fledarmûs || woosan

「chapter 1」: blackbird

The way too energetic voice of a radio host filled the silence of the car, joined only by the static hiss of the old radio and the hum of the motor as the driver took a sip of his coffee. The first ray of the morning sun hit him right in his eyes and he squinted into the light, regretting his decision to have left his sunglasses at home. But how could he have known that he'd have to deal with this? When he'd stepped out of the house ten minutes ago, it had been pouring. His shirt was still damp because of it.

When the radio struggled playing the song that had replaced the voice, he emptied his cup and turned it off. Instead, the half-dead device now displayed the time in red numbers, which glowed so weakly that they might not have been there at all. Then it stuttered alive, misused its horrible condition to play the song in the most disgraceful way possible and interrupted his thoughts with its static. He turned it off again without sparing it so much as a glance.

With a deep sigh, he stopped at a redlight and closed his eyes to escape the blinding sunlight. The radio turned itself on. He groaned. "Shut the fuck up, it's too fucking early for demonic possessions," he complained when a deep voice in the radio started chanting what he assumed to be Latin, simply ripping the device out of the dashboard when the display glitched. The redlight turned green and he threw the radio in the vague direction of the backseat without looking where it landed. He should've done that ages ago, that thing had never been useful anyway.

Continuing his drive out of the city, he yawned and tried to keep his eyes open. How many hours of sleep had he had? Three? He shouldn't have let his friends talk him into watching the entire trilogy in one night. Especially because two of them had – once again – been unable to keep their hands off each other and he'd had the displeasure of sitting right next to them. He should've known better though, it wasn't exactly new that they behaved like a newly wed couple on their honeymoon. They'd been clinging to each other this morning too.

He sighed. He really shouldn't have given in to them. Today was his first day of the internship, he couldn't possibly show up looking like a tired rat. Yet here he was, barely awake, driving around in an ancient car with only his half-dead phone as a GPS. And probably just barely having avoided the seventh supernatural phenomenon of the week. On Tuesday. His new boss should pay him for even being alive, with all the shit that had happened yesterday. But if his experiences with the corporate nightmare had taught him anything, it'd be a miracle if he was allowed to actually use his lunch break as a break. There would be no money for him.

The sunlight hit the mirror tiles the previous owner of the car had glued to the ceiling and the already vibrantly painted and decorated interior turned into a gleaming rainbow. He should've brought his sunglasses. If this car wasn't such a work of art, he would've taken all of it down when he got it. But whomever this car had belonged to had been a gifted artist, getting rid of all the paintings, cat sculptures, glass gems, mirrors and the fairy lights sewn to the ceiling in the back to make it look like a starry night would feel like a crime. And he loved it, even though it refused to work like a normal fucking car; he'd gotten it for about five hundred bucks, and for that price this devil's machine functioned splendidly.

When he finally turned into the street of his destination, he frowned. These identical white mansions with their perfectly cut lawns certainly did not seem like the sort of building that would house an IT company. But his phone told him that he hadn't taken a wrong turn, so he shrugged and searched for the house number 361. He felt entirely out of place driving through this rich suburb with his little junk car, like a dirty feral pigeon among white doves.