The Birds
Audrey Gruian
Mrs. Corbeau didn’t know the difference between a robin and a sparrow, but if it was dark and shrieking, she shot it. To hell with whatever creature refused to delay its incessant caw for just a few hours more, to hell with its blaring trill! The darned things had been the cause of her poor sleep and headaches for the past week; she knew this for a fact.
It wasn’t as if Mrs. Corbeau particularly wanted to purchase the BB gun. But by the second week, her tossing and turning had become so violent, her husband begged her to find some solution. By this, he meant a pill, she knew, but Mrs. Corbeau couldn’t fathom swallowing any more than she already was. Old bones were hard enough to keep upright; the ephialtes was a monster to be tamed by some other method. And anyway, she thought, that’s what they fed women her age when they were too stumped by or too disinterested in their anomalies, the drug they claimed could slay the monsters and the hot flashes with one gulp. Mrs. Corbeau had been through that tunnel before. She kept the BB hidden in her peacoat the entire trek from the store to the house, wiping beads of sweat from her brow on the bus. She thought the driver had called her “hag” and felt her face flush when he clarified that he was offering a hand. The couple across the walkway seemed to stare with accusatory eyes, so she kept her own on her hands until her stop.
It started with just one or two a week. The alarm that went off in the middle of the night, volucrine screams that shook her awake, the shuffling of slippers down the hall, the dog whistle yawn of the porch door, and the blinding snap, the whip of the descent along the length of the old oak, then the thud, then the gasp of the October air realizing what she’d done. The soft body, dark-winged and deafened, draped across the grass. And the next morning, as if it had never happened at all, no more than a blurred outline of some faintly remembered foe imprinted upon the lawn.
Maybe it was the thrill of it: the kickback of the BB gun and the decision to pull the trigger, the assertion of quieting the silence of the night. Or maybe it was the gift of spontaneous opportunity, the alarm now just an excuse to rush down the hall and out the door. Regardless of the reason, she kept the gun close as she and her husband climbed into bed, and lay with eyes half shut until the screeching began.
The following week, the shrieking had grown louder. The bags under Mrs. Corbeau’s eyes had grown darker. She pulled her weight off the bed, night after night, with increasing vigor—or maybe it was relief. She stopped fixing the sheets, flung aside in the heat of the chase, and let her shuffling grow into footsteps as her labored breathing stretched into wails. She shot like a schoolboy, confident to a fault, and without care for keeping her pajamas—or her hands—clean.
By the third week, Mr. Corbeau had caught onto his wife’s habits. There was mud in their bed, and he woke up shivering with the early morning wind. And what was that wailing? The door was unlocked. Was she scared of something? Was she seeing something? Mr. Corbeau didn’t understand. He couldn’t understand. This was becoming absurd. She was jeopardizing their safety. He pleaded with her to just go to sleep, to just quell her anxieties, to just believe him that there was nothing to be worried about, but pleading was no use once she began blaming some birds. What birds? He didn’t hear anything! She must be mad! That was that! he asserted in a frenzy of frustration and fear, and he purged the house of suspicion until he found it in her intimates drawer: the gun. The worn lock on Mr. Corbeau’s safe clicked open, and the BB was placed beside a smaller, quieter, deadlier twin.
Mr. Corbeau locked the front door and the back door and the kitchen windows each thrice over. He had moved his pillow to the couch by the front door, and bolted the bedroom shut from the outside. Silly, Mrs. Corbeau thought to herself, as if this was going to stop the cawing. And who, she reasoned with her devil’s advocate, was going to make them stop now? Let him suffer for a while, too. Let him suffer while I, for once, sleep. With a reluctance that felt childish, she took a tablet from the neglected container in the corner of her husband’s sink cabinet and prayed. If she couldn’t shoot, there was no use lying in anticipation of an incubus.
Not long after she had fallen asleep did it return. Only this time, the caws were howls, the shrieking a siren, the screams oscillating and pulsating with a force that felt magnetic. It seared through her eardrums and into her brain and pressed into her temples until she rose, in the shuttered and locked bedroom, sweating and wide-eyed and seething. Her vision bounced, her limbs throbbed, and after one attempt at kicking down the locked door that nearly disabled her, she turned to the window.
With every ounce of strength she could muster, she forced the sliding window up, fumbled with the lock until it stuck in place, and with the tip of her bedside nail file, sliced the screen clean through in one desperate gash, sticking one arm, then the other, out towards the lawn, before tearing it apart and spilling limb over limb out onto the roof. The screeching continued, ached, throbbed through her body and through the air. She wasn’t about to jump, she comforted the devil. That would be absurd. On her rear, she slid slowly towards the gutter, used it to hold her frail figure, and fell the remaining eight feet into the open-armed ground.
If it wasn’t for the noise, the darned noise that filled her so possessively, she would have remained curled on the grass until whatever mysterious hand had wiped away all those weeks of fallen birds got ahold of her, too. Perhaps Mr. Corbeau would awake the next morning to nothing more than her imprint in the dew. But the sounds, now morphing beyond what she knew of avian ability, taunted her. They pointed and shouted, they called her useless and spineless and sick and insane.
“You know what’s insane?” she shouted back into the dark. “It’s this! It’s you and your goddamned yelling! I’m insane? Ha!” And Mrs. Corbeau stood with all her five feet and three inches of power and raised her arms above her head and she yelled. She screamed and the birds screamed back. She screamed louder, waved her arms about and gripped the hair on her head at the roots, daring to rip. “Come and get me! Come and get me! I’m insane!” She hollered and yelped and cried and, when she noticed that the blaring whine of the birds (or whatever they were) was quieting down, she kept going. She hooted and howled and ran across the lawn, cried such a guttural cry that she heard the flap of distant wings vacating the old oak. She wailed, scooping the earth into her palm and smearing it across her wrists and forearms, her knees, her stomach, her cheeks. She knelt, belting into the night, the tears and snot forming a rasp in her throat that only made the sound louder, deeper, more volucrine. She knelt, hypnotized by her scream and the foreign sense of some form of peace—the fledgling ascension—it now brought her, keenly unaware of the slam of the front door flying open and the snick of the safety disengaging.
Mr. Corbeau didn’t know the first thing about birds, most certainly not the difference between a robin and a sparrow, but it was dark and shrieking, and he shot it.
It wasn’t as if Mrs. Corbeau particularly wanted to purchase the BB gun. But by the second week, her tossing and turning had become so violent, her husband begged her to find some solution. By this, he meant a pill, she knew, but Mrs. Corbeau couldn’t fathom swallowing any more than she already was. Old bones were hard enough to keep upright; the ephialtes was a monster to be tamed by some other method. And anyway, she thought, that’s what they fed women her age when they were too stumped by or too disinterested in their anomalies, the drug they claimed could slay the monsters and the hot flashes with one gulp. Mrs. Corbeau had been through that tunnel before. She kept the BB hidden in her peacoat the entire trek from the store to the house, wiping beads of sweat from her brow on the bus. She thought the driver had called her “hag” and felt her face flush when he clarified that he was offering a hand. The couple across the walkway seemed to stare with accusatory eyes, so she kept her own on her hands until her stop.
It started with just one or two a week. The alarm that went off in the middle of the night, volucrine screams that shook her awake, the shuffling of slippers down the hall, the dog whistle yawn of the porch door, and the blinding snap, the whip of the descent along the length of the old oak, then the thud, then the gasp of the October air realizing what she’d done. The soft body, dark-winged and deafened, draped across the grass. And the next morning, as if it had never happened at all, no more than a blurred outline of some faintly remembered foe imprinted upon the lawn.
Maybe it was the thrill of it: the kickback of the BB gun and the decision to pull the trigger, the assertion of quieting the silence of the night. Or maybe it was the gift of spontaneous opportunity, the alarm now just an excuse to rush down the hall and out the door. Regardless of the reason, she kept the gun close as she and her husband climbed into bed, and lay with eyes half shut until the screeching began.
The following week, the shrieking had grown louder. The bags under Mrs. Corbeau’s eyes had grown darker. She pulled her weight off the bed, night after night, with increasing vigor—or maybe it was relief. She stopped fixing the sheets, flung aside in the heat of the chase, and let her shuffling grow into footsteps as her labored breathing stretched into wails. She shot like a schoolboy, confident to a fault, and without care for keeping her pajamas—or her hands—clean.
By the third week, Mr. Corbeau had caught onto his wife’s habits. There was mud in their bed, and he woke up shivering with the early morning wind. And what was that wailing? The door was unlocked. Was she scared of something? Was she seeing something? Mr. Corbeau didn’t understand. He couldn’t understand. This was becoming absurd. She was jeopardizing their safety. He pleaded with her to just go to sleep, to just quell her anxieties, to just believe him that there was nothing to be worried about, but pleading was no use once she began blaming some birds. What birds? He didn’t hear anything! She must be mad! That was that! he asserted in a frenzy of frustration and fear, and he purged the house of suspicion until he found it in her intimates drawer: the gun. The worn lock on Mr. Corbeau’s safe clicked open, and the BB was placed beside a smaller, quieter, deadlier twin.
Mr. Corbeau locked the front door and the back door and the kitchen windows each thrice over. He had moved his pillow to the couch by the front door, and bolted the bedroom shut from the outside. Silly, Mrs. Corbeau thought to herself, as if this was going to stop the cawing. And who, she reasoned with her devil’s advocate, was going to make them stop now? Let him suffer for a while, too. Let him suffer while I, for once, sleep. With a reluctance that felt childish, she took a tablet from the neglected container in the corner of her husband’s sink cabinet and prayed. If she couldn’t shoot, there was no use lying in anticipation of an incubus.
Not long after she had fallen asleep did it return. Only this time, the caws were howls, the shrieking a siren, the screams oscillating and pulsating with a force that felt magnetic. It seared through her eardrums and into her brain and pressed into her temples until she rose, in the shuttered and locked bedroom, sweating and wide-eyed and seething. Her vision bounced, her limbs throbbed, and after one attempt at kicking down the locked door that nearly disabled her, she turned to the window.
With every ounce of strength she could muster, she forced the sliding window up, fumbled with the lock until it stuck in place, and with the tip of her bedside nail file, sliced the screen clean through in one desperate gash, sticking one arm, then the other, out towards the lawn, before tearing it apart and spilling limb over limb out onto the roof. The screeching continued, ached, throbbed through her body and through the air. She wasn’t about to jump, she comforted the devil. That would be absurd. On her rear, she slid slowly towards the gutter, used it to hold her frail figure, and fell the remaining eight feet into the open-armed ground.
If it wasn’t for the noise, the darned noise that filled her so possessively, she would have remained curled on the grass until whatever mysterious hand had wiped away all those weeks of fallen birds got ahold of her, too. Perhaps Mr. Corbeau would awake the next morning to nothing more than her imprint in the dew. But the sounds, now morphing beyond what she knew of avian ability, taunted her. They pointed and shouted, they called her useless and spineless and sick and insane.
“You know what’s insane?” she shouted back into the dark. “It’s this! It’s you and your goddamned yelling! I’m insane? Ha!” And Mrs. Corbeau stood with all her five feet and three inches of power and raised her arms above her head and she yelled. She screamed and the birds screamed back. She screamed louder, waved her arms about and gripped the hair on her head at the roots, daring to rip. “Come and get me! Come and get me! I’m insane!” She hollered and yelped and cried and, when she noticed that the blaring whine of the birds (or whatever they were) was quieting down, she kept going. She hooted and howled and ran across the lawn, cried such a guttural cry that she heard the flap of distant wings vacating the old oak. She wailed, scooping the earth into her palm and smearing it across her wrists and forearms, her knees, her stomach, her cheeks. She knelt, belting into the night, the tears and snot forming a rasp in her throat that only made the sound louder, deeper, more volucrine. She knelt, hypnotized by her scream and the foreign sense of some form of peace—the fledgling ascension—it now brought her, keenly unaware of the slam of the front door flying open and the snick of the safety disengaging.
Mr. Corbeau didn’t know the first thing about birds, most certainly not the difference between a robin and a sparrow, but it was dark and shrieking, and he shot it.
Audrey Gruian (HM '26) is an engineering student from the greater Seattle area. You can often find her enjoying live music, tinkering, or photographing slugs on hiking trails.