(tbh)

BIRDLAND

Two men of about six-foot-three and 135 pounds each stood plainly on a suburban park-bike-path sort of thing. One had severe depression, due to his surroundings, lifestyle, lack of other friends, etc. The other was merely unhappy, privileged, at that. The two hadn’t seen each other for close to four months, this in spite of their mutual loneliness. Both had succumbed to a sneaking suspicion that the other hated him, in both cases, due to jealousy. They only met now, in spite of their combined 43 years of age, due to a conference their mothers had staged with each other, wherein a decision was reached that something “tangible” must be done. Each mother, affectionate, doting, dropped their boy off on the yellowed grass, palm courts, and drove far outside walking distance.

The first boy was named Phil. He was the first to speak. “Hello, Wancy.”

The other boy’s name was Wancy. He was the one with all the depression stuff. Wancy didn’t know what to say, so he said, “Yes.”

They started walking around. Neither of them played any games, had any hobbies. Hadn’t since they were kids. They’d just walk around the playground at recess, talking about stupid shit and doing nothing.

Phil stammered out some stupid shit. “I’ve been thinking about Megan lately”.

Wancy glared at him like he’d split the poles. “I’ve been trying not to”.

Phil glared right back. “You always shut me out, Wancy. You always shut everyone out. That’s what I’ve really been thinking about.”

Wancy sighed. He’d not been looking where he was stepping, and flattened a big white goose turd on the sole of his left Adidas. He lazily scraped it off with a stick, stopping them both for a moment. “I’ll tell you who’s been weighing me down, is goddamn Gertrude. Have you ever read the paper?”

Phil chuckled a little. “Uh, no, I do not read the paper. I don’t really read anything”.

Wancy blinked, and continued. “She died, man. She died last September. Remember how we said we’d visit her again, all those years ago?”

Phil blinked, now, and squinted. “Gertrude?”

“Yeah. It was that week sophomore year where we had to volunteer at the old folk’s home, ‘cause the SRO let us off easy. She was that old lady we were always hanging out with. She liked to watch sports and drink those whiskey sours and tell us stories about all the crazy dogs she’d had in her life. I remember that one chihuahua she said would sit right in the toilet if you didn’t close it. I remember how she laughed, and said, ‘at least my sons didn’t leave their shit out anymore’, and how funny I thought it was that she was using ‘shit’ literally.” Wancy motioned expectantly to Phil. They were walking again. “You don’t remember her?”

He didn’t. “I think I remember that week. Was that the second time we had to volunteer there?” It was the first. Wancy didn’t really notice, though. “That last day, I remember she looked at me like you would look at me. Like she trusted me. She said, ‘Now I know Gertrude’ll see y’all soon, won’t she?’, and I said she would. Now I just think. Did she remember me when she was dying? Did she feel betrayed?”

Phil knew now that he didn’t remember her. Most of his high-school memories got washed out by THC and lack of interest. “Forget it, man, I kind of wish I could. Why do you want to talk about Megan?”

Phil made a funny face, like he was being interrogated. “Well, you didn’t tell me a lot about why y’all broke up.”

Wancy looked out, beyond Phil, stern. “The shit I don’t tell you about is that way for a reason. The only thing you’ve got to know about me, is that I’m perfectly rational.”

Phil gave a ‘fuck you’ face, but it wasn’t recieved.

“You can’t sustain an online relationship longer than a couple months, anyway.” They were way out on the walking path now, over in that brief segment where it’s a lake on one side and grassy hills on the other and you can’t hear any cars. Goose shit was still everywhere, but most of it was dried out, to where it’d leave no residue even if you did step on it. The only vehicle in sight this far in was a rusty tractor, caked over with mud and cut grass. Wancy laid down in a clean spot, and beckoned Phil to join, which he did. “I was immature back then. I think I’ve grown from all that.” Wancy let a silence linger, then broke it. “What do you think’s gonna happen when you die, Phil?”

Phil didn’t take very long to answer the question confidently. “Well, I think it’s gonna catch me by surprise one day. I’m gonna get slammed by a grand piano or struck by lightning or something. Then the lights go out. Everything will go out. Only my consciousness will remain in existence, it’ll remain in existence forever, totally unable to take in any sensory input. I’ll be, in every possible sense, alone.”

Wancy widened his eyes. “That’s kind of glum. Have you considered religion?”

Phil shrugged. “I figure, if it’s better than that, hooray. If it’s that, then I’m right. Isn’t that nice?” Wancy thought it was, indeed, nice. He stopped talking, and the two of them looked up. It was the type of day with just enough clouds that you could start talking about what they were shaped like. Tranquil, Wancy unfurled his fists, took a nice breath in, and let his eyelids rest.

Immediately, Wancy felt a sharp, jabbing pain in his forehead. He shot up, angry, and looked down. Fuckin’ goose pecked him. He kicked at it, and the goose started waving its wings all intimidating-like, calling its friends over.

Phil got up, and said, “Why the hell did you fuck with it, man?” A crowd was beginning to form. “Not today, man, not here!” the two were being chased around, squawked at. They backed away, giving the geese an inch they made into a mile. They had torn away the legs of Phil and Wancy’s pants, leaving them wearing cutoff jorts like mortified nevernudes, and begun pecking at their legs, drawing blood that spilled out viscous with complex sugars and cornstarch slurry. Wancy found a moderately large rock, and was getting mixed results hitting them with it held in his hand. There were 15 or 20 geese here now. Most of the ones out on the periphery were just flapping their wings and yelling, shitting, making it clear that the Others weren’t welcome here. There was no one in the background to see them.

Phil got out his keychain, and flicked to the pepper spray, blasting the marauding hordes like a skunk. It didn’t work as well as it would on humans, dispatching maybe half of them, but more and more kept joining the fray. The geese were in a sort of pile now, maybe two and a half geese tall, but thick, with Phil near the center, and Wancy on the outskirts. The ‘caw’s and ‘honk’s coagulated into a gooish sound, thickly coating the two men of 6’3’s eadrums. The geese were reorienting now, reducing their overall surface area while still gaining mass. Phil was up to his nipples, and they were pecking at his face. He put his head down on his chest, reflexively, and was swallowed by the burgeoning mass. Wancy, left out in the sun, shouted, “No!” and ran off toward that old tractor, with wheels half-buried. He got up into the cab and pawed around feverishly for keys, not in the dash, either dash, seats, center console. He rummaged through the glove compartment, and found a tiny one that looked like a spare. He gave it two tries and nothing happened. He pressed his full body weight into it, paltry, but enough, clicking and prompting the engine to whurr and rev, ramshackle, but functional. He stomped hard on the gas, the wheels behind him beginning to stir up clouds of mud dust, spawning a coughing fit, four season’s worth of allergies having him convulsing. The machinery trudged along unfazed. Wancy was at this point beginning to run geese over, slathering his wheels sticky with blood and feathers. The dense center of the mound, unfazed, was building itself up at the expense of out, now at about eye level with Wancy in the tractor, and growing taller by the second.

Wancy prayed to God that Phil was nearer the top than the bottom. Some searing intuition within him told him not to sweat it. The pile, now a cylinder with a height of 10 and radius of 1, had shed most of the geese on its outskirts, as Wancy reached its outer walls. He had his arms up under the dash, and was pressing down as hard as he could, to add additional force to his now insufficient body weight. He jumped up and landed on it, and the tower popped, with Wancy pushing through what was now a wall nobly and valiantly, like the Kool-Aid Man. The tractor burst down a hill, and crashed to a sudden stop on a medium-sized oak tree, toppling it. Wancy burst from the wreckage and found Phil, who had been thrown onto some concrete from the tippy-top. He seemed concussed, yet nonplussed. He said, “Hello, Wancy”.

Wancy was a bag of emotionality, blubbering and crying all over his friend. “I’m so happy you’re not dead, we need to get you to a hospital, blah blah blah.” Phil hugged him and laughed. They walked back the way they came, out from the big stain now being picked at by local flies, and the smoldering ex-tree. Wancy, by the end, said something like “We should hang out again sometime.” They didn’t. Phil moved out to suburban St. Louis that next year after he had that fight with his dad, and Wancy died at 45 from an accidental overdose of prescription painkillers.