A Short Collection of Short Stories

ScissorBeak

In the country lands of the Middle West of America, there once sat a house. There is nothing left of it now, save a few old decaying posts standing wearily against the wind that occasionally passes through and a lone sketch of a beast that refuses to move no matter how hard the wind blows. But it was once a grand house. A magnificent structure of brick and marble, standing high and proud above its domain. The windows were always open, the shutters only added as an afterthought for design. The marble was always pristine, the carpets clean, and it is said that one could search the whole house and not find a speck of dust. The owner of the house always wanted it this way. She was a tall, frail thing. She could not have been much older than 20, but already she showed signs of old age, and in her eyes, there was a weariness far beyond her youth. She rarely spoke to housekeeping, save to tell them they needed to clean better. She simply could not stand any dirt in the house. Why this was, no one knew. Perhaps it was simply her way of dealing with the grief of her father, who had left her the house and the fortune. Perhaps it was some mental illness, which was very likely, as evidenced by her peculiar manner, and the numerous bottles of pills and medicine prescribed to her that she refused to take. But perhaps the least well known, but the most likely, it was for the same reason as the weariness in her eyes.

Perhaps because of her age, or her mental instabilities, she had been assigned a caretaker. A kind old woman, by the name of Kindra. She had once been excited for her assignment, but after a few days she found that there was hardly any interaction with the young woman. She spent almost all day locked in her room at her desk, blank pages in front of her, a pen in her hand, her head resting on her other fist anchored by her elbow on the table, staring out the window at the fields of grass. And very very rarely, Kindra would see a small smile stuck to her lips, more like the ghost of a smile, rather than an actual one. She only ever wore one outfit. A tight black dress with deep purple lace sleeves, and a high lace neck. Whenever Kindra tried to speak to her, the young woman would look at her with that weariness in her eyes, and then resume her previous stare. The only time she ever spoke was when Kindra asked her what her name was. The young woman looked at her, and in a voice as weary as her eyes said, "Ember."

"Is that your first or last name?" Kindra asked, eager to keep the conversation going. But the young woman, Ember, spoke no more. She had resumed staring out the window. Kindra too looked out the window, and thought she saw a flicker of motion in the fields. She thought nothing of it. Until she looked down at Ember and saw that the small smile had appeared on her lips. Kindra thought this was strange, but when she opened her mouth to ask, Ember looked at her with that weary expression and Kindra closed her mouth again and left. However, she was determined to find what had made Ember smile. The next day she sent several servants to go search the fields. When they returned unsuccessful, Kindra shook her head. It had been a fleeting hope. A crow, she thought to herself, a crow that was all it was. But something inside her warned otherwise.

That night, when Kindra went home, she glanced back at the house. It was the first time she'd ever seen it at night, as she was leaving later than usual. There in the window was Ember, staring as she always had. But then she looked down directly at Kindra. A coldness started deep down in Kindra's bones, and she hurriedly got in her car. She turned the key, and the engine started with a throaty growl. The coldness that was in Kindra's bones creeped into her muscles. Her engine had not made that noise. She flipped on the headlights and the coldness reached her skin. She turned the car around and began to drive away. Then the coldness reached the top of her skin and began to surround her. Kindra tried in vain to calm her breathing, but her lungs refused. She found herself driving down the straight country road faster and faster, wishing to escape the dreadful cold. But the faster she went the colder it got, the more the darkness swallowed the fields, the car, the stars and the moon, until not even the headlights could penetrate the dark cloak that was wrapping itself over the world. Then, a creature leapt from the plains and stood in the center of the road staring into the headlights, much like a deer does. But it was no deer that had landed on the road. As Kindra stared at it, she could not tell which adjective would fit it better: horrifying or magnificent. It was a tad bigger than her car and built like a dog. A thick frame gave it a fierce appearance. If it had a tail, it could not be seen, but occasionally it would seem that something swept through the darkness at its back feet. Its legs were built the same as dogs, but its feet looked almost like human hands, black as ebony, and curved into vicious claws. Its whole body was covered in large plates of black shiny material, almost armor, but it moved too fluidly with the creature to not be a part of it. All of this Kindra thought of as an afterthought, for in the moment the creature's head was what held her attention. Black like the rest of it, covered with what looked like super short, soft fur. Its eyes took up most of its face, like massive black glass orbs stuck into clay. Finally, it's beak. Long and perfectly straight, two holes at the top for nostrils. The beak was maybe a foot or two in length. It narrowed to a sharp point, and unlike the rest of the body it was a silvery gray. The creature stared at her, and she stared back at it. How long it had been, Kindra couldn't know. A few seconds? Hours? She didn't know. She couldn't know. The creature tilted its head to the side and clicked its beak, making an unnatural chattering sound. Kindra's heart was either frozen or beating too fast for her to feel. Then the creature lifted its head and screamed at the sky, a blood curdling screech that froze Kindra's blood, and made all the hairs on her arms and the back of her neck stand up straight. As the creature closed its beak Kindra heard a very distinctive sound. A sound that is hard to describe. It is the same sound a pair of scissors make as they close. At that moment a single word came to Kindra's mind. It was rather two, but she put them together, to form a single word that would haunt her for the rest of her days. Then the creature crouched and jumped off of the road in one beautiful, graceful leap. Kindra did not know how long she sat there after it left. She did not know how long she had been staring at the creature, but she did know that the moon had been in the lower quarter of the sky, just beginning its nightly trek when she began going home. It was nearing its peak, when Kindra finally regained her senses, and continued driving. But she did not stop at her house. She drove miles and miles, all the way to the nearby city to get a hotel room. The next morning, she set it up to sell her house and spent the rest of her days in an apartment in New York City, caring for young children. She never returned to the country. She never thought about it, except in her sleep, when the creature would sneak through her dreams as it did the fields. She thought of the incident consciously only twice and that was a month later, when the newspapers were filled with how the young woman (Kindra refused to say- to think her name) had gone missing after a terrible storm, and again a week later when they found the young woman brutally murdered, though there was no telling who, or what did it. She thought of the creature. She had no memory of braking nor beginning to drive again. Only the creature. Only the screech. Only the distinctive sound of its beak closing. Scissorbeak Kindra had thought, then tossed the paper in the trash.

The night Kindra had left, the young woman thought nothing of it. It was almost a week later before she even noticed she was gone. She was walking through the corridors of the house, like a ghost stalking a graveyard, and mildly thought to herself where did the woman who brought me lunch go? She dismissed the thought and returned to her room and stared out the window. Then she picked up her pen and resumed her normal position. There were many clouds in the sky, and the light in her room brightened and dimmed, brightened and dimmed, brightened and dimmed. Like a beast breathing, the woman thought to herself. As the day passed the room grew dimmer and dimmer. The clouds grew bigger and darker, and the wind blew harder and harder. The house creaked and moaned and rattled. The shutters blew wildly, and still the woman sat there. Rain began pattering on the window, softly at first, then harder and harder, louder and louder! The shutters banged. Lightning flashed, followed by booms of thunder so loud they shook the very foundations of the house. And still the woman sat there. She sketched an occasional line on the paper she'd been working on for years. The one she'd hidden when she heard the old woman coming. It was nearly done now. A few more lines. She added some shading. Then another line. The thunder banged and clashed, lightning flashed, and hail began pounding on the roof. Windows crashed and shattered, and still the woman sat there. Then she made one final curve on the eye in her drawing, and muttered, it's complete. There was a lull in the storm. The young woman did not hear the thunder, nor the rain, nor the hail. She stared out the window, and when the lightning flashed again, she saw it, standing on a rock jutting above the grass like an island in the sea. Magnificent, it stood there, staring at her. It lifted its head and screeched, and inside the young woman, an excited energy began. A boldness she had not known before, a wolfish instinct to run wild in the storm. She stood from her desk and walked calmly out of her room. She padded softly along the carpet, straightening a painting as she passed. She walked slowly down the gilded staircase, feeling the smooth, cool railing slide gracefully in her hand. She reached the front doors and opened them wide open to the storm. The rain blew fiercely, the lightning struck feverishly, and the thunder roared triumphantly. The young woman walked calmly out of the house and down the porch steps. She did not feel the rain that soaked her clothes and made them heavy, nor the hail that tore her skin as it pelted her. She heard not the thunder that damaged her ears, it was so loud, nor even the lightning that blinded her for a second, before striking again. She saw only it, standing on the rock against the storm, felt only the feverish excitement that the storm raised, heard only it's terrible screeching, and unnatural chittering. She walked calmly into the fields, not knowing- or perhaps she did know- that she would never truly leave them. The storm left in the morning, and the fields were calm, and the rock empty, as well as the house. The servants reported the young woman missing when they arrived to find the house in such terrible shape. A week later the police found the young woman at the base of the rock. She seemed in perfect condition when they found her, her purple dress mostly intake, the lace sleeves still clean. Yes, she seemed to have died of natural causes. Except for the clean slice down the center of the dress, and the fact that the young woman's torso was completely hollowed out. But the most striking thing was her expression. Gone was the weariness in her eyes, her mouth in the small smile she rarely wore. Not even Death could fully steal the peculiar, dark beauty she had always possessed. In fact, it seemed to amplify it. The story went national, so odd was her death. Many came to see the house and investigate. This would not be possible for long, as the house caught fire after a lightning strike lit it on fire the next year. But the people still came. Some claimed there was something there. Some claimed to see the beast on the rock. Some claimed she was just insane. Some claimed that on stormy nights the house would appear again, a dark spectral. None could be justified.

In the country lands of the Middle West of America, there once sat a house. There is nothing left if it now, save a few old decaying posts, standing wearily against the wind that occasionally passes through and a lone sketch of a beast that refuses to move no matter how hard the wind blows. A rock stands in the plains, like an island in the seas. And sometimes, a dark shape flickers through the grass. And on stormy nights, the whole area becomes a buzz with a feverish, wolfish energy. On those nights a dark figure stands on the rock and screeches. Sometimes the young woman is there. She whispers a single word when the figure closes its beak. And miles and miles away, an old woman awakes, a dark coldness surrounding her, and a word echoing in her mind. It is the same word. When the figure stops it's a terrible screech. When it closes its terrible beautiful beak.

Scissorbeak.