My husband didn’t ask why I’d spent the rest of the night on our couch. He woke me to the TV blaring, having turned it on to hockey with the volume as high as it could reasonably go.
“Morning,” I said.
He grunted back. “It’s noon.”
Hockey retook the den.
“You making lunch?” he asked when the other team scored.
I listened to his lips smack against a coke can, his throat contract and squeeze as he swallowed. The nausea crept back into my gut. I didn’t answer his question. I asked instead if he’d seen Dylan.
“Probably still in his room. Pouting,” he said. “I bet he’d come downstairs if you made lunch.”
Back to hockey.
Then I sat up. “Birds do have teeth.”
He groaned. “You can’t possibly still be on this.”
“I saw it again last night,” I said. “It pleasured me.”
“It what?”
I went into the kitchen and opened the fridge. “Do you want eggs?”
He followed, brows knitted together in a look of concern-turned-contempt. “What do you mean, it pleasured you?”
I shrugged. “I’m not sure. I’ve never felt that way before.”
He looked me up and down. “You’re crazy, woman.”
“Maybe,” I said. I let the fridge shutter closed. “But I can show you.”
He was skeptical—I could see it in how his face creased downward—but let me lead him outside. He stood where I did last night: an arm’s stretch from the banister, gazing out at the treeline as if it shared his exasperation. “So what’d you do?” he asked. “Bend over and let the bird fuck you?”
There was a line of black watching from an oak tree, and I laughed. “No, of course not,” I said. “I would never embarrass you like that.”
The black shifted, grew into a bird with its wings spread. And then another, and another; it came out to four ravens shooting at us, bearing teeth.
“Hell are those, vultures?”
One came down to its perch. It was my crow. Phil didn’t step back, didn’t look at me or give any sign he was cognizant. He just stared straight ahead and said it:
“Birds can’t have teeth.”
But the bird did have teeth, and in a mess of black feathers it flew to his mouth like an arrow. He tried furiously to bat it away, though when their scuffle slowed it was clear who was winning; the crow’s feet were clamped down on his collar, holding itself up while it picked between his lips. I heard it chew and crunch, and soon the other three birds had swooped down to join it. My husband fell. His head hit the deck with a thud. The crows stood atop him, feasting, his jaw their new perch. He had stopped grunting.
I fell to my knees beside him, but did not wallow. I ran my fingers down my neck, let the heat flooding through me have its way. It was euphoria—a rogue wave I did not want to resurface from. I came to understand, then, the concept of heaven, the ecstasy old scribes must have felt when they dreamed of spinning angel wheels and burning bushes. I climaxed.
I laid in elation for some minutes. My mind was slow to come back to me, and when it did it was not entirely the same; there was a numbness there, a strange clarity wedged between me and the rest of my body—calmness, despite the heartbeat in my brain.
I stood, and at my feet he was splayed out like a doll newly broken. The crows had flown off and left his mouth a well of blood. His gums were fat and red and shredded at their sockets. They had taken his teeth. I looked back at the treeline and saw, just for a moment, those dark wings weaving through the branches, and in that moment I was with them; gliding on outstretched arms, hollow-boned and lighter than air. Free.
“Mommy!” Dylan yelled from the kitchen. “I’m hungry!”
The moment ended.
“Coming, baby.”
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