Rush

It’s still -20 degrees in Kazakhstan, but we’re going out in the garden for this week’s flash fiction anyway. You can imagine it’s somewhere else.

I’m not really sure what genre this one is. Perhaps you can write in and tell me?

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Sean brought me another dead bird this morning. Sean means “old” in Irish to remind him to enjoy life while he can. He’s my cat.

Sean likes to bite the heads off the birds, and I can’t decide if it means he doesn’t respect me (“Here, you can have the rest of this bird”), or that he pities me, like a patient mother chopping up already soft vegetables for a finicky sickly child.

Do children eat vegetables? That’s something I’ve forgotten over the course of a long life. I know my cat’s name is Sean. I named him after an old boyfriend. Or husband, or something. And I know that the little birdies in my garden are trying to tell me something important, which is why Sean kills them when they come too close.

He buries their heads in the flower beds with their secrets still inside.

I don’t remember buying a cat.

I don’t remember the last time I bought anything, or even went as far as the garden gate. If it weren’t for the dead birds’ bodies that Sean feeds me, then I might have starved years ago.

What kind of name is Sean for a cat? If I had a cat, I’d call him… Puss, perhaps. That’s not a good name, but I don’t have time to worry about that. I have to concentrate on digging up the birds.

Sean doesn’t like it when I go into the garden, but he won’t tell me what the doctors say either, so I have to ask the birds that a neighbourhood stray buries in my garden. Sometimes the head isn’t there yet, so I have to kill the bird myself. Sean will try to take it if he catches me, but I won’t let him. He can have the body if he wants. There’s nothing left worth having in a cold body, but I won’t give him the head for all that I pity him. He’s getting older and older, while I intend to go on forever.

As soon as I’ve put the bits of the birds’ secrets together, I’ll be flying right out of this prison, leaving the old man behind.

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And here’s something a little birdie told me: the new album from psychedelic rockers Earthless is out tomorrow, January 28th. If we learned anything from this week’s story, it’s that life is too short to waste. Make the most of yours with Night Parade of One Hundred Demons!