A Feather, But No Milk

A Story by ZackOfBridge

Breakfast is served

Robin woke with a dull ache in her back. The sensation was not uncommon however such pains had never before felt like writhing creatures churning amongst the fibers of her back. She was in the state of wakefulness and sleep where time became viscous syrup. This was the same state where the visions of dreams and the insomniatic barks from the city danced in a room of white, impressionable walls. Robin reached for the sight of the pain as though to shush it away or to put it to sleep like a restless infant. Her hand came to rest on a lump, a mass greater than the palm of her hand and likewise larger even than her modest breasts. Unlike her breasts, this form had certain toughness to it, like bone and muscle or a small boulder. This growth was tough, but soft to the touch and with multiple layers that fluttered as she ran her fingers forward and backward in an effort to assess it in full.

Provoked by an inkling of panic she began to scrape and tug at the unknown formation as though to pry it from her body, or if it were a living creature, to bother it enough for it to retreat from her backside and with the best of luck, from her bed altogether. With no luck she drew her hand away and let it settle in front of her face and her eyes half shut with the sands of sleep. She showed very little surprise, though her pillow would testify that a drop of nervous sweat precipitated from her forehead, when she saw that caught in her tensed fingers was a single feather. It was a long feather, like an old-fashioned quill but immensely colorful, sparkling even in her dim room as though it had absorbed all the light available to it. A fine stream of blood, her blood ran from its needlepoint and down the crevices of her fingers.

In the bathroom she did not bother to look into the mirror even when she brushed her teeth. She simply let the feather fall into the disposal like she would tissue paper or a used tampon. She washed both hands meticulously with a disgustingly abundant amount of soap in the case that disease lurked in the feather. She sat herself on the toilet to relieve herself and ignored the panicked shaking in her legs with professionalism.

Usually to pour a full bowl of cereal only to find moments later an absence of milk in the refrigerator was the single largest tragedy of her morning routine. Today, however, she felt a questionable relief in her refrigerator’s dairy deficiency. She did not take a spoon with her to the breakfast nook. No milk, no need for a spoon she rationalized. Her fingers pinched clusters of the cereal and she brought the nugget of bran over her mouth and let it rain onto her tongue. After four or less repetitions she grew weary, and wholly unsatisfied, with the idea of eating with her hands at all.

The feather, it may have left a resilient bacterium on her hand, she thought as she ignored the anguish in her back. She made certain to lean forward so as not to provoke the pain with the back of the chair. With a new found fear of her hands she began to lower her whole face into the bowl and gathered the cereal like snowflakes on her tongue. Delighted, she found it rather fun and she chewed and smiled at the same time. Once more she lowered her face into the bowl and became overwhelmed by the image of herself. If her neighbors saw her from the window they would surely think she had gone mad. This made her laugh at herself, an incautious and true laugh like the clucking of hens. If her neighbors could see her it was because the window was level with the breakfast table. The thought to close the drapes did not cross her. Instead she abandoned the bowl into the air and let the cereal fall where it may onto the tiled floor. To her knees she fell as though in desperate prayer and so to make her hands completely unavailable to her she drew them behind her back and joined her hands at the middle of her spine. Slowly but with grace she brought her face to the floor in a low bow and collected a single flake on her tongue. Her face came so close, as it had to, as to feel the cool dot of the tile on her nose. Confidence came after this and with confidence an increase in speed and crushing accuracy. Blood began to trickle from her nose and down the slopes of her lips as it was crushed and broken by the sheer force of her jabs at the cereal. Teeth too shattered onto the hard floor into small pieces. These too she gathered onto her tongue and ingested without reservation.

It was not until a pool of her blood had gathered all about the floor that she recognized her arms had fallen cleanly off during her feast. Possibly she was so far beyond the use of arms that their removal from her shoulders made no difference to her. This new consciousness of her arms’ absence made her also aware that another mass of pain had penetrated through the other side of her back just below her shoulder blades. She became aware in this moment of what had happened to her. The feather, the twin growths on her back and her new preferred way of serving breakfast (she could not deny with honesty the sheer pleasure of plucking each flake of cereal individually from the ground) told her that she had become a bird. A rush of euphoria overtook her and suggested she launch herself from the window. Leave the nest and take flight, she thought and cocked her head toward the windowpane. It was not until after doing so that she learned she was a flightless bird.