Read Blackbirds Online

Authors: Chuck Wendig

Tags: #Fiction, #Thrillers, #Supernatural, #Fantasy, #Paranormal, #Urban, #Suspense, #Horror, #road movie, #twisted, #Dark, #Miriam Black, #gruesome, #phschic, #Chuck Wendig

Blackbirds (7 page)

BOOK: Blackbirds
11.28Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
  Hands on the sink in Ashley's bathroom, she stares at her reflection in the mirror. She smokes a cigarette, blows the plume against the reflection, watches smoke meet smoke.
  All told, it's the orgasm that really bothers her.
  It isn't the
sex
. Sex happens – hell, sex happens often enough that it's a hobby for her like scrapbooking or collecting baseball cards is for other people. Who cares? Her body is no temple. It might have been once, but it lost its sanctified status long ago (
just over eight years ago
, that wicked little voice reminds), with too much blood spilled at the altar.
  The orgasm, though. That's new.
  She hasn't had one in… she takes another drag of the Marlboro, tries to figure it out. She can't. It's like doing hard math half-drunk. It's been
that
long.
  And then last night? Boom. Bang. Fireworks. Fountains shooting off. Twenty-one gun salute, rocket blasting to the moon, a Pavarotti concert, the universe exploding and then imploding and then exploding again.
  A blinking red light. An alarm going off.
  And what was it that did it?
  She presses her head against the mirror. It's cold against her skin.
  "It's official," she says into the mirror. "You're totally broken. Unfixable." She has an image of a cracked porcelain doll being dragged through puddles of blood, mud, and shit and then punted into mid-air, its arms cartwheeling, until it smacks headlong into the grill of an oncoming eighteen-wheeler. The doll looks like her.
  (A red balloon rises to the sky.)
  Time to do what Miriam does best.
  "Time to dye my hair!" she chirps.
  This is her true gift: the ability to shove it all out of her mind. Just crowd it out with hard elbows and headbutts. Zen and the art of repression.
  She opens her bag, takes out two boxes. She bought them a few days before at a grimy CVS in Raleigh-Durham, and by "bought," she means, "with a five-finger discount."
  It's hair-color. Cheap-ass punk color for cheap-ass punk girls. An adult female with any self-respect would never buy a brand like this, would never dye her hair these colors –
Blackbird Black
and
Vampire Red
. But, while Miriam legally qualifies as an adult, she certainly doesn't count as one with even a dram of self-respect, does she? H-e-double-hockey-sticks no.
  She pokes her head out of the bathroom door. Ashley lies back on the bed, heavy lids half-closed. The TV is playing (
Spongebob Squarepants
) some kind of daytime talk show.
  "Long day at the office, honey?" she asks.
  He blinks. "What time is it?"
  "Nine-thirty. Ten. Shrug."
  "Did you just
say
shrug instead of actually shrugging?"
  Miriam ignores the question and instead holds up the two boxes for display, one in each hand. "Check it out. Blackbird Black. Vampire Red. Pick one."
  "Pick one what?"
  She makes an exasperated sound. "A candidate for the presidency of the Moon and all its Provinces."
  He stares, confused.
  "A
hair color
, retard. I'm dying my hair. Blackbird Black–" She shakes that box. "Or Vampire Red?" She shakes the other box.
  He squints, face slackened to indicate minimum investment or comprehension. Miriam growls and stomps over to him, dropping her bag. She thrusts the two boxes up under his chin and makes them do a little dance, like the
Let's All Go To The Lobby
parade of treats.
  "Black, red, black, red," she says.
  "Yeah, I don't actually care. It's too early for this shit."
  "Heresy. It's never too early for hair dye."
  "I dunno," he croaks. "I'm not really a morning person."
  "Let's go through this," she says. "Vampires are cool. Right? Modern vampires, at least, they're all black leather and sexy moves and pomp and circumstance. Plus, they're pale. I'm pale. Except, vampires are slicker than goose shit on a glass window. Suave. Sultry. I'm neither of those things. Plus, I don't really feel like being one of the slag-whore bitches in Dracula's brothel, and all that Goth and emo shit gives me a rash."
  She holds up the other box. "Blackbirds, on the other hands, are cool birds. Symbols of death in most mythology. They say that blackbirds are
psychopomps
. Like sparrows, they're birds that supposedly help shuttle souls from the world of the living to the world of the dead." A little voice tries to say something, but she shushes it. "Of course, on the other hand, the genus – or is it species, I always get them mixed up – of the common blackbird is
Turdus
, which, of course, has the word 'turd' in it. Not ideal."
  Ashley watches and listens. "How do you know all this?"
  "Wikipedia."
  He nods, gamely.
  "Still nothing?"
  He shakes his head.
  "Dude, seriously. You have a chance here to sway my fate. If you subscribe to the thought that a butterfly's wings flapping in Toledo can cause a hurricane in Tokyo, you'd know right now that you have
tremendous power
in your hands, the power to shape destiny, to direct the course of the entire breadth and scope of human history,
right
here,
right
now."
  He blinks. "Fine. Vampire Red."
  She makes a
pshhh
sound.
  "Fuck that noise." She hurls the Vampire Red box at his head. "I was always going to choose Blackbird Black, dummy. You can't sway fate. Tsk, tsk, tsk. And that, dear boy, is the lesson we learned here today."
  And with that, she darts back into the bathroom and slams the door.
 
 
NINE

The Notebook

 
Ashley hears the faucet start.
  "Perfect," he says. He hops down, grabs Miriam's messenger bag sitting by his feet where she dropped it, and hoists it up onto the bed.
  He casts one more paranoid glance at the door. She should be in there a while. A home dye job isn't quick work. All that washing, all that combing through, all that waiting.
  Satisfied, he starts going through the bag.
  Item after item ends up in his hand, then on the bed. Lip balm. Hair ties. Small MP3 player so scratched and dinged it looks like it has been run through a wood chipper. Pair of tawdry romance novels (one with Smooth Blond Fabio on the cover, another with Dark Goateed Fabio). Clark's Teaberry gum (he doesn't know what the fuck "teaberry" is). A squeaky toy for dogs; it looks like a squirrel clutching an acorn in his mouth. Before he has time to think on that, out come the weapons. A can of pepper spray. A butterfly knife.
Another
can of pepper spray. A hand grenade –
  "Jesus Christ," he says. Swallowing hard, he gently sets the grenade down on the pillow behind him. He steadies it, takes a deep breath, and then goes back into the bag.
  Finally, he finds what he's looking for.
  The diary.
  "And Bingo was his Name-O."
  It's a black notebook, its plastic cover nicked. The book is swollen, like a tumor filled with words instead of blood. He gives it a quick flip-through: tattered pages, some dog-eared, all colors and styles of pen (red, black, blue, Sharpie, ballpoint, uniball, one in fucking
crayon
, by the looks of it), each page dated, each page starting with
Dear Diary
and ending with
Love, Miriam
.
  "So what about you?" Miriam asks, and Ashley damn near voids his bowels. He looks up, heart racing, expecting her to be standing there, but she's not. She's still on the other side of the bathroom door – she's yelling through, talking to him while she rocks the dye job.
  He takes a deep breath. "What about me, what?"
  "Where you from? What do you do for a living? Who are you?"
  He flips to the front of the diary.
  "Uh," he says, trying to focus on the words. "I'm from Pennsylvania. I'm an, uh, a traveling salesman."
  "Yeah, right," she calls back. "And I'm a circus monkey."
  "I've never had sex with a circus monkey before."
  He flips a few more pages. His eyes drift over the words. His mouth starts to go dry. His heart races. It makes sense, but… He turns another ten pages and reads more. He mouths the words he reads without speaking them aloud –
  
Like trying to derail a train with a penny or kicking a wave back into
the ocean, I can't stop shit, I can't change shit.
  Flip.
  
What fate wants, fate gets.
  Flip.
  
I am a spectator at the end of people's lives.
  Flip.
  
Bren Edwards shattered his pelvis and died in a culvert. He had two
hundred bucks in his wallet – I'm going to eat well tonight.
  Flip.
  It is what it is.
  Flip.
  Almost done with you, Dear Diary, then you know what happens.
  Flip.
  Just need a rich guy to bite it. That'll be the day.
  Flip.
  Dear Diary, I did it again.
  His eyes catch something else in the messenger bag flopped on its side. He reaches in, pulls out a small year-long planner.
  "I'm from Pennsylvania, too," Miriam calls out from the bathroom.
  "That's great," he mumbles. He flips through the datebook. Most days are empty, but others? Others have names. Times. Little icons, too – stars, Xs, dollar signs.
  And causes of death.
  
June 6, Rick Thrilby / 4:30PM / heart attack
  
August 19, Irving Brigham / 2:16 AM / succumbs to lung cancer
  
October 31, Jack Byrd / 8:22 PM / eats a bullet, suicide
  And on, and on.
  "Find anything interesting?" Miriam asks.
  Ashley, startled, drops the book and looks up. She narrows her eyes, and darts her gaze between him, the diary sitting next to him, the grenade on the pillow, and her fallen bag.
  "Listen," he starts, but she interrupts him.
  
With a fist.
A straight clip to the mouth splits his lower lip.
Pop
. His teeth rattle. He's surprised, though he probably shouldn't be. She's been on the road for years now. Somewhere along the way, she learned how to throw a punch; and by the looks of that black eye, she knows how to take one, too.
  "You're a cop," she says. "No. Not a cop."
  "Not a cop," he mumbles around the palm pressed to his bleeding lip. He pulls his hand away, sees a streak of red.
  A stalker. A psycho."
  "I've been following you since Virginia."
  "Like I said.
Stalker. Psycho
. You know what? Eff this." She pushes past him, fetching her books, her armory, her other debris and detritus, and cradles it all before upending it into the open mouth of her messenger bag. Ashley grabs her wrist, but she'll have none of it. She wrenches free. He reaches again, but she backhands him off the bed.
  By the time he realizes what's happened, the front door is already open, and she's gone.
 
 
TEN

The Sun Can Go Fuck Itself

 
Birds tweet. Bees buzz. The sun shines, and the air is heady with honeysuckle perfume. Miriam squints against the bright light, wishes she had a pair of sunglasses. A sour feeling sucks at her gut; her bowels feel like ice water. She hates the sun. Hates the blue sky. The birds and the bees can go blow each other in a dirty bathroom. Her pale skin feels like it's about to split open like the skin of a microwaved hot dog. She's a night owl. The day is not her domain, which makes her reconsider –
maybe I should've gone Vampire Red, after all.
  Her boots stomp down the deserted back road. She's been walking for fifteen minutes now, maybe more. It feels like a lifetime.
  She feels vulnerable. Like she got played. Miriam hasn't felt this way in a long time. She's the one with all the secrets. With the edge. Her nerves are electric. Anxiety nibbles. She doesn't know why. What's to worry about? What's he going to do?
  She keeps walking.
  The road twists and turns. Up a hill. Under a copse of trees. Around the bend sits a post-and-rail fence, a hand-painted mailbox, a half-collapsed barn and farmhouse. Perfectly pastoral. Miriam feels like smashing handfuls of gravel into her eyes and rubbing vigorously. She's not even sure why she's so angry.
  She hears a car coming up behind her. It slows.
  A white Mustang. It's Lying Sneaky Asshole.
  It pulls up alongside of her, the passenger window down. Ashley leans over, one hand easy on the wheel. He peers out at her. The smile is gone. He's all serious-faced.
  "Get in," he says.
  "Suck my dick."
  "Nowhere to go."
  "I got my getaway sticks. They take me all kinds of places."
  "I know who you are. I know what you do."
  "You don't know rat rubes from rum punch. Whatever you think you know damn sure isn't the half of it. Keep driving. Get away from me."
  She keeps walking. He continues to ease the car alongside her.
  "I'm not going to sit here and drive along like an asshole," he says. "I'm done arguing. Just get in the car. Don't be a twat."
  Miriam reaches in her bag, and with a quick pivot of her wrist, the butterfly knife is out; metal gleams, and the blade flies free of the split handle.
  "Hey–" he says.
  She lags behind a second and kneels. He tries to see what she's doing, but by the time he gets his head out the window, it's too late. One thrust and the knife punctures the back tire of the Mustang. Air hisses from the rubber, a whispering fart.
  "What the – ?" he yells out from the car. "Where are you – oh, Jesus Christ."
BOOK: Blackbirds
11.28Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Under the Harrow: by Flynn Berry
Walking with Plato by Gary Hayden
Vagina Insanity by Niranjan Jha
When We Were Animals by Joshua Gaylord
Marco's Redemption by Lynda Chance
Ten Crescent Moons (Moonquest) by Haddrill, Marilyn
For Keeps by Karen Booth