Threat Quality Press

By Jeff Holland

Bird flies up.
Bird flies down.
Bird looks around, wondering what it did wrong this time.
Bird looks up at branch, and starts the whole process all over again.
As Pete Seeley sat at his table in the food court of the mall, watching this bird winging back and forth between the tile and the decorative potted trees, he had to admit: it was a bit hypnotic.
There he sat. Neither the mystery paperback, nor the initially disappointing and now increasingly lukewarm plate of Chinese food on his tray had managed to keep his attention. Pete had, for the last few moments, completely forgotten them in favor of this curious display of nature gone screwy currently mesmerizing him.
What kind of bird was it, he wondered. Sparrow? Finch? Was there some point at which he had been required to learn to recognize different types of bird? Pete found himself wondering why his parents had never made him join the boy scouts.
No, he’d just have to sort this out on his own, without any special training.
Whatever this bird was, one thing was absolutely beyond debate: this sucker was as lost as a living thing could ever be.
The bird must have flown into the food court via the parking lot entrance, hunting for warmth. And then, just as sure as warmth was found, suddenly nothing made sense to it anymore.
Below its feet, no dirt, just tile.
But when it looked up, it probably thought, “What’s that? Something recognizable! Trees!”
“Trees in pots, decorating the food court – different thing,” Pete explained to the bird – out loud, he realized too late. Not quite the familiar territory the bird must have imagined.
It would fly up to one of the branches, get a better sense of its surroundings. But then, recognizing that its sense of place had been completely discombobulated, the bird would return to the food court tiles, for one more frustrated go at sussing this whole crazy problem out.
Of course, the bird did have a brain smaller than a chickpea, Pete reasoned. So really getting a handle on this situation might be a bit more than it was capable of.
Pete then remembered the phrase “bird-brained,” a concept that had been mostly relegated in his memory to Bugs Bunny cartoons, and suddenly felt bad about it. It wasn’t this creature’s fault that its head couldn’t carry a powerful giant brain like the one housed in Pete’s.
The brain currently cycling through “Loony Tunes” reruns.
Having “bird-brained” in his head unlocked a memory of the phrase “hare-brained,” and he briefly wondered if some similarly confused rabbit might make an appearance in the food court today. Pete actually caught himself turning to look, and then recognized this to be proof positive that must be a bit dim. Not bird-dim, or even rabbit-dim. But probably not a shining example of human brainpower, he accepted.
Still. A bird on its own, and then a rabbit wandering around? Pete uttered a minor chuckle at the thought. Eventually, he managed to shake all these amusing images off, and returned his attention to the bird.
And he realized this little bird was making him feel awful.
Here he was, making little jokes to himself. And meanwhile, that goofy, stupid little bird couldn’t possibly grasp what had happened to it. It just didn’t have the deductive capabilities to realize, “Ah. I am inside. Better find a door.”
It didn’t have concepts of “inside” or “door” that might save it.
This little bird’s predicament was just poking at Pete’s soul, and he didn’t exactly know why.
It wasn’t as if he could help the damn thing. Could he?
Well, sure, he could try. He could make a game effort of catching the poor bird with his hands, walking it outside and setting it free. But that would mean he’d have to make the attempt at getting his hands around it.
Which carried a whole new set of problems.
Most notably, he’d be seen by the other mall patrons, and yes, also mall security. And what would that look like?
It would look exactly like a 35-year-old man in a suit, trying like hell to catch a bird in a mall food court. So it was a near certainty that if he kept that effort up long enough, mall security would take a vested interest in him.
And Pete had noticed that some of those guards rode on Segways these days. Basically scooters, yeah…but really well-made scooters.
Could he outrun a mall cop on a scooter? Yes, he assumed, he probably could. Not that he would try. He told himself that. Except that it was a complete lie, and he knew it.
If his options were A) getting escorted out of the mall by a 20-year-old in an ill-fitting uniform who was mounted on a rolling pogo stick, or B) hauling ass towards the Macy’s exit, then yeah. He was definitely going to try his hand at option B.
But his catlike ability to run at speeds exceeding 13 miles per hour – while no doubt impressive to some slower animals – would not by any means be useful in regards to his gestating plan to save a poor little bird from the Kafkaesque nightmare in which it had found itself trapped.
A mall cop on foot passed by Pete without paying him any attention. He didn’t seem to notice the bird, either. Which, Pete realized, kind of pissed him off. That kid was the police of the mall, for God’s sakes. Doesn’t that include its every patron, human or avian?
Pete glanced over at the bird again. It was back on the tiles, working the hell out of its little brain, trying all over again to figure out how to escape this baffling scenario.
This probably wasn’t going to work itself out anytime soon, Pete realized. And a quick check of his watch informed him that, yes, his lunch break was nearly over. If he was going to do anything, it would have to be now.
He spotted a janitor, and decided that while he, Pete Seeley, held virtually no power when it came to returning the baffled bird to its natural habitat…maybe this wasn’t new territory for the janitor, Maybe he had some ideas. Or, at least, a net.
“Excuse me,” Pete started, grinning bigger than he knew was necessary, but he wanted to appear friendly, dammit. “You see that bird over there?”
“Oh yeah,” the janitor said casually. “Yeah, he’s a long way from home, isn’t he?”
“Yeah, looks like. So what do you guys normally do in this kind of situation?”
“Nothin’,” the janitor answered simply, eying up a trash can and clearly wondering how long he’d have to keep talking to Pete before he could get back to his job.
But Pete was incredulous. “Nothing? You do nothing, whatsoever? Isn’t a bird in a food court, like, a health violation or something?”
“Yeah, I imagine. But they usually find their way out. Or…y’know.” He was already edging towards the trash can.
Pete grabbed the janitor’s arm, feigning casual, but guessing he was feigning if-you-make-a-noise-I’ll-kill-you much more convincingly. “What? What, ‘y’know’?” he asked, hearing just a bit of tension in his voice.
“Well, uh…they die,” the janitor answered, using the same tone one would use on an exceptionally stupid Kindergartner.
“Ah. Well…shit,” Pete summed up. In vocabulary far more adult than your average exceptionally stupid Kindergartener. So at least he had that to brag about.
“Yep,” the janitor said, wandering away purposefully.
Pete sat back down at his table, took a couple half-hearted stabs at his room-temperature Chinese, and then finally picked it up and stood again, dumping the tray in the trash.
The whole tray. He decided he was a bit mad at the janitor, and this was the only way Pete could think of to get back at him.
Then he looked back at the bird, wondering if maybe it had gotten comfortable with its new routine.
Bird flies up.
Bird flies down.
Bird looks around, wondering what it did wrong this time.
Pete had run out of options. He had no more plans or schemes. He couldn’t think of anything else to do. So he headed towards the exit, a bit sad, yes. But there was something else. He realized he was filled with an odd sense of pride in his own species. It’s a rare thing to feel pride at being human, he thought, as he pushed open the smudged steel and glass door that led out to the parking lot.
Lunatic as the notion probably was, he had to admit: It’s good to be People.
Call them what you will – psychotic apes, fleshy mouthbreathers, whatever – it’s a hell of a lot harder to accidentally trap them. Pete found comfort in the knowledge that if he ever found himself somewhere completely unfamiliar? It didn’t necessarily mean he was going to die there.
And some days, when you least expect it, that can be quite a warm feeling.
Pete Seeley opened up the door of the food court, held it open, and waited a few moments to see if maybe the bird would take the invitation to come outside. When it didn’t, Pete whispered, “Good luck, buddy,” and headed back to work.

This entry was posted on May 16, 2008 at 4:15 am and is filed under Jeff Holland, Short Fiction with tags Jeff Holland, Short Fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.