Creeps, true stories from Reddit (Second book)

Got a new pet parrot but then i heard it speak

The whole mess started with a phone call. I was relaxing in bed late one night when my phone rang. David's name displayed on the caller ID. "That's weird," I muttered to myself, checking the clock beside my bed and seeing that it was just after midnight. David was a police officer who worked ridiculous hours, and I wondered what he was doing calling me so late.
"Hello," I said, picking up the phone.
"Hey Eric," he said. "Sorry to be calling you so late, but I have sort of a strange request."
"What's that?"
He sighed. "A few days ago, I worked a suicide downtown. Nothing unusual about it. Just your typical single male taking things into his own hands. The thing is, the victim had a pet parrot."
"I see," I said, wondering where he was going with this.
"We gave it to a local bird sanctuary and figured that was the end of it. But they called earlier and suddenly said we had to take it back because there's no room. I don't have anywhere to keep it, and none of the other officers are willing to take it. I know you had a parrot for a few years, so I was wondering if you'd like it."
I considered his offer. It had been a long time since I had a pet bird, but I'd always had a strange affinity for them. I figured it couldn't hurt to take the parrot off his hands. I still had my cage and everything. Even if I decided not to keep it, I could always wait until the sanctuary had capacity and give it back. "Yeah, I guess I can do that."
"Oh, thank God," David sighed. "I was hoping I wouldn't have to keep the damn thing. Couldn't bring myself to just abandon it."
He gave me the sanctuary's information and told me I could pick it up anytime tomorrow. I said my goodbyes and hung up the phone.
The next day, I went to pick up the bird. It was at the Freedom Bird Sanctuary, which was only about thirty minutes from my apartment. I told the lady at the front desk what I was there for, and she went back to retrieve the parrot. I noticed that she seemed oddly relieved to give it to me, eyeing the caged animal with what almost seemed to be repulsion.
I was a little annoyed by that, figuring that you should at least be empathetic toward animals if you were going to work at a sanctuary. Shrugging it off, I returned to my car with the parrot. I scrutinized it before heading out, seeing that it was a scarlet macaw, and a big one at that.
"I guess you need a name," I muttered to the cage.
The bird just stared at me with beady eyes, seeming reluctant to offer any input.
"Crimson seems like a good name," I decided, noticing the vivid red of its wings. The color seemed to have more depth than most macaws. I secured the small travel cage in the passenger seat, making sure it wouldn't shift while the car was moving, and drove home.
Once home, I found my old cage under a pile of linens in the closet and transported the bird to its new home. Crimson was surprisingly compliant, letting me easily pick him up and place him in the larger cave. Additionally, the bird was oddly quiet. I hadn't heard a peep from it since picking it up.
I filled a small dish in the cage with food I had picked up on the way to the sanctuary and watched the bird closely. It was perfectly content to sit on its perch and watch me.
"You gonna say anything?" I prompted the bird.
It just stared and sat stock-still.
"I guess not," I said, turning to leave the room.
"I know," the bird said, just as I turned my back. I whirled around and stared at it. "I know," it repeated from its perch.
Weird, I thought. That's an interesting phrase to teach a pet. I just shrugged it off. Parrots picked up random phrases all the time, and scarlet macaws were particularly prone to doing so. Still, it was kind of eerie.
I returned to my bedroom and began watching TV, figuring it best to let Crimson adjust to his surroundings without me bothering him.
"I know," the parrot said once again, its voice echoing down the hallway.
"I really hope he doesn't say that all the time," I said to myself, turning the volume up on the TV.
The day passed in relative peace, Crimson only speaking a few times throughout the day. It was the same phrase every time – I know.
That night, I was roused by the sound of voices from my living room. Groggily, I sat up and listened closely. It didn't sound like the squawky voice of a parrot. Rather, it sounded as if there was a human speaking in my living room.
I opened my door and stepped out into the hallway, listening intently. As soon as I did so, the voice stopped. I waited for another moment, seeing if it would return, but it never did. I sighed and returned to my bedroom. Damn these thin walls. My apartment was already crappy enough, and I didn't need to hear people's conversations outside.
The next night, I once again woke to the sound of people talking outside. It sounded like they were practically in my house. I got up to go outside and tell them to quiet down, but, as I approached the door, I thought I recognized the voice.
It sounded like my girlfriend Hannah. She had a key to my apartment, so she could be here, but I actually hadn't seen her for a few days. She was in grad school and told me she needed some time in isolation so she could finish an important project. Maybe she was finished.
I opened my door and moved toward the living room.
"Oh, that feels good," I heard Hannah say.
What the fuck? I glanced around the doorway to see no one there, just Crimson sitting in his cage. He was facing the doorway and almost seemed to be staring directly at me.
"I love it when you do that." The parrot's beak moved in sync with the words.
I stared at the bird in awe. Not only was it speaking in full sentences, but it was mimicking Hannah's voice perfectly. Rather than a high-pitched squawk, it sounded exactly like her. How? The bird had never heard her voice.
"You're so much better than Eric," the bird said, its voice still exactly like Hannah's.
A shiver ran down my spine at the sound of my name. I moved into the living room then sat on the couch and watched the bird, mesmerized.
"Oh yeah?" It said, it's voice now that of a man. The voice sounded oddly familiar, but I couldn't quite place it.
"Yeah," it said, once again sounding like Hannah. "That idiot never has any idea what he's doing. He just flounders around, hoping he'll get me off."
"Stop," I said suddenly. I didn't know what was going on, but I didn't want to hear it. I felt nauseous and a sick, icy sensation settled in my gut.
It was almost imperceptible, but the bird seemed to shake its head, as if saying no to my request.
"That's because he never has any idea what he's doing," the man's voice came again. "He flounders about life the same way. Poor guy can't even hold down a job."
I felt vomit rise in my throat as I recognized my voice. It was Jake. My best friend Jake - and he was talking about me.
"What are you doing?" My voice was barely above a whisper.
"I know," the bird squawked, its voice now back to normal.
Gripped by sudden fear and anger, I picked up a pillow from the couch and flung it at the cage. It bounced off and fell to the floor, the metal bars emitting a sharp clang. The bird didn't even flinch.
"I know," it said again, somehow sounding like it was mocking me.
Feeling dazed, I retreated to my room, closing the door tightly behind me and trying to block out whatever sound may come through. Thoughts about what I'd just heard swirled through my mind. How could a parrot form sentences like that? How did it mimic those voices perfectly? Tears stung my eyes as I thought about the implication of the parrot's words.
I tried to ignore it, to shove the thoughts down into the darkest corners of my mind. But they remained stark, torturing me as I stayed up all night thinking about them. I tried to convince myself that I'd imagined it or that Crimson had just been stringing together random words and happened to sound like Jake and Hannah. But how did it know my name? It couldn't be a coincidence. Could it? What exactly did he know?
I spent the next couple days haunted by what I had heard. Crimson remained entirely silent during that period, even neglecting to repeat its pet phrase of "I know."
I considered bringing it up with Hannah, getting her to tell me how ridiculous it was so we could just laugh it off. But something stopped me. Maybe I just didn't want to sound crazy. Maybe I was just worried about bothering her when she needed to focus. Or maybe, just maybe, the parrot was right.
Eventually, wracked with exhaustion after several nights without sleep, I invited Jake over to hang out. As we watched TV, my attention was entirely focused on him. There was no sign of guilt on his face, no evidence that he had betrayed my trust.
At one point he went to the bathroom, and, driven by a need to know, I grabbed his phone from the coffee table while he was gone. Typing in the password I'd seen him use countless times, I unlocked it and opened his texts.
The sick, icy feeling once again settled in my gut.
There it was, plain as day. There were countless texts between him and Hannah. At first, they seemed innocuous, but, as I scrolled up, they became even more incriminating. Countless explicit texts filled the screen, separated by various pictures and videos that were far more than just friendly.
My hands shaking, I quickly put down the phone as I heard the bathroom door open. Jake returned to his place on the couch and continued to watch TV with me. I sat there in cold silence, simultaneously deeply hurt and filled with rage. All the while, Crimson watched from his cage with beady eyes.
Eventually, I made up an excuse about being busy and asked Jake to leave. He shot me a strange look, sensing that I was acting different, but nodded his head and left.
I remained seated on the couch and burst into tears once the door had closed behind him. How could he do this to me? How could Hannah? Through the pain, I wracked my brain for how to deal with this. I didn't want to break up with her. But how could I stay with someone who would betray me like that?
I wish I'd never known. I wish I'd never taken that fucking bird. I looked to the cage and stared at it. Crimson stared back, cocking its head as his eyes seemed to penetrate to my very core.
"Eric," it said, sounding different this time. Now the voice was raspy, like that of an old woman who'd been smoking a pack a day for years. It was the voice of my mother – the same mother who'd been dead for nearly a decade.
"Yes," I responded, my voice shaky. I don't know why I responded. I should have just gotten rid of the bird and forgotten everything that happened. But something about it seemed to command attention – maybe even obedience. I felt like I had to listen to it.
"You can fix this." It still spoke in my mother's voice.
"How?" My mouth felt dry, and my hands gripped the couch cushions tightly.
"Silly boy," my mother said. "You've always been too trusting, too kind. You never should have been with that dirty whore in the first place." The bird chuckled, an eerie experience when the sound came from a beak. "And you were dumb enough to befriend Jake. You know he's never been able to keep his dick in his pants."
The bird was right. I never should have kept Jake around. I knew how he was with women, and this wasn't the first time he'd done something like this to a friend. Hannah had a history too. But I thought that maybe I would be the exception. I thought they would never hurt me.
"How do I fix this?"
The bird cocked its head again and stared at me with those black, soulless eyes. Then it answered in my mother's voice. "Kill them."
At first, I was revolted, but the bird kept repeating its command in my mother's voice. And, after listening to it for several hours as it watched me with a piercing gaze, the bird's suggestion suddenly didn't sound like such a bad idea.

Posted by u/travisliebert