flew me to places I've never been
The ducks land with a series of thuds. Not dramatic—no smashing, no great calamity—but there’s something almost surgical in their arrival, like someone intended them to appear without context. Which, frankly, is much worse. Everest freezes.
The pen in his hand goes rigid. The air between two breaths sharpens into glass. Because the ducks aren’t part of the schema. He didn’t leave the window open wide enough for anything to come in—he measured it. He remembers the precise angle of the hinge. And yet—white. Green. Ragged black. Lined up on the floor like witnesses. Watching.
His first instinct is to try and explain it. A bird? No. The angles don’t make sense. Wind? No, not with this kind of placement. Rationality is supposed to work, but the facts arrange themselves in illogical ways, forming a pattern that isn’t a pattern, which might as well be a scream.
His breathing picks up. Shallow. Fast. Notebook trembling in his hands, he writes:
He can feel the ducks behind him, like gravity’s shifted slightly and they’re the new axis. A frantic edge frays the corners of his mind, but he forces himself not to stim too aggressively, not to rock or claw his own arms. Instead he does what he always does—organizes. He crouches slowly, movements clinical, and with two fingers nudges one duck (the green one) gently to the side, as if expecting it to detonate.
Nothing.
Still, the presence of all three is intolerable. Uncatalogued chaos. So Everest carefully takes the notebook, and with painstaking precision, tears out a blank page, folds it in half, and gently drapes it over the Ludo-esque duck. If it’s going to haunt him, it can at least be polite and cover its face. Then, as if needing to reset the world, he stands. Walks with exact pacing to the kitchen. Pours a glass of water. And stares into the middle distance as he drinks, white-knuckled, pretending this is normal and that he's fine.
The pen in his hand goes rigid. The air between two breaths sharpens into glass. Because the ducks aren’t part of the schema. He didn’t leave the window open wide enough for anything to come in—he measured it. He remembers the precise angle of the hinge. And yet—white. Green. Ragged black. Lined up on the floor like witnesses. Watching.
His first instinct is to try and explain it. A bird? No. The angles don’t make sense. Wind? No, not with this kind of placement. Rationality is supposed to work, but the facts arrange themselves in illogical ways, forming a pattern that isn’t a pattern, which might as well be a scream.
His breathing picks up. Shallow. Fast. Notebook trembling in his hands, he writes:
- Objects introduced into interior without physical justification.
Shapes: avian. Paint inconsistent with domestic decor.
No entry sound. No breach. No break.
He can feel the ducks behind him, like gravity’s shifted slightly and they’re the new axis. A frantic edge frays the corners of his mind, but he forces himself not to stim too aggressively, not to rock or claw his own arms. Instead he does what he always does—organizes. He crouches slowly, movements clinical, and with two fingers nudges one duck (the green one) gently to the side, as if expecting it to detonate.
Nothing.
Still, the presence of all three is intolerable. Uncatalogued chaos. So Everest carefully takes the notebook, and with painstaking precision, tears out a blank page, folds it in half, and gently drapes it over the Ludo-esque duck. If it’s going to haunt him, it can at least be polite and cover its face. Then, as if needing to reset the world, he stands. Walks with exact pacing to the kitchen. Pours a glass of water. And stares into the middle distance as he drinks, white-knuckled, pretending this is normal and that he's fine.
but now I'm laying on the cold hard ground
