Today, I’m thinking about birds and beasts. Here in the Northeastern region of the United States, blue jays are screeching. Foxes are prowling. It’s mating season, and the animal kingdom is getting frisky.
But there’s been an uptick of animal guts all over the roads as well. Getting active brings with it the risk of becoming vulnerable.
The three short stories below capture this electric dichotomy of life and death. The stakes are high, and where there’s danger, there’s growth.
Birds Who Play With Their Prey
Have you heard of a shrike? Me neither, until I read “Natures” by Colin Bonini for Driftwood Press. A shrike is a terrifying bird that eats birds. Not only does the predator strike hard and fast, it also stakes its prey to something — a fence, a branch — to pick at it slowly.
The images are vivid, rendered at times in scientific detail, but the power of this piece is between the tightly packed lines. If your husband acts like a shrike, what does that make you?
You smile and bite my cheek, play it off as a peck.
— Colin Bonini, “Natures”
Both Beauty AND the Beast
We all get jaded as we get older, but for young girls who fall prey to older men, this is especially so. “All Kinds of Fur” by Tanya Žilinskas for TriQuarterly reads like a fairytale nightmare set in a magical forest/shopping mall, complete with Prince Charming, Sleeping Beauty, and a monster who never dies.
A belligerent musk rose from her coat, which was unrecognizable as a single animal but instead dozens, maybe hundreds of hides patched together.
“You’re giving away your youth,” the crone said.
— Tanya Žilinskas, All Kinds of Fur”
Growing Wings is Painful
Because the previous two stories are depressing, I want to end on a hopeful night. Take flight in “A Sharp Breath of Birds” by Tina Connolly for Uncanny Magazine.
To be seen is beautiful. When you feel like the only person in the world who can see the penguins in the nursery and the swans waddling up the wedding aisle, it’s an indescribable comfort when you realize the girl next door can see them, too. This short story is rich with surprising, beautiful language that plays on the title (“an exaltation of larks startles in reply,” “a murmuration of starlings on the carpet takes skittish flight”).
A year after the wedding, the feathers start growing in.
— Tina Connolly, “A Sharp Breath of Birds”
