Horror

Zains murder part 1

Corvus Brachyrhychos or the American Crow has fascinated me for many years now. It is a magnificent bird; they’re highly intelligent and adaptive, I also like their appearance. For centuries now, people revered the taxonomic crow family, some cultures have also feared it; I guess it’s all because the members of this family have no problem eating corpses of various kinds. Speaking of which, one such lovely bird is sitting on my porch as I’m writing this. I’ve named him Zain, after my childhood best friend, Zain, he used to love these birds too.

First and foremost, I am originally from a small town in southern Poland, I’ve moved to Texas twelve years ago when my dad decided it would be a good idea to leave Eastern Europe and move The States live a better life. Now, being a common Polish person, I’ve been brought up in a rather tight Catholic family, nothing too serious though. As long as I was a good Christian boy who said his prayers, ate his vitamins and obeyed his parents everything was easy and lovely. I was a good kid, never causing trouble or questioning my folks, they are good people too, aside from the religious indoctrination part.

Anyhow, originally we settled in Eureka, a small rural community because this was pretty much the only place we could afford. There were a little over three hundred people when we moved in so it wasn’t hard to get to know people. A couple weeks in town and I’ve managed to make myself some friends. It was a small gang of four boys my age; Trevor Jagodicz nicknamed “Red” for his shot temper and ginger hair, Michael “Mikey” Philips, a skinny little kid, even for a twelve year old, Theodore “Teddy” Jackson and their so called leader, Roy Reznik better known as “Double R”. This kid was nuts from the get-go and I should’ve noticed it, but as tends to be, I missed the huge signs on the wall when I first saw him flaunting around his huge golden crucifix necklace. I mean he was spewing priest-levels of religious rumblings once I introduced myself to the gang in an attempt to join their game of soccer. I’d never be able to forget how I am of course welcome to join their game because I appeared due to “god’s guiding hand” in their lives, mind you it was a fucking twelve year old.

One soccer game later and we became a united group, I was one of them, I wasn’t the new kid anymore, I’ve come to be a local kid. We did everything together from going to school, to going to the arcade together to even going to church together. Back then, it seemed like the best time I could have in my life and that went on for a couple of years, life was bloody perfect for me.

Two years after I moved to Eureka, I came across a new kid at the first day of my Eighth grade school year. I had never seen him before, and he did seem kind of weird staring at the crows that were flying above the school yard, so me being the nice kid I was, I’ve decided to approach him and make small talk. Man, that went on great, we became instant buddies, he told me about he admires the fact that birds can actually fly using their own bodies, which at that point, seemed like granted for me. This new kid even told me about how he wants to study the birds and later, when he would grow up to build flight machines and such. That is how I met my soon to be best friend, Zain.

Over the following days and weeks, I’ve slowly distanced myself from Double R’s gang and started hanging with Zain more and more frequently. We would do all sorts of stuff, from talking about the girls in our classes to going to the movies to playing video games together. In a sense, we were a couple average teenage guys, but there was another side, a more mature side to our friendship, mostly brought up by Zain’s dreams and the way he chased them. His passion with Corvids in particular and flight in general had often caused to stray around town for hours in search of a good observation spot to stare at birds. The other boys did not like my close friendship with Zain.

I learned pretty quickly that Zain was a Syrian kid whose parents immigrated to America during the nineties, I found his parent’s rather secular approach to Islam to be fascinating. Guess that was caused by the stark contrast between his parents and mine on the matter of religion.

There were virtually no other Arabs in town, let alone Muslims, and back then, the memory of 9/11 was still rather fresh in the minds of the public. You can imagine how Double R reacted to seeing me around Zain after he figured out that Zain wasn’t exactly a “White Christian boy”, ironically though, Zain had a skin completion slightly lighter than mine.

So I wasn’t really surprised when my former gang pulled me aside one day and tried warning me about my best friend being a possible terrorist and what not, I brushed them off, stating the guy was born on American soil to parents who weren’t in any way, shape or form related to terror organizations and what not. I didn’t even take the time to listen to a counter argument, I just left, and the gang, well they stared at me like I had murdered a person.

All was fine and dandy, until one weekend Zain and I were hanging at this large open field staring at the sky, we virtually spent the whole afternoon laying on the grass looking at the birds come and go, it was a really nice and quiet pass time. So we’re laying down there on the grass and Zain looks at me grinning from ear to ear, I looked at him dumbfounded and he goes, “Fun fact, a group of Crows is called a Murder”

I chuckled with surprise and went, “Seriously, dude?! That’s sick!” and we laughed off our ass about this weird little fact. We stayed in that field until the sun started setting on us, that’s when we got up and started leaving into the direction of Eureka. Just outside the field, my old gang was waiting on us.

“Sup, boys” called out Zain at the sight of the gang.

They didn’t respond, so we kept on walking and they got in our way, I asked, “what’s this about?”

“So what this sand nigger is what you traded us for, man, really?” called out Mikey, mockingly.

“The fuck?” I asked, staring him dead in the eyes.

“Yo what is this about, I haven’t had any issues with you, people” called out Zain.

Teddy shoved Zain and said, “We’ve an issue with you trying to make our little pal here into a terrorist like yourself”

Zain was about to punch him in the face for that remark and before I could react I felt sharp pain in my shoulder, I’ve been struck by a telescopic bat from behind by Red. I screamed out in pain as he hit me again and again screaming at me that I wouldn’t be a so concerned with “him”, referring to Zain, unless I had a thing for him. I cursed back at him and in response; he kept beating on me with his bat.