The Half That You See by Rebecca Rowland (best summer reads .TXT) 📕

the deck of a ghost ship. To his right was his and Donna’s bedroom, the study, and the bathroom. To the left was the living room.  Gary stood still and quiet, his labored breathing and the intermittent roaring of the storm the only sounds permeating the cold air.

The tapping was gone.

It must have been the wind. Maybe a tree hitting the house, the old TV antenna blown down and smacking against a window, or—

Tap. Tap. Tap-tap-tap.

It was coming from the living room.

It was the largest space in the house: rectangular in shape, the walls made of massive pine logs from forests long since decimated, with a huge stone fireplace that the previous owner had capped with a stuffed, snarling bobcat head, the first thing that Donna made him throw out when they moved in.

Gary stretched out his arm as far as it could go; the light from the kerosene lantern was meager and weak. He squinted, trying to make out something, anything foreign that could be causing the sound, and wished for his flashlight buried somewhere in the snow.

“But that’s as good as wishing for a generator. Or a job. Or having your wife back.” Gary’s voice sounded tiny and defeated. He hated it.

Tap-tap-tap-tap. Gary took two steps further into the room. “It’s coming from the fireplace,” he said in a quiet voice, feeling foolish for speaking softly. But what was it? A fallen tree branch moving from a downdraft? “But there’s a cover on the fireplace, right?” Is there? Or is that just another one of your asinine assumptions, like the one about your wife being faithful rather than a sex-crazed slut with a thing for woodcutters with big logs?

There were two more quick taps, then a few seconds of silence before it began again. Gary finally saw it: on the edge of the smoky light, a flash of movement and shadow inside the darkened confines of the fireplace. He took a step back. If there was an animal in there, could it push its way out?

“No,” Gary answered himself, “the panes on that fireplace are heavy and tight as hell, Donna made sure of that, said she didn’t like drafty fireplaces…”

He squinted and cautiously moved toward the glass, then screamed and nearly dropped the lantern when a black mass slammed itself against the panes.

“It’s a bird,” Gary said. “There’s a damned bird in my fireplace.”

It wasn’t a small bird, a sparrow or some such thing. It was black and big. A crow.

“How the hell did you get in my fireplace?”

The bird continued to intermittently tap, its soulless black eyes never wavering from Gary.

"Now what do I do?" Gary said. Well, either open the fireplace, kill the fucking bird, and start a fire, or sit back on your ass and do nothing like you've done your whole pathetic life.

“That’s not true!” Gary countered, his voice angry and bitter. “I’ve done a lot, I put myself through college, I, I was successful as hell as a software designer, I—” You’re a loser, fat boy, and now you’re going to let a little bird put the final cold nail in your coffin!

Gary took a deep breath and stepped closer to the fireplace. Blood from the soaked t-shirt around his hand dripped to the floor and the crow seemed to become more excited, tapping harder and harder on the panes.

What the hell? Does it smell the blood? Can birds smell anything?

It’s a fucking crow, dumb-ass, not a hawk or a vulture or a carnivorous monster from the Jurassic period. It’s got a brain the size of a damn pea. Just fucking kill it!

“It's only a bird,” Gary said. “It's probably more scared of me then I am of it. Maybe if I just knock hard on the panes it'll go back up the chimney.”

When Gary moved closer, the bird attacked the panes with more vigor and beat its wings against the panes in union with its tapping. Gary stepped back and as soon as he had moved away, the bird slowed its tapping.

“Fine. Stay in there and freeze to death.”

The bird blinked its coal-black eyes once, twice, and then stepped back into the darkness of the fireplace.

Gary sipped on the Armagnac, the bottle now half empty. “You shouldn’t drink anymore,” he told himself. “I definitely don’t want to get drunk.” But the truth was—if he was being honest with himself, and wouldn’t that be something new—he did want to get drunk, to get shitfaced and pass out until this night was over and Donna was back in his arms and bed. Except she’s not coming back. She’s at Dougie’s now, all warm and cozy in his cabin with its generator and lights and they’re probably laughing their asses off when he’s not burying his huge cock up her tight slit!

Tap-tap…taptaptaptaptap…taptaptap…

"Shut up!" Gary screamed. Even under all the layers, he could feel the cold work its relentless skeleton fingers into his shivering body. It was getting colder, no doubt about it.

What if the electricity doesn't come back on, shithead? You really gonna die like a pathetic loser just ‘cause you have some phobia about birds?

Gary took another drink from the bottle, then stood on shaking legs. “You gotta do this,” he told himself. “Do it or die.”

Like a man going to his execution, Gary went into the living-room. He was at the point of no return, like when he was a teenager and had decided to call a girl and ask for a date: even if she hung up on him, even if she laughed at him. He could use one of his big heavy blankets to throw over the bird as soon as he opened the panes. If it didn't come out, so much the better: he'd smother the crow right inside the fireplace then beat it to a pulp with the fireplace poker. As he gathered his strength, Gary realized that the tapping had stopped.

"Maybe you decided to leave," Gary said. “Maybe you died. But if you’re not dead when I