Warren Adler 2009 Short Story Contest Finalists

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I'm not a nasty or bitter girl. You must understand that. There are a lot of things that I like. I like dogs with ears like wings. I like the sound a light-bulb makes when it's broken and you put it to your ear and shake it. I especially like it when a stranger says "bless you", and I even like rain, even though it seems like you're meant to hate it. Really, I do like things and I'm not one of those people who carry sadness everywhere they go. I just hate him. I hate him. I hate him so much that sometimes I feel empty, like an avocado with all the middle scooped out. Just skin.

He was always so mean to her. He's mean to everyone and everything, but with Red it was worse. He always sat within reach of her cage so that when she made any noise, when she squawked even the slightest bit, he could just stretch out a lazy hairy arm and slap the metal, making the whole thing shake horribly. It scared the hell out of Red. She'd flap into the far corner and stay there for a bit, trembling. Her eyes were like little raindrops. And he'd go on smoking and watching the horses on the television, not making anyone happy, not doing anything. Just smoking and sweating. And if he saw I was watching he'd stare at me with his face all screwed up like a giant knot and say "I've told you..."

He smokes and drinks and shouts at my mum. I know lots of men shout but he really shouts. About anything. The tiniest thing can make him go red and start spitting his words. I swear the clouds cover the sun when he's angry. I usually stare at something, hard, so hard that it fills my head and I kind of can't hear him. He pulls himself up from his armchair, (I can't believe he can still get up sometimes, he's so sweaty and flabby I think he must be stuck to the seat by now), and walks into the kitchen, staring at her, all red and loud. When he shouts he spits everywhere. It's disgusting. And his hands, like those big metal balls that they smash buildings with. Mum can't cover the rosy wounds with makeup. Makeup isn't good enough. There's always ash down his t-shirt. He's disgusting. He makes her cry so so much and it makes me want to hurt something.

"Mum," I've said so many times, "can we move Red into my room?"
"Why, love?"
"Because he's so mean to her. She's scared."
"I don't think so Jenny. Frank likes things the way they are."
"But I don't. I hate them."
"Jenny."

He drinks beer during the day and I think it's vile. It's like watching the world rot, seeing him there in his chair. The stubble on his face looks like a swarm of insects. And the sun just falling in, keeping everything warm, or at least trying.

I brought a friend round once. It may well have been the bravest thing I've ever done. His name was David and he had a thin face and pale skin and hairless arms. He collected stamps and knew the names of birds, so he loved Red, loved watching her. The word "parakeet" has only ever sounded right on his lips. He was a year older than me, he'd only just turned twelve, but he was just so much smarter than me in every way. I wanted to know all his thoughts, read them like an encyclopaedia. He was so quiet but getting him to talk was a wonderful challenge, like coaxing an animal out of the shade. When I got him to really start chatting about something it was amazing, he lit up, it was like watching a sunflower grow.
At dinner, Frank barely looked at him.

"Danny?"
"Pardon?"
"Did you say Danny?"
"No, David."
"Oh. David. David's my brother's name."

I didn't know this then. I could barely believe he had a brother. I imagined him to be like a mudman. David starting talking about the geography project he was doing on Ireland (his mum was Irish. I suppose she still is). Frank interrupted him.
"Ireland," he scoffed.
David stared and sort of chewed the side of his mouth. My eyes went cold at the edges.
"Have you been there?" he asked.
"No I bloody haven't. Why would I visit bloody Ireland?" There was a moment of awful silence, and then; "A load of Catholic bloody inbreds, that's all Ireland is. Stinking shit heap of a place."
I couldn't look at David so I stared into my spaghetti instead. Mum said nothing, she's like a cardboard cut-out, how can she love him? Red began cawing, she was thirsty, she was always thirsty, and he slapped the cage. It sounded like all the clocks in England falling apart, and Red in the corner with those little raindrop eyes, quivering.
David didn't ever come round again. I didn't ask but I knew he didn't want to. Not asking was the kindest thing I could do.

This morning the water coming out of the taps was cold and I told him and he said "boil the kettle then". So I did. And then I lay in the tub (which was still cold, because carrying the kettle up the stairs was hard and steam hurts, although it looks harmless) and I cried and cried. And then I pressed a razor into my arm, just near the elbow where it's soft, and didn't weigh a single gram for a second, just lying there wet and cold, not breathing, watching the little red flowers turn pink, floating, thinking about how easily things get lost.

"Morning darling," she says, "did you sleep well?"
"No," I say.
"Jenny," she says, smiling into her palms.

This afternoon I was doing my maths homework, which was nearly impossible, like all maths homework. I saw him go past in the hall. The veins in his legs looked like the cracks you get in concrete, thin and black. I can hardly believe he was a baby once, that he was loved. When did he twist, become such a monolith of decay? There are so many ghosts in this house.

Mum came in with some lentil soup and bread. The soup was so hot it looked like it was turning into steam in the bowl and escaping to somewhere better. Mum smiled at me in that way that doesn't look real, just makes her look like someone's who's sleeping and who's had the side of their mouth pulled up with invisible strings. She smiled and said "how's the homework going dear?" and I said "awful, I can't do it" and she said "oh, don't be so gloomy, keep trying, you'll get it" and I said "yeah" and she smiled into her palms. We may have well of said nothing at all. She hasn't gone out the house in weeks. She used to go to bingo on Wednesdays but Frank decided that she was throwing money away, which she wasn't, she actually used to win, come home smiling, but that was that, it was decided, no more bingo. She didn't even argue, which was the worst thing. She shrinks every day. This house loses light every day. I go from red to pink every day.
The lentil soup was watery and when I dipped the bread in it fell apart like in horror film when someone's skin melts off the bones.

Running away in the middle of the night to somewhere with white walls and huge windows, that's all I ever dream about.

Later this afternoon I was watching television, something about a new flu strain, something terrifying, and he came in.
"Aren't you supposed to be doing your homework?"
"I was," I said. My voice goes quiet when I'm talking to him, no matter how hard I try and stop it. It quivers, like when you stretch an elastic band out and flick it.
"So?"
"So, I'm just having a little break. It's hard."
"Maths isn't hard."
"This maths is hard."
"It isn't."

Red poked her little beak through the cage just behind him. Standing on one leg, she cawed quickly and sadly, as if she had something to say about maths. He slapped the cage without looking. It wobbled horribly, sometimes I don't know how it never fell off. She had such beautiful wings. But so small and useless with all that metal, and all that cage.

Sometimes I stare at the marks on my arms, the little patches of milky flesh, and wonder why God or whoever made us out of something so delicate as skin.

I gave up on the maths homework at about six. My thoughts wouldn't work. It was like dragging equations through fudge. Useless. At dinner he didn't even leave his chair, he made mum take it into him on a grimy little tray, and didn't say a word. I ate at the table, pizza and peas, all of it soft and grey. Mum looked tireder than usual. Her hair was grey and frizzy like cobwebs, the old thin cobwebs you get in garden sheds. "You okay mum?" I said, and she said "yeah darling, I'm fine, just not feeling great" and I said "go to bed" and she said "I can't, there're things to do still" and I said "make him do it" and she just smiled one of those smiles that don't even deserve to be called a smile, into her palms like always. He had the TV so loud that I could hear the men on it. They were arguing in American accents about women. He snorted, grunted something at the screen. The whole house felt so still, like it had been here forever, but forgotten, like an abandoned church. Outsi!
de it was grey. It's always grey. If I was God I'd flood the world again and float away to somewhere where there's so much colour I could drink it.
Red screeched and he slapped the cage, and that's when the idea arrived.

It must have been about eleven when I did it. Usually I'm asleep by then, or at least in bed, blinking, staring through the black, trying to figure out how good my eyes are. But this time I was up. For a while I looked out the window. Headlights are so much prettier at a distance. It was darker than I'd ever seen it and my toes were so cold they felt hot.

I crept downstairs, so slowly that I nearly stopped breathing a few times. Everything in a house gets louder at night, like there are so many people dreaming everywhere that the waking world gets jealous, gets louder.
Moonlight is amazing, isn't it? I know everyone thinks that but it's one of those things that you see and think "it really is true, everyone's right, that's amazing". In the lounge there was a big slab of it that had fallen through the big window, lazily, like a sleeping beast, fallen through the glass and across the dusty rug and over the cage. The metal glowed. It was so silent that I could feel the blood in my ears. Red noticed me and twitched a wing. Suddenly it was perfect, like someone's favourite scene in a play. One day I'll see the moon like that again, gentle and safe, from somewhere very high up, somewhere with the windows from my one and only dream.

Touching her cage felt odd. As my skin met the metal, everything went slow and dreamy, as if I'd stepped into an old photo. I unclipped the clasp, pulled open the tiny little door, and reached in. Red withdrew a little bit, pulling her wings into her sides like a toy soldier. Her feathers were so delicate. I wished everything was that soft. I should've touched her more, should've crept down at every midnight and felt the other warm thing under this roof. In the moonlight her lime green body had turned milky. It realised for the first time how weird it was that me and mum had named a lime green parakeet "Red".

Between my palms she felt like a feathered heart, warm and pulsing. The window behind the TV was open, like it always is. I went to it and reached both arms out. Even the white marks on my arms didn't look ugly at that moment. They were like script. The air was crisp. A smile couldn't stop rushed up my face, and Red so hot, like a rock from a volcano. Had she predicted this? I held her there for a second, and then I let my chest empty and pulled my hands apart.

She beat at the air in ecstasy and rose towards the stars. A little lime green firefly. The only thing in the sky alive. I watched her until there was nothing left but black.

Afterwards I crept back upstairs and sat on my bed. But the idea of going to sleep seemed crazy. How does anyone sleep when there is this much wakefulness? I wanted to watch the sun come up, watch the city go from black to white and see the colours in between. I lit a candle. Breathe. Then I took a piece of paper and a chewed black biro from my desk, and began to write, thinking that maybe somewhere someone might read it one day, and realise how beautiful it can be to set something free.