Setting Free the Birds
A short story
Tap. Tap. Tap.
The noise swam into my sleep but I pushed it away. This dream was far too good to abandon. The tapping came again and I made the laughing girl in the red dress click her heels on the dance floor. Hanging on, just hanging on.
“Eduardo, wake up.”
It wasn’t the girl in red speaking. I shrugged the gentle hand off my shoulder and groaned, turning over in my warm cocoon.
“Eduardo. I need you.”
Urgency and pleading sank through layers of consciousness and the girl in her red dress faded away. Rubbing my eyes, I sat up.
“What is it, Paulo? I’m sleeping.”
This was no longer true. The remnant of my warm, colourful dream slipped from my mind even as I tried to hold on to it. The beautiful girl would have to wait until another night.
Paulo was crouching at my bedside, his warm brown eyes beseeching.
“Today is the day. I need you to come with me.”
“To set free your birds?” My older brother had been talking about it for weeks now, in that obsessive way of his. “Are you sure?”
“I have to.”
I climbed out of bed, pulling on the jeans I’d abandoned on the floor the night before…
