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

razor-sharp beak began to viciously dig into the soft flesh of his outer ear.

Gary awoke from the nightmare to the sound of his teeth chattering furiously. He pushed himself up with his good hand and leaned against the bed, his body raked with uncontrollable shivering. His head pounded from the Armagnac and his bladder felt close to bursting. With shaking hands, he pulled whatever covers were left on the bed and wrapped them around himself.

Taking two deep breaths, he stood up. Feeble light shone through the windows, giving everything in the room an ethereal, unreal glow. What day was it? Was it tomorrow? The next day? “It doesn’t fuckin’ matter,” he muttered, his mouth dry and tasting like shit. “I gotta…I gotta piss then I will figure things out…”

Gary stumbled out of the bedroom and into the bathroom and would have achieved his one goal of not pissing his pants if the pipes underneath the sink hadn't burst and covered the floor with water that had turned into ice. His right leg flipped up like a clown at a circus and his injured left leg followed. Gary slammed hard onto the frozen tiles, clipping his forehead on the edge of the sink. The fall knocked the breath away from his lungs and as he lay gasping on the frozen floor, his full bladder released. Blood pooled around his face from the jagged slash on his forehead, his pants steamed from the hot urine, and his left leg screamed out in silent agony.

Tap…taptap…taptaptaptap…

“Fuck you,” he croaked, his voice almost inaudible over the still-present sound of the storm. “Fuck…you…”

It was no use. Gary was spent, defeated, dying of hypothermia in a pool of his own piss and blood. He closed his eyes and waited for the inevitable touch of death. The tapping grew louder, as if excited by Gary’s imminent demise. And then, Gary heard it. An undercurrent of sound, something not born of the howling winter winds or crazed avian minds.

Voices.

Gary wiped away the blood from the eyes and slowly, painfully, sat up and listened more intently. He could hear laughter—a cold, malicious sound—coming from the living-room. Laughter at Gary’s life, at all his failures and soon-to-be death.

“Fuck you,” he whispered. He grabbed the sink with his left hand and pulled himself up. “Fuck you!” he screamed, and it was a great and wonderful release, like slicing open an infected boil.

“Fuck-YOU!” he roared with white-hot passion and anger. Maybe the crow with the voice of Doug Freeman had killed and eaten Jackson, but it wouldn’t kill and eat him. Not today or ever.

He stumbled into the living-room, now illuminated with a weak yellow light. "You think you've won, don't you?" he yelled at the fireplace. The blanket he had placed over the panes the night before had fallen off, and Gary could see the fireplace was packed tightly with birds, so many that the entire structure bulged in and out, the solitary black lung of a giant.

Gary squatted, staring into the dozens of black, unblinking eyes behind the furious beaks. He grabbed the fireplace poker and tapped gently on the panes. “You’re not winning. I’m a genius, a certified grade-A fucking genius, and I’ve got the perfect plan for all of you!”

In the utility room, he put on Donna’s old bike helmet and her wood-working goggles, then gathered a hand axe, a box of matches, and every aerosol can they had: paint, deodorant, air fresheners, his arms full of metal cans. Back in the living room, he pulled down all of the drapes from the windows and cleared away a large, circular area free from furniture, paper, anything that could catch on fire in the living room.

The tapping of beaks and beating of wings increased, growing louder and more frantic. Gary tore one of his blankets into crude, wide strips and wrapped them around his hands and face. He reached up on the fireplace mantel next to his wedding picture and grabbed a heavy rectangular-shaped copper ingot. "Donna got this for me in Copper Harbor," he said to the birds, a brief memory rising up in his addled mind. “She said it would bring me luck.”

The picture hovered in his mind, him standing with his stunning new bride on the shores of Lake Superior, watching the sunset, crimson and gold shimmering off the gently rolling waves of the lake, holding each other close and—

Gary slammed the copper ingot hard into the helmet, hearing plastic (or was that bone?) crack as he dropped to his knees. “Gotta stay focused.” His words slurred as he took deep breaths, then stood slowly up, feeling dizzy and weak but with the memories safely knocked away. “It’s time…time for the show.”

Gary placed the ingot down on the couch, and after lighting a match, grabbed an aerosol can and pushed down on the button. The spray ignited into a foot and a half long yellow-blue flame. “You want some shit? Then come and get some!” he screamed at the fireplace, then threw the copper ingot with all his might at the glass. The two rectangular panes exploded outward in a gleaming shower and released the birds in a frenzied rush of beaks, feathers, and claws that headed straight for Gary.

The greater part of the shit lasted for hours.

Gary killed the last crow with his bare hands. He squeezed it tight, felt bones snap and viscera pop even as the bird’s talons imbedded themselves like fishhooks into his exposed forearms.  Gary brought the bird close to his face.  “I remember now, Doug," he said, like speaking to a lover. “I remember how the poem goes. ‘Want to hear?”

The bird said nothing, blood and shit squirting out of its cloaca as Gary squeezed it tighter.

“I'll tell you anyway,” Gary said as the bird ceased its struggling.

Alone in the woods

in the deep dark night,

under the stars,

under their light,

which show me the road,

which life my fright,

and guide me to heaven

with warm sunlight.

“With warm