Crows spy on you.
That's what Skià said at the end of his live feed.
And now, his words sound kind of prophetic on this turret.
Another crow flies in. It spreads its wings to brake and stops at the railing. It caws. The one I gave a piece of biscuit to does the same.
Another one comes gliding in from nowhere. I swear, there was no sign of it in the sky a moment ago.
To cut a long story short, within half a minute the thin balustrade, with its rust-covered rails, fills with crows.
A procession of crows.
As black as they can be.
They caw as if on alert. Or maybe it's a threatening tone, I have no idea. I don't speak their goddamn language. And they're so close to me, I can see my terrified reflection in their glassy eyes. The tips of their beaks glisten in the light. I move as far away as I can.
Yes, I'm scared. Panic takes grip of my stomach, hardens it, turning it into stone.
The shrill sound of all these dark voices is unbearable and I hold my hands to my ears. In vain.
I'm surrounded.
Down below the grey abyss of the city opens up before me. What now?
I gather all the breath left in the back of my lungs and cry: HELP!
HELP!!!
HELP!!!!
It's the first time I've used that word. Yeah, the first time ever.
My cries dissolve into the ether and fade away. Like they never existed. And there's even no trace of bubbles like when I try to talk underwater. Now, here, on this turret, the meaning of the expression - shout into the wind - appears clear to me:
Suddenly, something crazy happens.
The kind of thing that might not be real, but it is.
I can see.
But not in the sense of just seeing.
I hyper-see. Super- see, over-see, I don't know how else to say it.
I mean, I can vividly focus a scene that would normally be impossible to view from this height. In fact, I can clearly and distinctly see a boy on the sidewalk below from the roof I'm on.
It's Marcello taking a picture of a writing on the wall.
And not only can I see him perfectly and I'm able to tell what he's wearing (a bright light jacket with black stripes sliding down the sleeves) and the shoes he's got on (an ancient Nike model), but I can also read the lopsided composition of letters that form the writing.
THIS IS LOVE: TO FLY TOWARD A SECRET SKY, TO CAUSE A HUNDRED OF VEILS TO FALL EACH MOMENT.
As if my gaze was made of some kind of matter, like rays of light that come out of the eyes of a B-movie character, he feels it and turns around to look up in my direction.
He stands like this for a couple of seconds.
It would be a good time to attract his attention now, to scream. But the scream gets stuck in my throat. Marcello can't see me up here. He doesn't have the super-sight I have right now. So he turns around and bends over with the camera stuck to his face. He takes the perfect picture of the sentence a romantic stranger copied - I bet - from a crumpled silver wrapper of a chocolate candy.
The crows start cawing all at once.
It's a scary chorus. It's an out of tune collective song.
Fear, now a heavy weight, crushes my chest. It compresses it, cuts my breath into little pieces. It's become one with my temples that begin to throb violently and my fingers sweat.
And then it happens.
I feel a stabbing pain that slams me to the cold floor of the turret.
I feel like I have two blades stuck in my back. They sink deep into my shoulder blades and an invisible sadistic hand twists and turns them over.
The volume of my scream is half the agony I feel.
The pain is pouring out of my back and trickling into every inch of my body.
I can't see anything anymore, this torture clouds my sight, thoughts explode, words disintegrate. I can only scream and scream and keep scream--
I hear the sound of a tear.
It's the cotton of my T-shirt.
Or the sound of my skin being lacerated.
Yes, it's my skin tearing.
I'm on the floor with my stomach on the concrete. I turn my head to see what's happening to my back.
And then I see them.
I see them!
Two little bones sticking out of my shoulder blades. Drenched in blood that must be mine, there's no other explanation.
Now fear grabs my throat and tightens it.
It's not over yet.
There's one more thing happening.
How can I express it?
How do you explain the unexplainable?
How do you describe the indescribable?
Where does one begin to put into words what is beyond man's understanding?
Maybe you just can't.
But I say it and ... amen.
It's wings that spread open from those two bones.
Wings, fuck. Dirty, monstrous wings!
With bones, feathers and everything. The whole package.
W-I-N-G-S.
YOU ARE READING
Alice Stays Home
Genel KurguAlice Lai is 15. It's the last day of school before the lockdown. She must now stay at home, an empty apartment where she spends a lot of her time by herself. Her parents work on endless shifts at the hospital (her mum's a doctor and her dad's a nu...
