Feathers

8. Debrief

Michael slept fitfully. He dreamt that he was standing in the bathroom of the Hamilton Station Hotel, but he was outside of his own body, standing behind The Crow. He stepped carefully around the tall figure, finally getting to look at him closely.

The Crow was crystal clear in his vision. He could see the rust on the bronze buckles of his black leather overcoat. He could see the definition of each individual hair amongst the thick thatch that grew down the back of the creature's neck and over the front of his chest like fur.

The Crow lifted his arms and Michael found himself under a canopy of expansive bat wings. He stared up at the semi-translucent wing flesh, pulled taught across crooked tendons, connected with thick, pulsing veins. The Crow's beak was long and curved. He had beady eyes, the overall impression was of something akin to a 17th-century plague doctor.

And then in the way that dreams unexpectedly shift and change, the bathroom began to fill with a blinding white light. Michael closed his eyes and when he opened then again he was standing on Dudley Beach.

He was holding Kobie's hand, it was night time and a storm was picking up, but this time they weren't afraid. They stood near the huddle of crows and kissed as the waves were whipped higher by gathering winds.

It seemed that the harder and longer they kissed, the darker the storm clouds overhead grew and the wilder the wind and the surf grew. The crows beside them cawed loudly. Michael realised that they could control the storm by kissing and so he kissed Kobie as hard as he could, pushing his mouth hungrily against hers. She responded with animal intensity. Their fingers dug into the skin on of each other's backs and Michael could feel an electric current running through Kobie's body and into his arms.

The sensation grew in pressure and as the pressure built, he could feel a vortex of wind and rain being pulled down from the sky over their bodies. They breathed in the storm and channelled this flow until it culminated with a great crack of thunder and flash of light. The sky tore open and a bolt of lightning struck them directly.

For the second time in his life, Michael was inside the glass of a lightbulb, except this time he felt no fear and no searing pain. Just a gentle warmth running through his veins and across his skin. Kobie didn't stop kissing him. He was only vaguely aware of the fire leaping off their clothing and the smell of burning. The light from their fire cast a warm glow across the beach.

In this light dim flickering light, Michael watched out of the corner of his eye as the group of crows that had been picking at driftwood a few feet away from them on the beach now began to change shape. They writhed and flickered, the image of them glitching and then merging together into one feathery clump. What had been three or four birds was now one tangled, wrong Katamari ball of feathers and beaks and spindly legs.

The sound of the waves had disappeared, the winds frozen, all that existed were Kobie's lips, hot against Michael's face, her skin under his fingers burning now, flames dancing across his face, his hair a ball of light. As the last of his vision was processed through his melting eyeballs by his charred brain, the last thing Michael saw was the writhing clump of crow parts on the beach stretching and growing, changing into the hunched over form of a man.

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Michael woke up with a start, sitting up sharply in bed, his breathing heavy from the dream. It was still dark outside. He fumbled for his phone, plugged in on the floor by his bed. The screen said 05:57 am. Only a few minutes before his alarm was due to go off.

He sighed and lay back down gently, trying not to wake Kobie. Thank god it was just a dream. He had known while having it that he was dreaming, but it was still a relief to be lying in his bed listening to the dawn chorus of magpies and sulphur-crested cockatoos through his bedroom window. The sky outside was only just lightening, giving shape to the dull outlines of buildings, trees and powerlines, but not yet enough light to reveal colour. The city was still in the grey in-between world of dreams.