The Winter Raven Made This Its Hold

Dear stone, that looks upon me with a cold aspect.

---

What was that sound?

He prised the curtain open a mere crack, just enough to see what the commotion was about, but remained unseen.

Across the street, the neighbor's roof had collapsed into a mangled heap. People would just throw a glance, and continued on merrily, drifting past as if it were nothing more than a pebble on the sidewalk.

Then he saw her. She was standing on the sidewalk, a cigarette clamped in her mouth, her eyes fixed on his window - or perhaps just the glass. Is she staring at me? he wondered.

It was unsettling, almost threatening. He snapped the fabric shut. The world was doomed anyway; let the ravens have their playground.

It was almost time. He went through the motions, pouring food into the little ceramic bowls for the cats.

Photo by Mahdi Soheili on Unsplash

He was usually out in the back garden long before sunrise, working the soil in the still, ashen darkness while the rest of the neighborhood was still asleep. It was a cheap hobby and he preferred living like a caveman in his own cave, tucked away from the world.

He had mastered the art of seclusion, procuring his sustenance through delivery so that they arrived in silent boxes at his doorway.

It meant he didn't have to go to the town store or answer the pestering questions of the neighborhood busybodies who stood on corners, whispering and pointing.

The matron of them all was Mrs. Page. Her family had run the neighborhood store since The Great Depression, and she still felt entitled to audit his life. She would pry into every corner of his silence, commenting on the kibble he bought as if his monthly expenditures were her business.

By mid-morning, he would retreat to the park, making sure to be there long before the school bells discharged the kids. Afterward, he would wander deeper into the woodland with his fishing rod. He always plucked a few violets from a shadowed corner - his wife's favorite.

Photo by Mason Summers on Unsplash

Then he would fish at the weeping brook. It was always thick with carp, and he'd find himself thinking of how much his cats loved these fresh-water fish.

"Look what I got today," he'd say as he stepped through the doorway, holding up his catch in the entryway.

He walked carefully around his tools; he had been trying to fix that dilapidated breach in the kitchen for weeks. He hadn't called a handyman for the longest time, because his wife didn't like strangers coming into the house.

They didn't have a housekeeper either. Cobwebs hung undisturbed in the corners, and the leaden floorboard dust was thick - - preserved with a frantic map of feline tracks, a life still in motion.

His daily excursion was a distraction from the radio silence at home - a silence so heavy it felt like an assault on his ears.

She was so full of life when they moved in seventeen years ago, but she had begun to wither when her father died.

She stopped humming those half-tunes like she used to. She had drifted away, her spirit retreating into an inviolate place unreachable and impenetrable.

It is a terrifying thing, how just one year can bring such a drastic change.

Before bed, he watched reruns of an old comediant he had seen a thousand times. The flicker of the television was the only thing that could shine a little light in the drab living hall, casting long shadows across the quiet furniture.

The jokes were pathetic, not even funny, but he watched them to drown out the memory of that day. He knew every line by heart, yet he laughed until his voice broke - laughing until he couldn't anymore.

Soon, his wheezing breaths turned into tears; he sat there, laughing and crying at the same time, just to keep the stasis air from turning into stone.

He always took care to keep the volume low, though; his wife was sensitive to sound, and a loud television would surely give her a migraine. It was the same reason he had removed the doorbell years ago - the street urchins wouldn't stop ringing it.

He prayed fervently, not the multitude; he prayed only for himself. He prayed for his family to be settled and whole.

He walked to the hearth where the violets sat. Though he had only plucked them this afternoon, their petals were already beginning to curl and droop, as if the air in the house were too viscous for them to breathe.

There, next to the flowers, a framed photo stood beside three dust-smothered ash urns - one large, two small. In the grey light, his wife smiled back at him with two cats in her lap.

"Goodnight, darling," he whispered to the larger jar.
"Sleep well, little ones," he murmured to the cats in the smaller jars that had followed the footsteps of his beloved.

He stood at the window again, watching the night away. His sorrow was too sore laid on, which no number of winters could ever blow away.

©Britt H.

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