Starbird

by W. D. Gagliani

  Then the crowd gasps like fireworks just went off in the pit, and Handlebar and I both turn to look, barely in time to see the two Grakens doin’ each other right then and there, you know, doin’ the deed. I ain’t ever seen a Graken mate, but there’s no doubt in my mind that’s what’s goin’ on. Mine’s drivin’ into the other one from behind like a bull on a cow, and they’re both screechin’ them Graken sounds louder and louder. All I can do is stare, and I can feel that’s what everybody’s doin’—it’s like the floor show at some skin palace but on some other fuckin’ dimension.

  Handlebar turns away, confused, and I have to force myself to keep from sticking ’im with the dirk anyway just on general principle.

  All at once the screechin’ in the pit’s as loud as my ears can stand, and then it stops—and my Graken’s doin’ his victory dance over the corpse of the other, which I can see now has been parted from its head. There ain’t no blood, but the smaller bird’s nothin’ but a metallic lump of dead bird, and mine’s crowin’ to the heavens.

  Then things get mighty intense.

  Handlebar turns to face me again, rage distendin’ his features like a balloon, and Jerry’s next to me and pulling me away toward the door. Making a weird noise.

  “What the fuck you doin’?”

  “Getting us outta here, Nate, before they tear us apart!”

  “Shit!” I turn and show Handlebar the dirk, and it’s a good thing, too, ’cause he’s headin’ for us now, the crowd eggin’ him on. Some guys are startin’ to edge off the risers, makin’ a move at us, when Graken zooms out of the pit and onto my arm like he always does, and then the shoutin’ starts and we’re runnin’ back the way we came in, past where the guards were, and Handlebar figures he’s gotta uphold his manhood, so he gives chase.

  I turn over a slop barrel and see ’im go slidin’ into the guts and corpses, and then I’m out the door.

  Next Jerry’s starting up the Volvo, and I dump our bird into the back and slam the door just as the crowd starts to boil outta the buildin’.

  “Fuck!”

  “What is it?” He’s screechin’ onto a side street. He really is an idiot.

  “We din’t collect the purse, Jerry-boy!” Is he dense, or what?

  “Oh shit,” he says. “And I think I dropped the side bet money when we were getting out.”

  I put my head in my hands and let the asshole drive us back to hell.

  It’s about two months later, and we ain’t seen a derby in weeks. Jerry keeps tellin’ me he’s heard this and he’s seen that, but it still comes down to either no action or the action’s keepin’ us out. We been in Missouri over a week now, where cockin’s legal as booze, and nobody’s talkin’.

  It’s our rep—it beat us here and no one wants to risk all their birds against a monster like Graken.

  Which is all fine and good, ’cept that my little friend’s gettin’ annoyed at the lack of movin’ breathin’ dinner—and the fun of eatin’ it chunk by livin’ chunk.

  I get back from my shoppin’ trip with a gift for Graken, but Jerry don’t rightly appreciate the gesture (which is worth approximately half what we got left in cash).

  “What the hell’s that?” he says.

  “Graken’s dinner.”

  I put the pet-shop puppy on the floor and fetch Graken, whose interest in the sitcom he’s watching is definitely fadin’.

  Jerry runs outta the room screamin’ just as Graken leaps in, wings a blur of metal edges.

  I turn away.

  But Graken’s gotta eat. What else am I gonna do?

  I cover my ears when he starts to crow his victory.

  Within a month, with no derby to find in all of Missouri and not much money left, we’re snatchin’ dogs off leashes and cats off porches. Jerry helps me with the canvas sack, but he won’t watch.

  Funny how bloody chickens don’t bug him much, but little Fidos and Felixes do. I make some fun of ’im, but mostly let ’im be. He spends his days lookin’ for a derby, with no luck. We don’t freakin’ exist.

  Sometimes I wonder what he’s runnin’ from, other days I think I know. And he ain’t ever gonna get away.

  We been arguin’ for hours. We’re in an Arkansas Motel Hell, shortly after havin’ been in an Oklahoma version of the same. We’re livin’ hand to fuckin’ mouth, with only a coupla neighborhood cockfights to tide us over till the World Series, which is supposed to be somewhere in this area. But the hicks—they’ve all clammed up on us, they don’t want us there after some of what they heard about.

  I can just tell the whole shitload’s about to hit the fan.

  “When we hooked up I thought there was gonna be money,” Jerry says loudly.

  I keep gesturin’ at the door—the walls are thin as toilet paper in a whorehouse ’round here, and we don’t need no cops. Plus, I don’t wanna piss off Graken.

  “There was money,” I says quietly, “for a while.”

  “Yeah, for a while. But the dream is dying, Nate. Maybe it’s already dead. I’m sick of the stink of death.”

  “It ain’t somethin’ you can control,” I says. “You liked it fine when we won.”

  “Hell, I liked it when we got to fight,” he says softly, and turns in, rollin’ into his blanket.

  Graken’s watchin’ Pulp Fiction on the cable and gettin’ all riled up at the scene where Travolta shoots the unlucky nigger’s head off by fuckin’ mistake. Suddenly he starts to make this pantin’ sound, and I realize he ain’t eaten in two days. If he don’t eat, Jerry and I don’t eat.

  I head out into the night. Fortunately we ain’t exactly in the plush side of town, and it don’t take me long to find what I’m lookin’ for. Hell, a coupla bucks and I’m headin’ home again.

  “Look what I brought you,” I whisper to Graken so we won’t wake up Jerry, who’s crashed out in the other room (he don’t like sleepin’ in the same room as Graken, if he can help it).

  Graken and the homeless guy look at each other for a second, then I’m bringin’ the sap down on the old guy’s head—just to stun, you understand—’cause the guy’s about to start screamin’. I can tell ’cause his flabby muscles tense in my hands and there ain’t no way I can get Graken food if this one don’t sit still a minute, so I bash him again and when he goes down Graken lunges in for the kill lookin’ like a bird-shaped lawnmower, blades all swirlin’ and flashin’ like they do when he’s real hungry.

  Guy tries to scream once, but I sap ’im a third time and he’s gone. Graken looks at me, grateful-like, then digs in.

  All in all, there ain’t that much left. Still, when Jerry gets outta bed and sees the mess, he turns and barfs his guts out in the kitchenette, his head in a basket. I figure there’s gonna be a scene, but he just goes back to bed without sayin’ a thing. I set to with a mop and pick up the bones and shit Graken don’t bother with, and it’s a single trip to the Dumpster.

  The TV screen’s a bluish blur in the corner. I don’t look at Graken, ’cause I know the jewel-studded metal slits he has for eyes are turned toward me.

  A couple small local fights later, we’re on the run again—this time back toward Baton Rouge. How’d I know the local mob was involved in cockfightin’? Turned out they did not much appreciate Graken’s special talents, and decided they’d had enough of us.

  So now we’re in Buttfuck, Louisiana, and with not a dime to buy anythin’ with, let alone some food for the bird. He’s got the TV on and a Hitchcock movie playin’—the one about them killer birds, I think, and I’m goin’ ha-ha, it’s like Graken has a sense of humor. I mean, I don’t know what the hell he is, but he sure knows me pretty good.

  Jerry comes at me again. “Goddamn it, Nate, there was all this money! What the hell’d we spend it on this fuckin’ bird for? What the hell’s he done for us lately?”

  “Yeah, well, he din’t go and lose like thirty grand, either!”

  Back and forth, him and me.

  I tried to shush ’im, but he wouldn’t lissen. He kept ge
sticulatin’ at Graken and pointin’ his finger at me and rattlin’ on about the way we’d ruined his life.

  “Until we came along, buddy-boy, your life wasn’t looking too spiffy, know what I mean?” I kept my hands calm, ’cause I didn’t know how Graken would respond if we got into it, and I didn’t want a stain on the carpeting.

  Jerry musta got my drift, ’cause he lowered his voice some. “If we don’t find another big derby soon, I’m gonna retire. Cut my losses. You needed an investor, and I did that. Now I’m as soaked as you are. Winning little derbies ain’t enough—we gotta find another big one. Or you can color me gone!”

  “Hey,” I reminded him while he was breathin’, “you never hadda stick around, Jerry-boy.”

  Then he mocked me, makin’ a face, and went on and on about my freak bird.

  So, when I couldn’t stand it anymore, I sapped him but good behind the ear and he went down like a sack of elephant shit. I turned around and there was Graken, all twenty inches of him, standin’ at the door—a TV lookin’ blue behind him in the other room—a real gleam in his slitted eyes.

  I nodded. “Looks like dinner.”

  Maybe Jerry was good for somethin’, after all, I thought as Graken began the matin’ dance that would end with a pile of jagged bones and human gristle in the middle of the blue motel carpet.

  I turned away, though.

  Some things you just don’t get used to, know what I mean?

  “I remember like it was yest’day the day I hooked up with Graken,” I say to the hick sittin’ next to me at the scraped-up excuse for a bar they call the Beckon-Inn, “and I’d be sure glad to tell you about it if you’d set there a spell and mebbe spot me a shot or three of whatever you’re drinkin’.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  W. D. Gagliani is the author of the horror/crime thriller Wolf’s Trap (Samhain), a Bram Stoker Award nominee, as well as four other novels in the Nick Lupo Series: Wolf’s Gambit and Wolf’s Bluff (47North), Wolf’s Edge (Samhain), which was published in 2011, and Wolf’s Cut (Samhain), which is scheduled for early 2014. He is also the author of the thriller Savage Nights, Shadowplays (a story collection), The Great Belzoni and the Gait of Anubis (fantasy/adventure novella), and Mysteries & Mayhem (with David Benton, multigenre story collection), as well as numerous short stories, articles, book reviews, and interviews. He is a member of the International Thriller Writers (ITW), the Horror Writers Association (HWA), and the Authors Guild. He lives and writes in a suburb of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His websites are www.wdgagliani.com and www.williamdgagliani.com, and he can be found on Facebook (www.facebook.com/wdgagliani) and Twitter (@WDGagliani).