The Crows

Fiction by Rebecca Kilroy

The flock of crows outside my window wouldn’t stop cawing at me. Every time I walked out of my apartment building, I heard them.

“Hey, sweetheart? Where ya going?”

“What? Not even gonna say good morning?”

“Check out the legs on her! How about a pair of heels next time?”

They liked to lounge in the branches of a straggly elm that pushed its way out of the sidewalk. The exact number of them changed everyday, sometimes two and sometimes ten. The tree was less their home and more the bird equivalent of a sports bar. The yellow glow of a nearby streetlamp cast them in sickly gothic shadows at night, but during my morning commute they were just annoying.

Their shouts and whistles followed me down the street until I ducked into the subway. I tried staggering the time I left for work. I started wearing a winter coat in October to give them less to comment on. I installed blackout shades over every window after I caught one of them peeping into the bedroom. Nothing dissuaded them.

“Could be worse,” my friend Gina said as we were waiting in Starbucks one afternoon. “I have this flock of cardinals living on my corner that preach at me. Every day it’s Bible verses and one-thousand-and-one ways I’ll end up in hell. Try walking a date past that without killing the mood.”

“You haven’t heard these crows,” I said, accepting my drink from the barista. Gina picked up her own vanilla latte and we shouldered our way out the door. “They’re foul. Where the hell do they even learn this stuff?”

Gina shrugged. “It’s New York. You can pick up a potty mouth faster than an STD.” I could reasonably take her word on this, since she’d confessed to having both.

We turned down 42nd Street and strode back toward the office. I kept a suspicious eye on the sky, as I’d found myself doing more and more lately. I almost walked into a band of slow- moving tourists who Gina deftly hip-checked out of my way.

“Do you know the worst part of this city?” she said.

A cold breeze whipped up a burst of garbage-scented subway air. I buried my nose in the fumes of my latte. “Where to start?”

“It’s way too expensive for you to move away from them.”

“It’s not like there’s anywhere we can go that doesn’t have birds.” We were getting closer to Bryant Park and I caught myself peering into the looming trees. “Any closer to the water and I’d have to deal with meathead seagulls.”

“I’d take gym rats with wings over parrots with no boundaries. Did I tell you the guy I was with last weekend actually had a parrot in his apartment? Like, invited it in there. He covered the cage with a blanket but I swear I felt the thing watching us the whole time.”

“Ugh,” I shuddered. “Who actually likes birds? Really, are you sure this guy wasn’t a psychopath?”

She took an unconcerned sip of her coffee. “Maybe we should both move. How about the suburbs?”

“And have a robin chirping neighborhood gossip at me every morning? It would be like having my mother outside my bedroom window. Besides, the crows would just follow me,” I sulked into my latte. “They have an amazing memory for faces.”

Since they’d moved in, I’d read up on my flock of neighbors, technically called a “murder”. I figured regular crows weren’t too far off from talking ones. The only real difference was that some jackass scientist had infected them with nanobots that made them speak. I liked to imagine him sitting in a park one day thinking, “You know what would make listening to birdsong better? If they could talk.” He probably thought he was getting some posthumanist, preternatural wisdom winging down from on high. Instead, he got crows with thick Bronx accents and high heel fetishes.

Gina and I turned to cut through the park. I kept my head down and studiously avoided making eye contact with the trees.

“Will you stop that?” Gina muttered. “You look nuts.”

But I noticed that as we approached a flock of pigeons picnicking on the path, she gave them a wide berth too. An old man on a nearby bench was tossing out handfuls of breadcrumbs which the birds pecked with casual disinterest.

“Wonder Bread,” I heard one of them coo. “And stale.”

“Ugh, I would never eat pre-sliced,” its friend scoffed. They took off in a ruffle of indignant feathers.

“Pardon me madames,” another called after us. “Is that a croissant I smell in your possession?”

Gina tightened her grip on the flimsy paper bag. “Take a flight, birdy. It’s mine.”

“Don’t bother with them,” one of its fellows cooed. By now the whole flock of them had drifted away from the old man who sat with his arms crossed, looking sour. The pigeons raised their beaks to the air. Their lumpy nostrils flared.

“As I suspected,” the bird announced. “They procured their baked goods from Starbucks.

That’s as close to a real croissant as a hot dog bun is to brioche.

“Screw you,” Gina scowled. We took off down the path again.

I swirled the last bitter dregs of my drink. As we left the park, I tossed the cup over my shoulder in what I’m sure was the direction of a trash can. The old man on the bench shouted after me, “It’s litterers like you who are killing our wildlife.”

I glanced back and rolled my eyes. “Don’t tempt me.”

Something else I’d learned about crows was that once they like a place, they don’t leave. So I was shocked one morning when I made it all the way down the block in my parka without a single avion telling me to smile. It was enough to make me do a double take and turn back.

There were no crows in their usual tree. They weren’t loitering at the news stand or flicking cigarette butts in the gutter either. I scanned the sidewalk for any sign of them and then I saw it.

Shit. One of them was dead and I’d walked right past him. His black wings splayed out like an uneven cross. I had a sudden feeling that I shouldn’t be seen there.

I turned back towards the subway but one of them was already in my path. “Morning, doll,” he cawed. “How ya doin’ today?”

“Not interested.”

“Easy there, hon. Don’t go getting all hysterical on me. I just want to ask a few questions.

Name’s Feathers. I’m looking into the death of my buddy over there.” “What happened to him?”

“That’s what I aim to find out. You notice anything suspicious last night?”

I shook my head. “I keep the blinds closed in my apartment. I didn’t see a thing.”

“So you didn’t see the vic falling off a window ledge?”

“He fell from a window? He has wings. Why didn’t he fly?”

“You know, you’re pretty sharp for a girl. Gotta hand it to you, I was thinking the same thing myself. Thing is, his buddies said the vic had a history of hanging outside your window and you didn’t like him much.”

“Maybe? Look, I have to go to work.”

“Hold up there doll, you just became the chief suspect.” “In what?” I scoffed.

He looked at me, a lethal glint in his little eyes. “A murder investigation.”

Rebecca Kilroy is a fiction writer based in New Jersey and Massachusetts. She’s previously been published in The Mount Holyoke Review where she served as prose editor. She has upcoming publications in Laurel Moon and The Copperfield Review Quarterly.