Little Black Bird

A story that I started writing one night...at around one am. Working on the ending right now

It was about four in the morning when she awoke. It didn’t seem like anything in particular; just that she normal woke at this time to the sounds of fire engines and a bus that came by every fifteen minuets just outside her apartment. There could have possibly been some kind of stars or a moon perhaps, but the street lamps were the only illumination she ever saw around this time of night, or morning rather, the city usually drowned out a once romantic sky.

Leaving the bed she wandered out past the small kitchen with the uneven floor, and into the small hallway that lead out to the front room, just past a smaller room that had been empty for quite sometime. The front bay window was glowing with the odd yellow glow that could only come from the old street lamps that never seemed to get fixed.

She took a seat in the window and with a heavy sigh she swept her hands back over her rather short, colored hair and leaned back against one of the pains of glass. The odd glow of the lights made her bright purple hair look faded and dying, even though it was quite clear that the color was far from dull. She had always been a rebel, first it had been piercing her lip, then dying her hair, then tattoos and… well, things that simply made her parents upset and she did that quite well.

Those tattoo’s seemed so haunting in the light, as if they would come to life off her skin. She had so many, and the more she got, the more she wanted, but she was running out of skin as was the result of a smaller body.

A slight rattle came, then it grew louder and louder just as that same bus rushed by as if it really had somewhere to be at four in the morning, she knew she didn’t, being a musician she only had a place to go when she wanted to go somewhere.

She brought her hands up over her hair and back again as she looked back into the apartment. It seemed so lonely, but the sound of the back bed creaking reminded her that someone else was there. After her silent straight face had been sitting there a slight smile cracked her face and she stood up, neglecting the fact that the few stragglers on the sidewalk could possibly see her naked form in the window. It had happened before, but when more people were about, and it had caused quite a scene.

“Will you ever realize you still have b***s?!” had been exclaimed with a laugh, but she had simply responded with a shaking of her head and went on with what she had been doing.

Just then the light in the kitchen turned on and she walked back slowly from the front room to the hallway where she could now see all the pictures on the shelves, but she gave them nothing but a slight glance before going into the kitchen to find a delicate frame floating about in only a buttoned down black shirt that showed a grey skull and crossbones on the right shoulder, clearly not her own shirt.

“Why are you up?” she said, going to the woman with sympathetic eyes. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”

The woman came back to her with a bright smile. “Of course not,” the woman said with a delicate, bubbly voice. “I just decided that I would get up with you.” However, the smile slowly faded into something quizzical as she tilted her head slightly to one side. “Does it still bug you Rei?” she questioned, her longer blond hair curving gently around her face due to the slight ringlets near the bottom. “Is that why you keep getting up around this time?”

There was silence in response and Rei turned into the small back room where the sink and dishwasher was. There were never any dirty dishes, not with her vivacious companion there. Before, the sink was never clean. She had never thought about it like that, or at least not for quite sometime. It had been almost four years since it had happened… could that still be the reason she couldn’t sleep past that time every night? No, of course not; Rei shook her head.

“Maybe it’s just habit,” Rei said, pushing her hair back again, something else that had become a habit, which always made her look more masculine than feminine. It caused the muscles in her arms to twist a certain way, showing that she was more muscle than anything else. “I haven’t really thought about it.”

But the blond seemed to see right through what Rei had convinced herself was truth. She went up to the half naked woman, who seemed to be wearing the black shorts that had gone with the shirt, and wrapped her arms around her. Sometimes, it was as if she was hugging a man. Rei wasn’t shaped like most women; she had no real figure to speak of. Her chest was rather flat, hardly standing out from her flat stomach, but Rei liked it that way. In fact, she had even purposefully flattened them with an ace bandage to make her look more masculine from time to time.

“Please Rei,” her companion said softly as she rested her face on the taller woman’s back, “I know it’s been a while, but it’s still bugging you, I can tell. Can’t we just-?”

“No,” Rei snapped, moving sharply away from the other woman, seeming quite aggravated. “I told you already, it has nothing to do with that Maggie.”

It had everything to do with that. Rei knew it and Maggie knew it as well, but the last thing Rei wanted to do was admit it. That empty room haunted her dreams, she couldn’t stand to open the door again and nothing had been touched in it since… that night. But when she would awake from those nightmares, when she would remember that that door was still closed, the thought of what had been beyond there, what had happened, faded into the rising sun. Nonetheless, when Maggie decided to speak up, which was a rare occurrence; it came back, like Rei hadn’t woken from the nightmare.

Rei let out a heavy sigh. And her eyes looked out into the small backyard that the couple shared with the tenant below them. It was an unruly little garden that Rei had once tried so hard to bring back to life. She worked for days and days, sweating and struggling with that mess, but nothing ever happened with it. It was something to keep her busy while nothing was happening.

“Rei,” Maggie said quietly as she went to the fridge, “I know you don’t like talking about it, but maybe you should.”

But Rei still avoided it. She walked out of the small room and went towards the bathroom which was just around the corner. “Go back to bed Maggie,” was all she said before closing the bathroom door behind her.

Maggie moved out into the kitchen, following her lover only to have the door closed in her face. It had been like this since then. Rei had never been so cold with her before then, she had never been so quite. When they had first met, Maggie had fallen for the wild, carefree, rock star Rei that wanted nothing more than to prove everyone wrong. Now however, she was different. At first, Maggie had ignored it and just loved Rei for Rei, but now that Rei seemed locked away in that room.

Now, Maggie stood outside the bathroom door. She gave one last look at the door that she knew wouldn’t be open for a while and let out a heavy sigh. “I love you Rei,” she said quietly before touching the door and turning to the bedroom.

She could hear Maggie outside the bathroom door, but all she wanted to do was hide away. Thinking about it made her hurt, her whole body ached with the image of that… She was always so strong; she had been that way for so long, she couldn’t find it in her to break down in front of Maggie, it wasn’t how ‘Rei’ would act.

My little Raven…echoed in her mind; cause her to stand up straight as a board from the toilet seat. It sent chills down her spine, as if she wasn’t alone when even Maggie was at least a door away. Rei clenched her fists as her arms started to shake. The screaming she could handle, the tears she could contain, but those images… that voice… it was enough to send her out the front window.

Rei could hardly remain standing, her knees where shaking and her breathing was heavy. She found herself sitting on the ledge of the tub, her eyes wide as if them being so far open would somehow stop her from crying. “N-no…” she muttered to herself while trying so hard to get her body to stop shaking, “go away… leave me alone…”

Perhaps she had simply suppressed everything for too long or perhaps it was Maggie’s questioning, either way Rei’s head was suddenly bombarded by every memory she had tried to block out. As she held her head Rei found it hard to keep from screaming out. It was as if she was reliving everything but the eyes… no matter how hard Rei tired to focus on it, she couldn’t see those eyes.

She was a beautiful but frail girl with hair as black as Rei’s natural hair color but as curly and vibrant as Maggie’s. Rei had fallen for her the moment she saw her, why, she never knew, but there was something so entrancing about the woman. While Rei was a wild and rebellious rocker she was a timid and gentle girl, almost too shy to truly fall for another girl outwardly. Nonetheless, she fell for Rei, almost as quickly as Rei had fallen for her.

Rei had met her through Maggie of all people. Maggie was always there, she and Rei had been friends since childhood, but they had never seemed to hit it off before. However, Maggie had found Rei’s soul mate, as Rei had seen it.

“This is Bri,” Maggie had said to Rei after a concert when she met up with everyone. “She listened to what you gave me and she wanted to see you guys perform.”

At the time, Rei seemed too involved in herself to care at all about the pale skinned Bri, but inside she had found something so attractively haunting about her. Little by little, the two began to see more and more of each other. Bri would come and stay with Rei and Maggie in their little two bedroom loft, but her shyness towards her own sexuality clearly became apparent. The farther Rei tried to get in the relationship, the harder Bri tried to push her away from anything that could be considered dating. Still, Rei tried, she worked day in and day out on the backyard when she found that Bri greatly enjoyed flowers and that was when Bri showed a step in the right direction.

The night before had been so tiring, but to Bri’s surprise she found Rei out in the backyard, draining herself out on a useless endeavor. Rei was out there for hours and when she returned Bri was waiting for her, a simple smile on her face.

“What?” grumbled Rei as if expecting an unfruitful response as was the norm. “You look amused.”

Bri just continued to look back at Rei, the smile seeming to grow. “Ray, short for Raven?” she questioned, though it appeared to have nothing to do with anything. “R-a-y?”

Rei looked puzzled, still she answered, “R-e-i, but yeah.” Exhausted, she paused as she wiped the sweat from her forehead. “Why?”

“You remind me of a little black bird,” retorted the frail figure, her eyes looking over the back yard. It looked about the same as it always did, but the mess was getting bigger, still no flowers. “Like a little raven searching for some way to survive in a world that has been starving you of affection.”

There was a kiss, something that Rei wished daily that she could remember. That was all she wanted to remember. That day she stopped working on the yard and tried harder to work on the bond with Bri. But the haunting girl that she had once found so desirable seemed to be a mask that had washed away as the rain began to sweep over the city. The next week it rained almost daily, not just from the clouds above, but it seemed to be raining on Bri as well.

Maggie didn’t see her for a few days, which meant that Rei didn’t see her either and they both worried. Then, when she popped up again, she wasn’t the person that Rei had wanted. She was a withered, delusional creature that seemed to hardly cling to even the thought of breathing. She stayed with Rei, but she seemed to cringe at any motion Rei made in her direction.

“My little Raven…” she would say to Rei with a smile, but it was a vacant smile. Rei couldn’t remember Bri’s eyes or most of her face for that matter, but that smile haunted her.

It was as if the rain was washing away everything that Rei had ever known about Bri. Day by day she began to become something different than the day before. Then after the rain stopped, Rei hopped that Bri would as well. She went off for a week with her band, but when she came back, what she found was nothing like what she had expected.

“Oh Rei!” met the woman at the door just as she was about to set her things down. Maggie was in tears, looking as if she hadn’t slept the entire time Rei had been gone. “Rei! It’s Bri! I… I don’t know what happened!”

Without hesitation Rei dropped her things at the door and rushed into the room where she knew the other woman had to be. The door was open slightly and when Rei pushed it open she found something that caught her completely off guard. The door flew open to reveal a dark room and a limp figure on the bed. There were dark spots all over the carpet and the door and the sheets, Rei feared that there was nothing left but a bloody figure with no pulse.

Slowly, she reached for the light switch and the lights came on, showing all the dark spots as deep red blood and the figure on the bed was covered in it as well, but she was still breathing, to Rei’s surprise.

“Bri?!” Rei shouted, quickly fumbling onto the bed. “Holy s**t! What the f**k did you do!?”

But Rei could never remember those eyes. She remembered the tears that covered the face and that same empty smile, but never her eyes. Rei could hardly recall what Bri said, she had focused too much on the blood. Later, after the ambulance had taken the bloody figure away Maggie told Rei what had happened and what had been going on with Bri.

Apparently Bri had been taking far too many anti depressants and the underlying suicidal tendencies, along with the shear amount of pills started to wear on her all the way around. It was all messing with her head and now she could no longer keep herself together.

Bri was in the hospital for quite sometime. Apparently, she had turned to self mutilation and the night Rei had come home to her taking it much too far. It was hard to see the woman she cared for so much strapped to her hospital bed. Bri didn’t talk at all while she was recovering, nor did she even look beyond the white wall that stared back at her with an empty look that rivaled her own empty existence. Nonetheless, Rei was at her side the whole time, sometimes even sleeping in chairs in the hospital. Rei wanted to see that Bri would change, that she would become someone completely different once she was free of all the chaos.

But when Bri came out of the hospital Rei spent all of her time with a distressed woman. She practically gave up on her band for several months, not willing to go anywhere unless she could have Bri there with her. Every night she stayed with Bri, barely getting any sleep for fear of waking up to a cold body at her side. Maggie watched as this all took place and she knew that this couldn’t continue as it was.

“She needs help Rei,” Maggie stated one morning while Bri was still asleep. “You’re going to get yourself sick doing this. We can send her to-.”

But Rei wouldn’t hear it; she slammed her fists down on the kitchen table, almost cracking it. “No!” she shouted angrily though her voice was raspy from lack of sleep. “If I sent her to some hospital I could never forgive myself! I have to help her! I-!” there came a sudden pause, as if it instantly hit Rei with what she was admitting. Nonetheless, she turned and looked at Maggie saying, “I love her Maggs. I love her.”

The blond was so shocked to hear those words coming out of Rei’s mouth. She sat there and stared at the other woman with no words to say. For the entire time the two had known each other Maggie knew that those few words didn’t come from Rei’s lips unless it actually meant something. But as wonderful as it was to know that her roommate and dear friend had finally found her love, Maggie didn’t appear at all happy. She looked at Rei and took her hand, as a mother would her child, as she said, “You can’t love her Rei,” in all seriousness. “I’m not saying that you can’t worry about her, or talk to her, or help her… but you can’t love her Rei. Bri is such a mess and she’s already taking you down with her.”

And again Rei’s stubborn nature kicked in and she pulled her hand away. There was so much anger in her face, but Maggie knew it wasn’t at her. Rei was simply angry because she knew that her roommate was right. Nonetheless, Rei continued feeling as she did and she continued watching over the frail figure for weeks, to the point where she was too sick to even get out of bed. Rei hadn’t been sleeping and she hardly ever ate for fear that leaving Bri would cause her to do something terrible.

Reviews

[Noah]

Wow... The emotions that run through this, the way you got them down. its amazing. Great write