Oct 25, 2016

I’m going to begin sharing more of A Bird’s Prey. I’ve gone back and forth with this decision, but feel it’s the right call. After all, the story is only just beginning. 

Chapters 1-5 are still available. 

Chapter 6

Travis’s faithful cat, Kitty, attempted to wake him up for about fifteen minutes. He ignored her by covering his head with the blanket. The alarm buzzed. He pulled the blanket off of his head and looked up at the time. Eight AM. It’s too early. He reached over and pressed the snooze button on the clock. Kitty saw an opportunity, raced under the covers, and began to meow. “You’re so annoying sometimes,” he said as he tried to push her away. She ignored him and continued to paw at his ear to wake him up. “Alright, fine. You win,” he said. He tossed his cover off and sat up on the side of his bed.

He blinked a few times and wondered why his eyes were so dry. He blinked, again and realized he forgot to remove his contacts before going to sleep. He looked down at the calendar on his nightstand and a wave of sadness washed over him. “It’s been five years, Kitty. I wish you could have met them.” He sat for a moment in silence. The moment was interrupted when he felt an itch in his left eye. He instinctively rubbed his eye causing his contact lens to pop out and fall to the floor. “Shit!” He dropped to his knees beside the bed and frantically searched for the lens. He found it and breathed a sigh of relief. As he picked it up to examine it, he realized it was folded in half. With great care, he attempted to pull the two sides apart. The lens tore in two in the process. “Dammit, dammit, dammit! God fucking dammit!” he complained and pounded the side of his bed with his fist. “This is my last fucking pair.” Concerned for her own wellbeing, as cats usually are, Kitty ran away in fear. Travis felt guilty for scaring her and turned to look for her. She was hiding under the dresser, in the far corner of the room. “I’m sorry, Kitty. Come back,” he said. She didn’t move. He crawled on his hands and knees to the dresser and looked underneath. “Why won’t you come out? I wasn’t yelling at you. I’ll give you a yummy kitty treat if you forgive me.” Travis reached underneath the dresser to pet Kitty and coax her out. She hissed, growled, and bit at his hand. “What the hell!? What’s gotten into you?”

Kitty stared at Travis with her vibrant yellow eyes. She blinked and the vibrant yellow was gone. It was as if her eyes were replaced by two, solid black, marbles. Travis panicked and shot backwards, away from the dresser. “Fuck!” he shouted as his left hand jammed into something under his bed. A few seconds later, Kitty poked her head out from under the dresser. She gave Travis a pathetic look, let out a soft meow, and pranced up to him. After purring and rubbing her head on his leg, she dashed under the bed. “Brat.” Travis said with a sigh.

Travis shook his hand in an effort to make his hand feel better. It didn’t work. He was about to stand when an unexplainable feeling told him to look underneath his bed. He leaned over, took a deep breath, and lifted the bed skirt. Kitty was there and her eyes were back to normal. She was rubbing her face all over a box. “I jammed my finger on that because of you.” She meowed again and acted as if she had no idea what he was saying…because she didn’t. “I’m glad you feel better,” Travis said. After a moment of consideration, he thought, it was dark under the dresser, and I am missing a contact lens. He shrugged his shoulders. “You’re just a regular cat. Right, Kitty?”

“Meow.”

“Of course you are. You just did what any frightened cat would have done.”

Travis dropped the bed skirt and picked himself off of the floor. He walked to his nightstand, and picked up his phone. “I need to call the eye doctor,” he said. He dialed the number and a pleasant female voice answered the phone.

“Thank you for calling Doctor Lenso’s office. Jane speaking, how may I help you?”

“Hi, Jane. I kind of ruined one of my last contact lenses. I was wondering if I could get an appointment for today? My name is Travis, by the way.”

“Hmm?” Jane says. “let me check on that.”

“Thank you.” Travis replied and covered the mouthpiece of the phone. “She must be new, Kitty. I don’t remember anyone named Jane.”

Jane returned to the line, “You’re in luck. We just had a cancellation. Can you be here at 11:30?”

“Yes. That’s great!”

“Okay. I’ve got you down for 11:30, this morning. See you soon, Mr. Singelmore.” Travis hung up, scratched his head, and wondered how the woman knew his last name. He shrugged and walked into the kitchen with Kitty at his feet.

Travis prepared each of them their usual morning meal. He fed Kitty a bowl of wet food because she was spoiled and refused to eat dry. He had a bowl of his favorite cereal from childhood, Chocolate Birdie Crunch.

Kitty jumped up on the table. Travis looked up from his cereal and said, “I really don’t know why I let you eat on the table. You lick your butt.” She purred and continued to eat without acknowledging him. She devoured her meal like she’d never eaten and jumped off of the table.

Travis finished up and prepared for the day while Kitty took her morning nap on the bed. She loved basking in the rays of sunlight that shone through the window and warmed the covers.

Travis was ready to go with plenty of time to spare. Unfortunately, he was unable to find his house key. He checked the time and said, “10:17! I’m never going to make it!” He sighed, groaned, and cursed to himself. He sat down at the foot of the bed and closed his eyes. He took a few deep breaths, counted to ten, and exhaled. The breathing technique was something his psychiatrist, Dr. Esslinger, taught him. The breathing kept his anger from evolving into a constant state of rage.

Travis opened his eyes, looked down, and saw his keys sticking out from under the dresser. Kitty still rested on the bed. He turned to her and said, “I blame you for all of this. My keys must have fallen off the dresser when you ran and hid under it.” She opened and closed her eyes, curled her head into her paws, and went back to sleep. “Screw you, too,” he said. He then picked up his keys and headed out the door.

Travis jogged all the way to the bus stop. By the time he arrived, the driver was closing the door of the bus he needed to be on. With surprising speed, he sprinted the last two blocks. I’m going to make it, he thought as the bus pulled away. The driver looked back at him in the side view mirror and smiled with a grin so familiar and so terrible, Travis froze in his tracks. It was a grin he’d never forgotten. He had nightmares about it.

The bus lurched and hissed to a stop. The door slammed open with a clank. People waiting on their busses took notice. Travis looked back at the crowd and saw a woman with a cigarette hanging from her mouth. She gave him an angry look and shouted, “Get on the bus, asshole!” Another voice shouted, “Come on, buddy. We all got things to do!”

Travis turned back to the bus. The driver, a large portly man standing at least six feet tall, stepped off. “You gettin’ on?” the driver asked. “I’d like to finish my route today, and times a’ wastin’.” Travis trembled with fear at the sound of the phrase. It was phrase he’d only heard from one other person. It was engrained in his memory, forever.

“What did you say?” Travis asked.

The driver answered and annunciated each word, as if Travis were an idiot. “Are-you-get-tin-on-the-bus?”

“No. after that? You said something else.”

“Look kid, I don’t know what’s wrong wit’ you, but I gotta’ get goin’. Are you gettin on or not?” 

Up until that moment, Travis thought his life was more or less under control. His Thorazine prescription was enough to prevent him from seeing things that weren’t supposed to exist, and weekly counseling sessions with Dr. Esslinger helped him accept the idea of a chemical imbalance in his brain. An imbalance, he was told, had always existed. It took a few years of therapy, but Travis was convinced the imbalance is what led to his visions. Dr. Esslinger even told Travis accepting the imbalance as reality was a breakthrough. A breakthrough which opened the doorway to his recovery. Ever since his realization and acceptance, the visions stopped. He knew he’d never be cured, but he was beginning to think he could live a semi-normal life, free of visions and free of Jacob Conley.