Up With The Crows

by Zoe Parker

  This time a little piece of me had been hoping that I would be working with people, I’d get along with. Maybe ones I could at least have conversations with. Having some work friends might be nice for a change, but I see that so far it won’t be happening.

  “Okay,” I say lamely—his brows that are in desperate need of plucking draw together to form a little fat roll right between his eyes.

  “Just okay?” he says, surprise thick in his voice. Was I supposed to ask a man who clearly isn’t happy with my presence a bazillion questions?

  “Yes,” I answer with finality.

  “Here is the map of the facility, along with the list of your duties.” He hands me a piece of paper with coffee stains on it. “You read the rules?”

  I wish the gravity of that question matched the amusement on his face. It’s almost like he wants something to happen to me here. This goes into the “Quit creepy job” side of the list, along with the asshole guard. Right now, the only thing in the positive column is the pay per hour which still outweighs any bad that I’ve encountered so far—but the day is young. That’s enough money to live quite comfortably and to pay off the rest of my debt. I’ll also be able to get my own apartment, one that I can walk around in more than three feet one direction.

  A gal can dream.

  Forcing myself to look down at the map in my hand I see that the last room number is 111. That’s a lot of rooms. “How many of these am I responsible for?” I ask as he’s about to turn away.

  Facing me again he chuckles, “All of them,” he answers, turning away and whistling as he walks the other direction. My first assumption about him is correct. He’s a toolbag. “Go to the cafeteria for further instructions, don’t bug me about it,” he calls over his shoulder as he’s clearly abandoning me to learn things on my own.

  In trepidation, I look at the map again, and by tracing my finger along the path we took to get here, I locate the room I’m currently at. Following the map, I manage to maneuver myself into the group room. It’s an open area, with several old cloth covered chairs placed around small round tables. On each table is a yellow plastic flower in a vase and a stack of blank paper with a single pencil on top of it. There’s an old TV in the corner of the room, high enough not to be reached without assistance, that looks like it’s at least 20 years old. The screen is doing that roll thing that I haven’t seen since I was a kid, the ancient TV is also wrapped in a wire cage.

  Another thing I notice as I walk farther into the room is its complete lack of people. Except for the nurses’ station standing against the wall like a bank vault, there’s no one, and I’m pretty sure that no one has been in here in a long time either. My eyes go back to the nurse station that looks out of place, surrounded by what I think is iron, another peculiar thing for the day. Its occupants are also only visible via a small glass window in the front. The only occupant of the room around that vault looking thing is an eerie silence that makes the sound of my breathing ten times louder than usual.

  It also makes me significantly more aware of the annoyed look the nurse is giving me from her throne behind the small pane of glass. I don’t miss the fact that there aren’t any holes to speak through either. I wonder what happens when she farts in there?

  “You must be new,” she says, then becomes a total cliché when she picks up a nail file to saw at her bright red fingernails. Or pretending to, at any rate, the file isn’t touching them.

  “I’m surprised the patients aren’t out here… socializing,” I mutter, barely loud enough to hear. Of course, she does.

  She laughs and says, “You think they’re real patients?” She keeps laughing and pretend files her nails, turning the small sliver of attention she gave me away. Unsettled by her statement and knowing that I’ve been dismissed I meander on towards the cafeteria.

  Of course, they’re patients. It’s a hospital.

  It says on this list of duties to give out some food trays at six, some at midnight and then yet again more at 4 in the morning before I leave. I work five days a week, twelve hours a day. That’s quite a bit of time spent here. I’ll have to make sure that when I spend time with the boys, it’s substantial quality time. The last thing in the world I need is for the other two to pluck themselves bald too. Then I’d have to figure out where to find more bird clothing.

  It’s not like I can make it, that’s a particular skill I don’t have.

  Crafting of any kind is beyond me. I always seem to make a big mess of it no matter how hard I try. The only thing that I’m relatively good at is time management, or at working through lists and being relatively organized to be more specific. This job will prove that because in this case, they’re more useful skills to have. It doesn’t matter that I went through a brief phase where I felt like an utter failure because I couldn’t cross-stitch. Admittedly, I spent more time bandaging the tips of my fingers than actual sewing, but that’s not the point. The point is needles are evil, and I have zero skill with them. Or painting, or clay, or drawing. Or anything that involves creative talent.

  I even failed one of those mail-in drawing projects that have the easy dots to connect. Instead of a letter saying, “good job but maybe next time,” I got one saying I should try a different hobby. A snort escapes me then another. When I picture the result of my attempt at being an artist it turns into a full laugh. The person who saw the drawing also hilariously wrote that it looked like a zombie penis. My laughter echoes off the empty walls as I work my way towards the smell of food.

  Among the myriad of smells, one of which is fried food of some kind, probably chicken, is a coppery underlying scent that I can’t place. It smells sickly sweet, almost like decay. Which doesn’t make sense. What could they possibly have in there decaying? Shivering from the abundance of things my imagination cooks up, I pause outside of the double doors marked “cafeteria.” I watch way too much TV because all I can picture now are bodies hanging on hooks in the freezer.

  Shaking myself, I take a breath and step through the swinging doors.

  The bustle on the other side by a multitude of people in white uniforms going to and from sinks and stoves like human-sized ants is a sudden change from the rest of the hospital that I’ve seen so far. There is life here in this part of the building. Large ovens line the far wall, and all look full of something or another baking in their pale inner lights. The paranoid person that dwells within me relaxes in the absence of hanging bodies. I bite my tongue to keep from laughing out loud at myself again. I can’t believe my weird ass head went straight to that.

  “You’re the new girl, are ya?” an older woman asks as she stops in front of me.

  I turn my full attention to her. She stands a few inches above my five foot two and a half height; her curly iron-gray hair is peeking out from underneath her netted hat. Her face is round and the lines around her eyes and mouth show a person who laughs a lot. Her eyes are a light brown and sparkling a bit as they size me up like a cow at market.

  Yep, there goes my imagination again.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I answer. Sensing an ally in this woman, I smile at her.

  Smiling back, she says, “Good, you look strong enough to do some actual work. God knows the last one didn’t. The names, Connie. What’s yours?” I tell her. “Come along Mel, and I’ll show you what you’re supposed to do.” Motioning for me to follow her, the first real adventure of my day begins.

  With a smile still slapped onto my face, I’m handed over to Brett, who’s given the responsibility to show me the order we give out trays. I have a good memory, but Connie gave me a cheat sheet, which I’m clutching like the lifeline it is. She said the list would change regularly and there’s no way to memorize it. I want to do an excellent job in the hopes I can keep this one for a while. Staying under the radar and doing my job to the best of my ability is the surest way to keep working.

  Attention is bad.

  Unfortunately, my guide reeks of alcohol and pot and is stumbling through the hallways vaguely pointing
at the rooms and mumbling. Seeing that he’s not going to be helpful at all, or nice—given his comments on my “average looks” and how there’s no one worthwhile to date in this place, I need all the help I can get. Pulling out the list and the stub of a pencil she gave me with it, I start plotting an efficient way of dispersing the trays since it isn’t in the same order as the rooms are. Instead, it crisscrosses, goes up and down and then back again to the beginning. That’s not even the strangest thing about it as I read down the list Connie gave me it gets much worse.

  Every single patient here has a “special” diet.

  The patient in room one gets an eight-ounce glass of pig’s blood mixed with chocolate, six times a day. Yuck. Maybe he’s an old guy, and it’s some kind of homeopathic diet? Albeit a wholly gross and unhealthy one. I keep reading and discover another patient only gets raw chicken with one broccoli floret as decoration.

  Is she teasing me with this menu? Maybe a first day of work joke?

  “Excuse me, but are these the things they actually eat?” I ask Brett, hoping he’ll answer.

  He stops and gives me a bleary-eyed, dirty look. “Yes, what about it?” he says and turns around only to keep mumbling things I can’t understand. When he stops suddenly I walk right into his back getting a nose full of stale Cheetos and the tang of the green weed that keeps him hazed and happy.

  “You act like they’re human or something,” he mutters then continues his mumbling journey with me walking behind him slightly confused.

  What the hell does that mean? Has he smoked too much today, maybe added a bit to it too? Of course, I act like they’re human because we’re all humans. He’s a peculiar one like the secretary. Maybe they’re former patients who are on a work release program? If that’s something they even have for this type of… facility? That might be just for prisons. Considering I’ve never dealt with either, I have no idea what’s going on. Other than I haven’t run into a single person that I’d refer to as normal. Not even Connie.

  I need to learn more about this place because my instincts say a lot is going on under the surface here. They also say to cut and run while I can, but my empty bank account nixes that one by overruling it with the life or death need to feed the birds and myself.

  My practicality may one day be the death of me.

  This thought makes me snort which in turn earns Brett’s attention again. He stops suddenly, but this time I manage to avoid walking into him. And his old hotdog smell.

  “Is this all a joke to you? This hell hole we’re forced to work in?” he snarls, spittle forms on the corners of his mouth as he continues to talk. “I hope they eat you the first day, dumbass.”

  Whoa, why so hostile? He frowns at me, and I realize I asked it out loud. “Why?” I prompt. I’ve done nothing to this guy or any of these people to deserve to be treated badly. Honestly, I’m quite sick of it happening everywhere I go.

  “Because they brought you in instead of offering your job and privileges to more deserving people,” he’s so bitter I can almost taste it.

  His shitty life is not my problem. I shrug and cross my arms waiting for him to shut up and continue walking. I don’t understand how there are more privileges for someone who’s going to do the work of five people compared to whatever he does. Connie told me I had the hardest job in here, although I’m not so sure of that either.

  I’ll know by the end of my shift. In fact, I’ll know a lot of things by the end of my shift.

  Chapter Six

  A forest bird never wants a cage.

  Henrik Ibsen

  As we make our way through the small, claustrophobic hallways I keep hearing a faint buzzing noise; it sounds like a big fly is flying around in front of me and once in a while doing a flyby of my face. Now that it has my full attention, I realize that it comes and goes and is closely followed by a flicker of color on Brett’s back. Determined to see if maybe he has a vibrator in his back pocket, I stare at him until the buzzing sounds again. I stumble when I see what appears.

  I should’ve eaten more today because low blood sugar is making me imagine wings on his freaking back—delicate, pink translucent ones, with little silver veins spidering out. They glow like a neon sign and leave little lit trails when they flutter as fast as a bee’s wings. While I’m watching they appear and then disappear several times. I’ve only gotten a few solid flashes of them, but enough to know that they’re definitely wings and they’re definitely not real. People don’t have wings, right?

  Maybe the buzzing noise is why my brain is cooking up wings to explain it?

  Odd they’re pink though, I would’ve guessed green ones with pot leaf-shaped veins in them or bright orange ones with cheese dust when they flutter. I stare at the back of his greasy head and bite back a giggle. When they flicker into existence again my smile fades. I make myself blink, and they disappear, but my stomach is still queasy from the debacle now that my moment of levity has fled. Once more they flicker in and out of existence, and again I blink. The only good thing about the imaginary wings is they distract me from the shadow person I occasionally see walking beside me. On the wall. Sideways.

  After this, I’m going to sneak a few bites to eat and maybe shut my head in a door a time or two. That will hopefully take care of the whole “seeing things” issue I have going on right now. If not, then I’ll break down when I get home and find a place I can make an appointment with a psychologist. This type of thing runs in my family and… well, I was hoping to avoid it since I’m 38 and other than a few burps haven’t had any other full-blown symptoms. A small hope flickers, for all I know this is some emotional breakdown from stress which would be better than the alternative. They happen to people all the time it happened to my Mom even. It’s why she does what she does with the house. The illness that ultimately killed her mother skipped her.

  Unfortunately, she’s the victim of other mental illnesses; I don’t want to end up that way, not if there’s a way to head it off. There’s no shame in it, but that doesn’t mean it’s a road I want to walk if I can prevent it from happening, or at least start the treatments before it gets too bad. The nausea in my stomach is enough to bring those dreadful thoughts to a stop. Probably a temporary one but I’ll take it.

  Brett stops in front of the door marked with a slash that I’m guessing is supposed to be the number one. We circled back to the beginning, and the tour is over. “The other floors you can figure out yourself, I’m not going up there,” he says, turning the knob and opening the door. “Here is the room you care for every single day, no matter what you have to do.” That doesn’t sound ominous or anything.

  The room inside is mostly dark with only faint light from the heavily barred window seeping through. Something inside moves and with shuffling steps heads towards the door. The harsh fluorescent lights touch the incredibly fragile looking face of an old man. His blue—no, white eyes…nope, blue again. Under the lights, they seem to be shifting between blue and white. They zero in on me and stay there giving me a spine-tingling feeling of… something. I’m not entirely sure what.

  What incredibly disturbing and awesome eyes to have.

  They sparkle with amusement as they hold mine, unflinchingly. When he smiles, I gasp, all his front, upper and lower teeth are missing. The exposed gums are shiny with fresh blood, that’s also stained around his lips and in rivulets down his chin.

  Well, this just got creepier.

  “He liked to bite until the doc fixed that problem,” Brett says with amusement.

  The thought of them doing that to this frail, old man bothers me on every level. What kind of place have I stumbled onto? I make a mental note of it and his room number. I’ve never dealt with something like that. I’ll have to look up what to do or more importantly, what they can do to patients. I mean they used to give out lobotomies like candy. A bit distractedly, fascinated by the old guy I study him. My instincts say he’s dangerous, that he’s more than he seems. Like an annoying fire alarm, they register him as a thr
eat—but not to me. I’m not sure why I think this, but the surety of it is concrete in my gut.

  “Hello,” I greet with a hesitant smile. Surprising myself and Brett who looks at me in shock. The eerie man smiles again and slightly inclines his head.

  “Hello, beautiful,” he says as those eyes of his shine, and he steps back into the shadows. My heart skips a beat, and a feeling of awareness flashes through me like fire. Taking a few deep, shaky breaths through my nose I swallow the feeling that’s borderline arousal—ick, he’s an old guy—and turn to look at Brett.

  “Only cowards do things like that to someone who has no defenses,” I growl. It’s a vile act in the least, and the fact that it happened should make me walk out right now. But… but something is telling me not to. My eyes go back to the man in the shadows who I know is watching me. I feel like he needs me.

  How weird is that? That doesn’t make it any less accurate, however. I feel it as realistically as the ground beneath my feet, and for now, I’ll heed it. I’ll also for sure be making an appointment to get my head examined. I need to, after deciding to remain here after the pink wings and the fact that they pulled out his fucking teeth. All signs point to GTFO. For now I’ll stay.

  For now. I might very well change my mind before the end of my shift.

  Brett is standing there giving me a somewhat confused look. “You act like you care about them?” he questions.

  “Who wouldn’t? Look what you did to…” I hook a thumb towards the man in the room whose name I don’t know. The list has room numbers and diets, no names.

  “Vale,” the old man says softly from the darkness, sending shivers down my spine. I really need to get my head checked, those were the good kind of shivers, and I’m pretty sure he’s old enough to be my grandfather. Maybe even my great-grandfather.