Hollow Kingdom

by Kira Jane Buxton

  But no damn time to wallow; I had to appreciate the opportunity presented, no matter how gory and tragic, how much a cesspool of heinous fuckery. This wasn’t going to be easy. I shuffled back to Dennis and the glass, emitting a series of clicks to let Dennis know it was time. Grasping the crystalline sheet in my beak, I thrust myself onto Dennis’s back, propping the sheet upright. Dennis made several careful paw placements to inch us forward until we were almost underneath the pin oak and the three sinister swaying dresses. I tilted the sheet to allow it to catch any light and, most importantly, attention. My heart thundered. Another cold snap puffed our fur and feathers. The MoFos persisted with their disturbed undulating above our heads, focused on the headset. A nervous whistle freed itself from Dennis’s nose. Readjusting my grip and the angle of the glass sheet, I projected a tiny light ray onto the oak tree. Lowering the glass, I navigated the little white ray, forcing it to dance up the tree and onto the soiled fabric of the kimono. Steady. The ray fluttered up the olive-green fabric, up its desecrated embroidered chrysanthemums, and onto the glaucous skin of the MoFo’s face. It lit up the vandalized holes of her eyes. Dennis flinched. She didn’t move. I carefully flew the ray across the oak’s branch and onto the face of the Victorian MoFo. My breath hitched as the ray lit up her crimson eye. Dennis braced. I fluttered my wings, driving my claws into his back, holding on tight. And then nothing. The MoFos didn’t move; they weren’t swayed by the light or the sheen of glass. Frustration billowed in my chest. Why weren’t they interested in the glass, the movement? Why were the MoFos all exhibiting such unpredictable behavior?

  Remembering that I promised myself not to focus on limitations, I set to thinking. An idea struck me, though I wasn’t sure I could pull it off. But then I heard Big Jim’s booming voice echoing through time. Big Jim would often channel the advice of superstar quarterback of his beloved Seattle Seahawks, Russell Wilson (long before he probably became hippo food): “Always persevere, always have a great perspective, and always have a great purpose in your life.” He would often follow this with another Russell-ism: “Why not me?” Buoyed by the good memories and positive words, I swallowed and silently repeated the mantra: Why not me? I could do this. Flooding my mind with the memory of a sound, I opened my beak wide, and from deep down in my throat, I let out the noise. Against all odds, having never recreated it before, I did the world’s most flawless rendition of an iPhone text message alert.

  “Ding ding.”

  The MoFos snapped their necks down toward us in unison. Four eyes and two red holes lasered in on us. Time evaporated. Suddenly MoFos were scampering across the oak branches, a heinous low whine piercing the air.

  “Let’s go, Dennis!” I screeched, but Dennis had already taken off, dropping from the curb and onto the tarmac to cross Phinney Avenue. Ahead, Cinnamon darted into an elderberry bush. The MoFos were on all fours in a breakneck arachnid run, gaining on us by the second. They were faster, more agile than the other MoFos, dresses ripping as they thundered across Phinney Avenue. Dennis was in a panic, running for our lives, bouncing me up and down on his back. The glass started to slip and I couldn’t hold on with the jostling and bumping, but we were nearing the windows of the Tudor house and I had to. My beak aching, Dennis shot up the stairs to the porch, the glass sheet slipping off his back. I held on tight, the weight of glass pulling me from Dennis. And suddenly, Dennis was running alongside the swinging porch and I leapt into the air with the glass in my beak. The MoFos jumped, hurling themselves into the air with me, horrible yellow and brown fingernails reaching out for me, for what I was carrying. They burst through the bay windows, launching me into a meteor shower of glass. I hit the wooden floors, rolling into a series of tumbles. I lifted my wing to shield myself from the raining shards. Raising my beak, I found myself face-to-face with the mastiff’s carcass, skin in deep valleys between its mountainous bones, its tongue spilled out onto the floor. A fate I didn’t want to share.

  One sonorous bark from Dennis didn’t need interpretation. He was telling me to get the hell out of there. I hobbled back toward the bay windows, fluttering over a sea of sparkling glass. Just then, two brown bodies hurtled past me, leaping to freedom through the gaping windows. Behind me, the three MoFos were on all fours, their faces close to the ground. Horrible wheezy snuffing sounds choked the silence as they hunted, sniffing as if truffle hogs. The MoFo in the hanbok had clambered to the lustrous piano and was smashing her face against its black lines. The Victorian MoFo rose onto two legs, her head twisting 360 degrees in search of a screen. I didn’t have long. Flapping hurt, but I was able to launch onto the windowsill and then tumble from the ledge onto the familiar fawn fur of Dennis’s back. Cinnamon was practically Velcro-ed to his side. We took off, running as fast as we could from the ravaged Tudor house. And as we ran, passing neighboring shops, we saw the brown-and-white bodies of two dogs—German shorthaired pointers, a strong legged, agile hunting breed with a fighting chance at life—disappearing into the distance. They were alive and animated, running under a swirling gunmetal-gray sky. Their paws kissed the tarmac as they ran. Sweat shimmered across the rippling muscles that would give them every chance at a future in their new territory. And suddenly, I was surrounded by life and vibrant color, in the tickling laughter of the leaves, the viridescent hope of glistening grass blades and an ashen sky that was ready to give birth. We weren’t even pissed that they didn’t stop to thank us.

  Chapter 20

  S.T.

  In Front of Some Shady-Ass Town Houses, Seattle, Washington, USA

  It was Cinnamon who stopped in front of the cluster of town houses. She seemed to have embraced our mission, a light in those Hershey’s Kiss eyes. I no longer saw their whites, the sparking fear. Finding life and those who needed our help, I learned, was her great strength. Cinnamon had an innate sense for what was behind a locked door and a fortress of brick, seeming to know whenever someone was in need of rescue. Her vibrancy had returned, perhaps sparked by a sense of purpose, and Dennis and I got to see her in her full glory, a little dog who resembled a cute soufflé but was fueled by a fiery passion.

  “Here! In here!” she said, darting around the ground-floor window to a town house where a flower box hung, full of long-deceased petunias and pansies. Her quick, saucy steps and the sheen in her eyes told me we had work to do.

  “Do you think there’s—” I let my question and the hope it held trail away. To feel hope for a healthy MoFo meant to feel the heartache of disappointment. I had to stop doing it to myself. There was a small crack in the window ledge. I fluttered onto the window box, inhaling the ripe bouquet of rotting flowers, to peer into the window. Inside was a humble home with country-style furnishings—cushions with embroidery about grandma being a badass, chicken decor, plaid for days, and a buttload of mason jars. I saw a rocking chair but no sign of MoFos. The beige carpet, however, was mottled with what looked like little black-and-white slugs, some shiny, wet, and slippery, some long–dried-up. I knew what it meant and I searched for the culprit among the gingham, farm-inspired effluvia and hanging wooden signs that said “Trust me, you can dance—Vodka” and “No bitchin’ in ma kitchin’.”

  “Come out! Come out!” barked Cinnamon.

  An agitated little puff of white, brown, and black burst into view, flittering around the periphery of the town house, its cage. I lodged my beak into the gap in the window, pushing hard, leveraging against the glass. Wood and beak fought against each other. I pushed harder. With a groan of protest, the gap in the window widened. The house sparrow—a saucy bird known for its mischief, undeniable ingenuity (they were the first of the feathered to start adorning their nests with cigarette butts to ward off insects), and synanthropic shadowing of MoFos—shot out through the gap in the window. Cinnamon, energized by the victory, spun in circles.

  “You’re free, little bird! Free to fly again!” she chimed, speaking from experience. She let out a tight yip, darting toward Dennis and engaging in the first play bow we’d seen.
Dennis bowed back and the pair chased one another across the tall grass in front of the town houses, goofy faces stretched by smiles. Their spongy paw pads flashed into view as they pounded through the dandelions. The sparrow hovered, wings a beating blur as it addressed me.

  “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” cheeped the sparrow.

  “Is there anyone else inside? Anyone living?” I asked, the hope of a live MoFo tasting sour and decadent, like a stolen tart.

  “Just me, me and the insects I’ve been living on. I will never forget this, Blackwing. I’m indebted to you.” He was twitchy, something inside him wound so tight it was ready to snap. I wondered how long he’d been trapped. Sparrows travel in vast quarrels, dependent on one another to stay out of the digestive systems of predators (who doesn’t find a sparrow to be a delicious hors d’oeuvre? They’re like airborne pizza rolls). But sparrows don’t do well alone.

  “We’re trying to rescue the domestics, the survivors that are trapped in homes,” I told him.

  The sparrow, treading air, darted its head to get a view of the bloodhound and the little ginger dog cavorting below.

  “You’ll want to go next door.”

  “What’s next door?” But the sparrow, a bird with a thug reputation for the acts of violence they often commit against other feathereds, had vanished into the gray pall. I hopped to the neighboring town house’s window. Cinnamon appeared by my side.

  “He’s right! You must look in here! This is the place!” she yipped.

  This one had no window box for me to perch on. Dennis ambled underneath the ledge and I gratefully scrambled onto his back to get a look. A gap in black curtains allowed me to see inside. The scene was bleak. In callous contrast to the country abode next door, this town house held dark secrets. Shredded newspaper, rusty hypodermic needles, and hoarders’ squalor littered the floors. The walls bore holes and graffiti in dripping red ink that said, “We brought this on ourselves.” Empty cereal boxes, broken plates, rogue bicycle wheels, weird white tubes, smeared brown shit, and spoons and chaos. And hanging by a dirty rope necklace from the staircase railing, with a needle stuck in his arm, was a decomposing MoFo. I gasped, instantly taken back to the day Big Jim and I went to his friend Pete’s house for an intervention. Pete had succumbed to the needle, and Big Jim burst into his home like a hurricane, showing tough love with his angry words and eventually his fist. It hadn’t worked. Pete chose the needles and the pills over friendship and eventually his heartbeat. Big Jim had swallowed back his tears at Pete’s funeral, but I could see them brimming in his eyes, could hear the pain crystalizing in his barreled chest. Pills, needles, headsets that take you to other worlds, perhaps it was something I would never understand about the MoFos. If I had the good fortune to be born a MoFo, I would spend every second of it wisely, enjoying my many talents and gifts. Why run away from perfection? From such immeasurable opportunity?

  A stockpile of food, cans of beans, peas, pumpkin, soup, cranberry sauce, and water—some punctured by tooth marks—were sequestered in a corner with a makeshift bed, a sort of paranoid cardboard fortress. On the wall, someone with great skill—the skill only a MoFo could have—had made a black ink drawing of a bird rising above an evergreen. In its beak, the bird held an eight-pointed star. Next to the bird was a perfect MoFo handprint. My skin rippled with bumps.

  The bird was a crow.

  And below that eerie drawing, writhing on a soiled shower curtain, was a litter of puppies. There were five of them (thank goodness there weren’t many more because of my shit counting skills), four black and white, one brown and white, sluggishly worming across the grimy plastic with newly opened eyes, some crusted over. Their mother, a skinny husky, stared through the walls to her coveted freedom with ice-blue eyes. We had to get them out of there. The window was sealed shut. This would take another round of luring, another carefully executed liberation. Our murder would have to launch into action again, hot on the heels of the sparrow liberation success. I turned to find myself alone and whistled for my partners with a sharp “ZzzzZZZt!” Dennis trotted across the grass, his sunken sad-sap eyes watching me before lifting to the slate sky. Dennis knew a change in the weather was coming. Cinnamon had a delightful case of what Big Jim called “going nuclear” and was tearing around the stretch of tangled grass in wide circles, ginger hair streaming behind her, her tongue—a postage stamp in pink—tasting joy and an air thick with moisture.

  “Freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!” she hollered. My bloodhound partner had already picked up the scent of the puppies and was at the front door, learning about the town house and its occupants through his olfactory bulb. I was contemplating our return to the chopper crash site to select another tablet-sized sheet of glass, already feeling fatigue in my bird bones, when Cinnamon let out a succession of alarm barks. Her panic, high-pitched hysteria was the soprano yip to Dennis’s bass.

  “Get back! Back, back, back, away!” Cinnamon was crouching as she coughed out her barks, ginger fur standing on end. Dennis sniffed at the air, turning from the door to face Cinnamon. I followed Cinnamon’s anguished gaze to several feet away from her, where a long-legged creature stood, dwarfing her. It was still but for a slight wobble, a small intermittent tremble that caused it to sway like a listing ship. Its eyes, wild and shiny with a forest fire behind them, were fixed on little Cinnamon. A wild dog that’s supposed to roam the plains of sub-Saharan Africa, the African painted dog looked out of place in Phinney Ridge, with its satellite dish ears and its exotic coat, a patchwork quilt of mottled pigments. My intuition drummed SOS messages in Morse code. Aside from not belonging in our fine city, there was something else that was very, very wrong with this scenario. African painted dogs are pack animals, strictly social, and this one was utterly alone.

  My hunch was confirmed as we watched the wild dog open its mouth. As if possessed, puppeteered by some invisible force, the dog’s head was seized by convulsions. It twitched and shuddered for a few horrifying moments, releasing strings of frothy saliva from its gums. And then I knew exactly why this pack animal was alone. Shit.

  I launched into the air, ready to soar above and mob the wild dog from the air. Three feet into my ascension, a streak of pain shot through my wing, sending me careening, a bumbling mass of black feathers, back to the front step of the filthy town house. I had forgotten my limitation, and I lay crumpled on the cement. But it was going to be alright; there were three of us and one of it and it was sick and faulty, quivering in defectiveness.

  Think fast, S.T., think fast.

  What we needed was fire, or something sharp—a needle or a spear. I spun to face the trees around us, looking to their trunk bases for fallen branches, something I could wield in front of that wild dog to drive it away from Cinnamon. I hopped forward, announcing myself to the African painted dog and letting Cinnamon know we were there for her, because murders are forever, and what happens to one happens to all. I got five hops forward, vitriolic caws igniting in the air, when I felt a great force envelop my body. I flapped with everything I had, but I couldn’t get away. Seconds were ticking by, seconds where Cinnamon needed us, and it took more seconds for me to connect the dots and realize what was happening. Dennis had clamped his jaw down on my good wing. I struggled to free myself, yelling at him—that scrotum-jowled buffoon—that we had to leap into action!

  “Dennis! GET OFF!”

  Dennis, his mouth soft but firm, held on with a pressure that might as well have been an ocean current. I was an injured minnow, helpless against a great tide. The earth stopped spinning as the African painted dog bared its long teeth, and in the middle of a fit of spasms, I swear it looked right into my eyes, right deep into the part of me that has never changed. And then I knew exactly who I was looking at. I had met The One Who Spits. And The One Who Spits was completely alone, pack-less, and without its murder. It was alone because it had rabies.

  We had run out of time. The One Who Spits released a surge of bubbling white foam, the spume of an insidious sickness, and
then broke into a run, a twitchy, mechanical charge, hitched by ticks and those intermittent seizures.

  “Cinnamon, come! ZzzzZZZt!” I heard myself yell, channeling Big Jim in crisis mode, desperate Big Jim with rocks in his throat as Dennis flew out of our Ravenna yard—the gate, oh god, Nargatha left the gate open—and Dennis galloped into the road, Big Jim bellowing at the minivan that was going too fast, and we all screeched—MoFo, crow, brakes, tires—and the van stopped right in front of Dennis’s wrinkly face. Big Jim yelled at Dennis again, “DENNIS! COME!” in a stormy voice, nostrils flaring on his bar-fight face, but when Dennis waddled back through the gate sheepishly, Big Jim held our bloodhound in his magnificent arms for a very long time.

  “CINNAMON! COME!” I yelled with Big Jim’s thunder.

  Cinnamon held her ground, brave and defiant with her sharp yips, baring flashes of paper-white teeth. Just before the African painted dog reached her, Cinnamon shot me a look like a deep, knowing smile. She took off in a spirited lunge that catapulted her from the weeds. The One Who Spits tore after her, fueled by a possession it couldn’t name. Cinnamon made it halfway across the patch of grass before The One Who Spits caught up to her, bringing its frothing jaws down on her tiny body. I couldn’t move, couldn’t get out from Dennis’s grip, couldn’t look away. The One Who Spits held Cinnamon by her neck and shook her, three sharp snaps sideways, and then she was still. The One Who Spits dropped her ginger body onto the tangled grass, a monstrous seizure assuming control of its head. It bit at nothing in the air and then fell onto its side next to our little fiery friend. The shaking was winning, a hideous tremor, an internal earthquake that would finally conquer its host.