Waiting for a Kiss (competition entry)
By 21tribes
- 2061 reads
Waiting for a Kiss
Craig aimed the tip of the arrow at the swan’s neck. “Keep still, will you? Stupid bird!” But the bird wouldn’t keep still. Instead she continued preening herself, flitting through her feathers, standing, turning in a circle before once more alighting gently upon her eggs.
Craig raised his bow and arrow again. Once more he took aim at the bird’s slender neck, not seeing the grace and beauty of what he was so eager to destroy. His friend Dale collected birds’ eggs. His friend Dale collected lots of things, friends amongst them, and Craig didn’t want to lose him. Not many people liked Craig. Not even his dad.
Dale said you couldn’t get near a swan’s nest when they had eggs, the male swan was very aggressive and, as ever, Craig absorbed every word that tumbled from his lips.
He’d found the male swan floating belly-up in the muddy canal water; he’d never seen a dead swan before and supposed a barge must have hit it. A few hundred yards further along the towpath he’d found the female swan sitting regally atop her nest.
Craig’s Uncle Batch said collecting eggs was illegal. Craig’s Uncle Batch was a vet so he supposed Uncle Batch was right and Craig liked his uncle. But so what? Drinking and driving was illegal too and his dad did that all the time, “It’s only a crime when you get caught, and I ain’t yet,” his dad liked to boast.
“That’s it, little birdy. You stay still, just like that and…” he pulled the string taught until he reached what was the right tension, holding his breath, his heart banging in his ribcage, trying to get out. A trickle of sweat ran into his one open eye and he had to squint to see the bird as the salt began to sting. He let go the arrow.
He watched it cut through the air and as time seemed to slow the arrow, it appeared that the afternoon breeze would bend it away from its target; strangely Craig felt himself hoping now that it would. But that horrible thwack sound and the clamorous flapping assured him that he’d been successful.
Craig thought that his heart had stopped beating because he suddenly felt very cold inside. He swallowed and glanced around guiltily then looked back at the bird. She was flapping so wildly now he was sure someone would come running to see what the commotion was. He threw down his bow.
“Stop it! Die, will you? Just die!”
He didn’t know what to do.
‘What would Dale do?’
He tried to calm himself. He turned his back on the bird so he could think more clearly. Put it out of its misery, yes that’s it, that’s what Dale would do. Dale would be good at that but he wasn’t here, Craig knew that he’d have to do it himself.
He turned back to the dying swan. He scanned the ground, searching for a weapon. If what Dale had said were true he’d need one; a blow from a swan’s wing could break your arm and its beak could crack your skull. He bent and picked up a fallen branch; the bark crumbled in his hand, the wood disintegrated in his grip and fell to the ground.
He looked around once more until his eyes fell upon an empty Guinness bottle, he recognised it as one of his dad’s favourites, its label partially scoured away by the rain. He picked it up and knocked off the few snails and leaves that were adhered to it then held the neck in his ten-year-old hand. He looked over at the swan, her wings now flapping feebly as she continued to protect her eggs. Just an ugly duckling, he thought.
She was dying and he hoped he wouldn’t need the bottle. An arrow was like a bullet; you could close your eyes and pull the trigger then walk away but the bottle, with the bottle he’d have to keep his eyes open.
He stepped closer, the bottle held out before him in defence rather than attack, and as he moved nearer his eyes began to absorb the beauty of the creature before him, the one blemish, the expanding bloodstain from which protruded the arrow that he, Craig, was responsible for.
I could just go, leave her to die, thought Craig. But the eggs, he had to get the eggs. He stepped on a twig and the resultant crack was enough to shake the swan from her death throes. Her head came up, her wings beating so fiercely he could feel the breeze from them cooling his hot cheeks. He stopped; sure she was about to attack and held the bottle before him. But her resurrection was short-lived as her fanning wings began to fade.
Craig didn’t like this anymore. It wasn’t fun and it was turning out to be too real. He hadn’t really meant to kill anything; he just wanted to see if he could. He had his mobile phone; he could ring Uncle Batch. But how would he explain the arrow?
“I’m sorry Mrs Birdy, I really am.” She looked up at the sound of his voice, her beak opened as if to speak but no sound came. Craig threw the bottle away and then the first tears began to flow. Craig hated himself, and felt he knew now why others didn’t like him and why his parents had rejected him. He sat down a few feet from the swan’s nest and blubbered through tears of self-loathing. The swan flapped a wing meekly as if she were shooing him away then was still once more.
"I remember when I was five,” he sobbed, “I never knew my dad; he worked abroad a lot. But whenever I smell beer I smell my first memory of him. I ran to him when Mom told me to. 'There's your Daddy, run to Daddy’ and after a shove in the back I did as I was told. He just knocked me away with the back of his hand as if I was a fly that was after his beer. I fell against the open door, it broke my nose." Craig looked at the dying swan, she was nodding her head, as if encouraging him to carry on and he continued. "Mom screamed at him then, not because he'd hit me but because he'd gone straight to the pub before seeing her."
Craig could still see the memory as it played in his head, still smell the stale beer from his father's hand as he ran from the house, too shocked to cry, as the shouting faded behind him.
He stopped talking. The swan was now motionless, as if she’d grown bored and simply fallen asleep over the telling of his tale.
He looked at the remains of the family he'd destroyed and wondered what it would be like to be part of a proper family. Had he destroyed this family because he was jealous? Perhaps that was why nobody liked him. Perhaps they could feel that his family wasn’t normal, and were scared of him like he was scared of Auntie Carol when she’d been dying of cancer.
"What do you think birdy?" She didn't answer. "I'm going to take your babies but not for Dale. If I have to do this to get friends then I'd rather not have them. I'll take them instead to Uncle Batch, he'll save them; he's a vet. They'll grow up and be fit and healthy swans that you would have been proud of."
Craig knelt down beside the nest and with a struggle lifted the bird's still warm body. Not yet dead she stirred slightly but Craig was no longer scared. She turned and with as much grace as she could muster gave him the tiniest peck on his tear-starched cheek - a touch as tender as only a mother’s kiss could be.
The bird died in his arms and he cried some more before placing the corpse beside the now redundant nest.
“I’ll come back for you later, Mrs Swan. I’ll come back with a spade and bury you properly with Mr Swan. But first I have to take these.” He picked each egg up in turn and placed them gently in the hammock he'd created in his tee shirt and held them close to keep them warm.
He would not lie to Uncle Batch, he'd tell him everything. He liked Uncle Batch and hopefully, after he’d heard what Craig had to say, Uncle Batch would still like him.
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Comments
Yes it's disturbing but you
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You've really captured
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Firstly welcome to
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