[Kaimee]: 5.Contest Entries.Budgerigar

“…and then half way through, I heard flapping, and then I heard nothing.”




Stories of the Different Ends of the World – Budgerigar.

The sky was glowing with dark reds and blacks. Even the birds were silent. It was strange. No one noticed they were gone until after. There was no noise. No television, no radio, no voices, no traffic. Just that blaring, that noise that was barely noticeable anymore because it had been playing for so many weeks now. ‘Please do not panic, we are in a state of emergency. Please move in an orderly fashion towards your allocated bomb or emergency evacuation shelters…’ on a permanent loop until the windmills stopped working either because the wind was extinct as well, or the world really did end. Huh, if the world hadn’t already ended then what was this? That recording, that calm never-expected-to-be-used-voice had been all many people could hear before they finally died. On the roads, outside, clawing at the doors. Draped in the doors if they’d been stupid enough to open them once the blasts went off. The air was stale inside. Better than outside though. Outside were noxious gases, alien diseases, mobile cancers, anything if you believed those very last printed newspapers.
There were rags stuffed into all the cracks. It was pitch black, with the only light coming in through the windows, a faint red glow. In the beginning, some people had had lanterns, face masks, had set up “airlocks” so they could go outside to retrieve what was left of the people they used to know. Dried out husks. Mostly. There were still pockets of people left in the houses. Not that any of them would last for more than another few weeks… at the most. The most horrible thing was your neighbours. The same people that had eavesdropped on arguments with your parents, who’s windows looked into yours; you could watch them die. Through those same windows, with their familiar glimpses of kitchens and bedrooms, you watched them slowly go insane or starve or sicken with the disease the blast had let out, if there was a crack or gap in their rags. There were children in there. Kids without parents, whose parents had told them to ‘wait there’. You saw them, watched them die. Watched them figure out that mummy and daddy weren’t coming back. And you couldn’t do anything, because they were Out There and Out There was death.

I think I’ll never be so calm again in my life. That’s what it was. Calm. Quiet. Suddenly, all my priorities were right. I knew that some things just didn’t matter anymore. But then, now that I knew what did, there wasn’t anything I could do. For less than a week the country had known it was at war when it hit us. We were the last. The other countries were fighting against it before we even knew it was there. Not that anyone knew what ‘it’ was. The scientists reports said that a top secret colonising mission sent out 50 years ago, in the early 90s, had returned with the news that there were no more oxygen-carbon systems close enough to be reached in several lifetimes even with the new ‘skip jumps’ they had developed. They also said it had accidentally brought back a parasitic alien, deadly to our race. If that wasn’t bad enough, there were other stories too. A few live broadcasts had terrorist groups claiming responsibility, some with mad scientists, newspaper headlines proclaiming Gods wrath or, alternately, Raelian cultists creating an early Armageddon in order to meet their “fellow alien”, God. Of all the stories, only one thing was sure: there was no possible cure; no way a human body could fight this. The proof was the millions of corpses, mummified husks, lying knee deep in the cities; draped across the paths, half out of cars or just slumped at whatever they happened to have been doing. But we had been fine. We didn’t have to be afraid. We weren’t at war. Then the blasts began. In the first city, no one got out. No one outside even found out for hours because there was no one left alive to spread the word. No one had a chance. Then the sirens started. There was a ‘state of emergency’ loudspeaker set up; replaying, over and over, a warning and, when blasts got nearer the cities, people were urged to evacuate, to hide in bomb shelters, to hide. Most people barely made it to their houses. The people with potted plants made it longest. They had air. The others gradually suffocated or, thinking it was safe, carefully ventured outside. They went Out There. They didn’t come back in. Even if they had been alive no one would have let them in. No one knew how the virus worked. Except quickly. People grew harsh when it was their own life on the line. After only a few days of the blasts, people’s faces grew stone like. Ridges formed, and deep creases. Faces set like masks; all the same. They said Go Away. We will Live even if You have to Die. They said nothing more clearly. Children watched as their parents refused to let them inside, grew frantic at the wave of ripples in the air, headed towards them; collapsed, screaming when it did. Not for long though. You may think those parents were harsh. But it was survival of the fittest. Those that opened the doors for people they knew, loved; they died. The people with them died. With no one even to remember who they were, that this lump was a baby that had smiled at her brother, that this heap of rubble had once been a mother, had children somewhere.

Fear erases everything about ourselves we tell to other people. Fear makes that man who wouldn’t marry you scratch and claw and kick to leave you behind – to make sure that you die, and not him. Fear makes your sister lock the door and stand beside the window with a baseball bat, looking out. Makes her smash your fingers, your cheek, pull chunks of scalp out, to keep you out. Fear makes people think We will Live, even if You have to Die.
Fear throws away every little boundary that lets these savages live in a community, throws away the rules and reminds you what is most important to every single person out there.
I’m drafting a story in my mind, which is stupid, I know. Why bother, it’ll all be over tomorrow. Or at the last stroke of today, whatever. Never whatever, don’t believe me when I pretend I don’t care, every cell in my body is screaming out with pure and utter terror. Fear makes my limbs too heavy, too concrete to move. Fear makes me hide here, huddled in the backseat of a groaning, collapsing, crushed car. Fear makes me too terrified to go out, even knowing I’m fracked if I stay here. Fear makes these people throw away the lies they lived by, but somehow it’s making me cling tighter to them. I’m drafting a story about the end of the world and no body will ever read it.
All I can hear is crashes, crying, sirens, somewhere a mad repeated scream. A snarl, let GO of me! And an instant of heroic intentions in my mind as I imagine rape, murder, robbery. And then I peek out, looking for a raw voiced woman’s assailants. I see a bawling baby a metre away, toddling, clinging with arms rubber-banded in fat. Clinging to his mother’s skirts, hands fumbling, dirt tear streaked down his face. A heavy blow and any cry I would have made dies in silence in my throat, chokes me back into hiding. He falls back stunned, and pulls her skirt with him. Mam mam mam! She grabs his desperately clinging arms and shakes, her still gripped, but forgotten handbag flying crazily and beating on my prison, murder streaming out through her mouth in a scream, the baby falls back in silence. Left in a heap on the ground. A grey t-shirt, maybe once it was blue. She screams again, a snarl, one wild scream torn from her throat, and stamps once, hard heels seep into soft. A sick thud, and then running footfalls, fleeing from this scene of her own fear and betrayal.
Concrete body, I stare so hard at that tiny figure so close I could touch him, I will each tiny stone slab of softness to move, I will it to whimper. A mother destroyed her baby, to save herself. Destroyed him absolutely. I notice the strangely shaped angle of face, a pool of blood escaping from the ripped eye.
I stumble up and out, clawing at the warped and heavy door, vomit catching the edge of my toes and stringing the ends of my hair. Vomit flecking his t-shirt, dotting in his blood.



Sunlight caught on the tiny dust motes and flashed miniscule suns, a universe, caught in a stream of gold. Heat glared up from the dry grass outside, and everything was golden hues and floaty feelings, flowers and heat crazed foxes slinking across the lawn. Spring isn’t green in Australia, it’s yellow.

“I can’t fucking believe I let you steal my last days alive.”
“If you’ll kindly remember dear, I did ask you not to come here.”
“I have a fucking husband for christ’s sake, I can’t believe you would do this to me!”

Lucy darling was perched on the windowsill joyfully chattering her head off.
I’d never let her sit there before, it was too dangerous. The neighbours have some fat smug tufty things they call pusses, and I’d heard something from Marcy at knitting group that these black birds would swoop in and peck any smaller birds to death.
But today, Lucy could sit there. Today I’d let her sit there and sing her tiny burstingly sweet and happy little heart out.
Today was the last day before the world ended.
You came here thinking it was my time, you accepted it, you had been to counselling of course. I don’t think you ever considered it could be your time either, ever.
Old bones creak and paper skin whispers as I shift, leaning forwards, soft feather touches of a miniature cheek against my fingertip leaning in for a scratch. I croon to that palmful of cheerfulness, murmur nothings to cover your muffled sobs, the raw and angry sounds from the couch behind me.
Harsh and lashing, your voice reaches out, full of heaviness and hell.

“Why did you name that stupid, fucking thing after me?”

I purse my lips and roll my eyes. I know I look like a gnome but I can’t help playing up your ideas of old age. You were raised by your father, and sometimes I wonder if maybe it’s a bit wrong not to like your only child very much. I didn’t like your father very much either dear.

“Fucking answer me, or I’ll strangle the fucking thing!”
“I didn’t, dear.”
“Didn’t fucking what?”
“Name her after you.”
“Oh, you just happened to call both of us the same fucking thing, are you fucking senile?”
“I named you after her.”

I watch two white butterflies twirl each other over the grass and up into the air. I watch someone in the distant sky, little specks flying from their arms as they hurled things from a hot air balloon, higher. It was the last day of the world. Today was the day to break all the records, I wish you knew that. I wish I’d taught you that.
I turn back to you, my aging, angry, ravaged daughter.

“I had hoped that you could be like her.”

I had hoped that you could be happy.

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Piece © Kate-Aimee Conrick. All rights reserved!