Wednesday 3 February 2016

Birdie

Newspapers sprawled across her bedroom floors and pinned to her creamy white walls. The faces of men and women, circled in red pen, pins through their foreheads. She walks into the bedroom wearing black from head to toe. All you can see is the darkness in her blue eyes.  Her name, is Birdie and she hunts the worst kind of people. She tugs off her balaclava and leather gloves , a bush of curly red hair is revealed, her skin freckled and scarred. She peels off her blood speckled clothes and hurls them onto her bed. Birdie opens the curtain, light dripping into the room, exposing the dust as it floats calmly in the air. She walks up to her decrepit cork board, tearing off the photo of an old man with balding hair and thin brown eyes, like a shark. His face is circled in red pen like all the others. She crosses out the man's face with black pen and places the photo inside her desk draw, along with the large pile of other crossed out people. Birdie saunters over to her laptop and switches her screen on, resting it on her lap. She prints out the document she had left open earlier and waits. A few moments later, her printer begins to whir to life. A page begins to appear, she rests her hands on her desk watching  intently the photo of a middle aged woman appears. Rounded with auburn hair and dark blue eyes, holding a nebulous gaze.
" You look familiar." Birdie remarks to herself as she gazes at the photo, baffled at the unexpected recognition she has with this woman.  Birdie grabs a pen from her desk and circles the woman's face, pressing her photo onto the cork board and stabbing the thin paper with a pin. Her screen lights up, an unopened message appears. Sender, unknown. 'Don't fly away Birdie, or I'll have to clip your wings."  It reads. She pounds the lid shut and pours her old coffee over the laptop. She's been found. Her bottom lip tremble, her hands uncontrollably shake.
"This can't be happening."
Birdie stands up and scans the room with urgency, she can't take much, they could already be on their way. She changes back into her bloody clothes and packs the vitals. gun, cash, pocket knife and most importantly... She scrambles toward the cork board and looks hard into the unreadable eyes of the auburn haired woman, ripping her photo off the pin and shoving it in her back pocket. She knew this day would come. She drops to her knees and pulls out a large petrol can, pouring it's contents over everything. The desk, the curtains, the cork board. Everything. She opens her desk draw and grabs her matchbox. She lights one match, and stares at the little orange flame, before she tosses it onto the petrol soaked carpet. It didn't take long before the flames spread but before they could reach her, Birdie had already disappeared. She had no time to wait. She is no longer the hunter, but the hunted...


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