Feathers

9. Confidant

"You should probably have stayed in the hospital longer," Spencer said in a bored tone.

"Right."

"After-effects of a lightning strike could become apparent days or week after the event."

"But do you think that's what this is? The crow man. Something in my brain? Or do you think there's... you know"

"Do I think there's a magic man with a crow's beak following you around and scratching sinister messages into bathroom mirrors?"

"Well... not following me around. More, appearing and then disappearing."

Spencer stared at Michael for a few seconds. Michael stared back at him trying to read his expression. But it was too hard to read Spencer. His face remained completely still except for a slight wrinkling of the brow. Michael thought, not for the first time, that perhaps Spencer may be on the Autism spectrum. he wasn't an expert, but there was just something different in the way Spencer reacted to things.

"Okay," Michael said, "I know this all sounds crazy. I don't believe in ghosts or demons or anything like that. But isn't it possible that being struck by lightning has somehow rewired my brain to be able to see things that other people can't see?"

Spencer took a sip of tea, then placed the mug back down on the table and moved his hands to his neck where they moved up and down in a familiar pattern, flattening the starched collar of his shirt. He looked just over Michael's shoulder at the fridge door with letter magnets that someone had arranged into the words "BIGG BUTTS".

"Like Spiderman," Spencer said, "gaining superhuman powers after being bitten by a radioactive spider."

"But less made up than Spiderman, more like infrared light. Something that's real. But usually we can't see it."

Their conversation was interrupted by a big-bellied man with a tangled ginger beard entering the kitchen and walking over to the fridge. He stopped and read the magnet letters and then let out one loud "Ha". He opened the fridge door and grabbed the carton of milk meant for coffee and tea. Turning around to face them, he drank directly from the carton and then smacked his lips together and burped. He was wearing a shirt with the same colouring and font as the Red Cross but with text that said 'ORGASM DONOR'.

"Boys," said Orgasm Donor in greeting, wiping his milk moustache on the back of his arm.

They both nodded at him. He put the milk back in the fridge and walked out of the kitchen. Michael made a mental note to have black coffee until the milk had been replaced, and silently cursed the lack of a uniform. Spencer looked more concerned than he had when Michael told him that he'd recently been struck by lightning.

"That milk is bad now," Spencer said quietly.

"Don't you think it's possible," Michael continued, "that I can see infrared now. But in this case, infrared is... demons. Or whatever that crow man is."

Michael looked at his watch. It was nearly 11 am, they needed to get back to work. But he suddenly felt a desperate need for Spencer to tell him that he wasn't crazy, for anybody to tell him that. He wasn't ready to end the conversation yet.

"There is another explanation," Spencer said. He pushed his glasses up his nose and then folded his hands carefully in front of him on the table. "Your brain could have been affected by the lightning strike, and your visual cortex could have become jumbled, you could be seeing things that aren't really there. Even hearing them and feeling them. Don't you think it's funny that one of the last things that you saw on the beach, that your brain processed before the lightning strike, was a murder of crows, and the vision you started seeing after you woke up in the hospital has the warped features of a crow?"

Shit. He hadn't thought of it like that. It was a strange coincidence. And it would make sense if what was happening was just his brain misfiring, creating a strange waking dream.

Michael felt Spencer's word pierce him and he deflated almost instantly. The light in the kitchen felt painfully bright, the sweet scent of the chamomile was sickly and Michael felt heavy and tired. Jesus, what had he been thinking. Demons? Infrared light? Of course, Spencer was right. His brain was misfiring. He was seeing things.

Michael's phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out and saw a message notification from Kobie.

"What is it?" asked Spencer.

Michael opened the message and smiled.

"It's Kobie. She's just asked if I want to meet her family tonight for dinner."

"Sounds like she likes you," Spencer said.

"I like her too. A lot. But if what you just said is true, and I'm totally losing it. Even worse than before. Last time I was just depressed. Now I'm hallucinating. I don't know if she's still going to like me when she finds out that I'm crazy."

"That's unlikely."

"What is?"

"We all build love maps based on our early childhood experiences. Most of us have faulty maps based on experiences of dysfunctional relationships with flawed parents that have a much greater impact on our brains than we realise."

"What's your point?"

"Kobie's attracted to you for a reason, as you are to her. You have a history of mental illness, you'll probably find that she has as well. Or at least some type of dysfunction. Otherwise, she wouldn't have ended up in the relationship with Dean, her violent ex."

"Nice victim-blaming."

"I'm just saying that you don't have to be perfect to be in a relationship. Nobody is. And most people are crazier than you realise."

"I should say yes to dinner with her family shouldn't I."

"Do you want to?"

"Of course."

"Then what's the problem?"

Michael didn't know the answer to that question until the words left his mouth, but as soon as he said them, he knew they were true.

"Because that means this is getting serious, and getting serious means I might get hurt."
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