The Viking Journal

Dead Birds Rain Down

The first thing that came back was the smell. The smell of hundreds of dead birds. It was foul. I didn't want to open my eyes. If the smell was this bad, how would it all look? I could just imagine my room being in shambles. And I'd just cleaned as well. Shit, what would my parents think? What time was it? Shit. I opened my eyes and all I could see was Griffon's torso. It seemed that he had passed out or something.

“Uhm.....Grif?”

No response.

“Griffon?”

I tightened all the muscles in my body and sat up. It was rather difficult and required all my strength as Griffon was in fact unconscious. Griffon's form awkwardly rolled off me. I was now given a full view of my room. It was not pretty. It was probably worse than I had imagined. I could taste bile in the back of my throat as I looked around. Every inch of the floor was covered with bird carcasses. There had to have been multiple people throwing them. But why? This old dead beat town was seriously messed up. Who were these people? Why were they attacking two curious kids with dead birds? What had we actually done wrong? This shit was only meant to happen in books and movies, not in real life. All myself and Griffon had wanted to know for the last two weeks was if our history was being taught wrong. Is it against the law to be curious? None of this made any sense.

I stood up and started tip toeing around all the birds. I had to get rid of them ASAP, before I actually threw up. Within half an hour I had three garbage bags full of birds. I was going to need new carpet. Griffon had conveniently been out of it the entire time. I contemplated dropping a bird on his face. It wasn't until I started lugging the bags down the stairs that Griffon stirred awake.

“Oh hello Sleeping Beauty.”

Griffon grumbled a response and rubbed the back of his head.

“So did I imagine the birds and the creepy guy and the blood?”

“No. That happened.”

“What the fuck is wrong with this place? And where are the birds?”

“I cleaned them all away.”

“Oh,” Griffon rubbed his head.

“Is your head alright?” I was already moving towards him before he could answer.
And my hand was already on the back of his head before he could say “No.”

Blood was slowly dripping from a wound that appeared to be from a piece of glass.

“Dammit Amy! That hurts!”

“Sorry! You might need stitches though.”

“Well isn't my mum just going to kill me.”

A thumping sounded from downstairs. It was like someone was trying to get through the locked door. All I could think was that the bird dude was back.

“OPEN THE DOOR!” screamed a female voice.

“Amy don't.”

“I wasn't going to.”

“WE KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE!”

We kept as silent as we could.

“THIS IS THE POLICE!”

Griffon shook his head and mouthed 'no'.

Then the gunfire came.

For the second time today Griffon threw himself at me. He started dragging me to my parents room. There was no point in asking what his plan was. The gunfire continued downstairs. Griffon ripped the curtains apart and yanked the window open.

“We're going to jump,” Griffon mouthed to me.

Oh shit.

“No we're not,” I hissed. “It's a two storey jump.”

Griffon grabbed my hand and dragged me over to rest on top the window sill.

“I can't do it,” I whimpered.

“You're going to have to.”

A crack sounded through the house. The door had been broken down.

“Just aim for the tree branch right there.”

“I'm going to die and I'm going to blame you.”

“Just jump.”

So I did.

I jumped, reached, grabbed the tree branch and swung myself to the ground. Griffon followed suit. We took off sprinting. We were running away from the centre of town. It seemed Griffon knew where he wanted us to go, so I just followed. More guns sounded in the distance. This only made us run faster.