Sad Gorgon Man

By Max Blanchard

He sat in the natural warm spring, trying to relax. The snakes circling his face, usually alert and angry, had been lulled to a peaceful sleep by the steam. But he himself, he couldn't quite get comfortable. He couldn't stop himself from noticing the disgusting, clingy sweat all over his body, or his slight back twinge, or his all encompassing sadness. And he couldn't help but think to himself: "This does not work."

His sister approached. Her scaly body seemed to slither across the rocks and grass. She dipped her big toe into the water, testing the temperature. She slid in beside her brother.

"What's wrong?" she said, sighing, but also concerned. Her love for her younger brother was genuine, but often exasperating to her.

He turned his head to look at her, his eyes projecting a fatigue and depression the rest of his body mistakenly thought it was able to hide.

"Nothing," he said, turning his head back, closing his eyes. "Just... nothing."

She put her arms around him, and gave him a tight hug. He sat there for a few seconds, limply taking it, before returning it in full.

"I don't know what's wrong with me," he whispered into her shoulder, "why do I feel terrible all the time?"

"Oh, you big dumb idiot," she said, squeezing him tight, "you stupid head."

They sat in their sibling embrace for a while, not speaking.

Eventually, she broke it off.

"Now tell me, what is wrong," she said, matter of factly, "and don't be vague about it."

He sat there, thinking.

"I just... do you ever feel like... like you're just not right? Like your entire body is flooded with feelings of self loathing and inadequacy, and that maybe the entire world would just be better off if you just killed yourself?"

She looked at him, seriously.

"Little brother, you... you know that's not true, right? You know the world would be a worse place without you in it?"

He frowned, looking at his hands under the water.

"Would it? Would it really? I mean, your life, our sisters' lives, mum and dad's lives, how would they measurably be worse if I died tomorrow?"

"Because, you moron, we all love you, and we'd all be really damn sad if you died," she said. It didn't feel adequate to her, but it was the best she could do.

He continued looking at his hands.

"I hope that's enough," he said, finally.

She held him in her arms, comfortingly. "Poor baby," she muttered, "poor, poor, stupid baby."

He walked home from the spring, sweaty and gross, towel wrapped around his waist. His bare feet felt a sickening crunch. He looked down to see what he had stepped on. It was a bird, obviously in the process of dying. His foot certainly hadn't helped things, but it seemed to him that they hadn't begun the slow, agonizing death he was seeing before him, either. He looked at the bird's wide bug eyes and its involuntary twitching and its tongue lolling on the ground. He stood there, immobilized, his foot still lightly pressing down on the bird's neck.

He knew at this point he could do one of two things: he could take the bird home with him, or he could press his foot down firmer and end this poor creature's suffering.

He stared into the bird's eyes. He saw pain, and helplessness, and an acknowledgement of the inevitability of its death.

Gently, he lifted his foot. He unwrapped the towel from around his waist, gingerly picked up the bird, and placed him in the centre of the towel. He cradled the whole package in his arms, and set off towards his cave.

Back in his tiny cave, womb-like and comforting, he laid the blood stained towel out on the rock that served him for a table, opened up the mess, and saw the damage that had been done. It startled him, how much worse the bird looked, lying there on the now brownish-red towel, blood matted to his feathers and continuing to seep out from some unknown hole in the bird somewhere. The bird still wasn't quite dead, but it looked closer to the end than it had even when his foot was down on its neck.

He got out his single bowl, filled it with water from his water jug, and took a piece of cloth from his surprisingly well stocked linen closet. He gently dipped the cloth into the water, and, hesitatingly and tentatively, began washing the blood off the bird's feathers and body. At some point in this process, the bird closed his eyes, which was not necessarily a good sign, but the washing continued unabated.

Eventually the bloody wound was revealed. Another piece of cloth was taken from the linen closet, torn up into strips, and tied tightly around the bird's body, to stop and soak up the bleeding.

He then dipped his long, gnarled fingers into the water bowl and slowly and carefully tried to drip water into the bird's open mouth. At first nothing happened, and he wondered if the bird had passed on, but eventually he detected a minor drinking movement in the bird's tongue, and he felt his heart rejoice.

At that moment he heard a knocking on the outside of his cave. It was a wet, spongy sound, so he knew it was his mother.

"Hey mum," he said, "come on in."

She entered the cave, leaving an unbroken trail of watery slime behind her. "Hi darling," she said, "I heard you weren't feeling so good and I just wanted to come and talk to you about it..."

She saw the blood, the bird, the towel, and her son dripping water into the bird's mouth, and her face became a show of concern. "What happened?" she asked.

He looked at his mother and said, "I found this little guy lying on the ground, half dead. I accidentally stepped on him, so I'm trying to nurse him back to health."

She looked at his face, hopeful and happy for the first time in an age, and imagined how crushed he was going to be when the bird, inevitably, died, and he went back to loneliness and misery. She poured water from her urn over her gills and said, "oh, honey... You know this isn't... this doesn't end well, you know that, right? Don't you think it would be best to put the poor creature out of his misery?"

He looked at his mother with hurt and betrayal. He felt himself unable to say anything without crying or cursing, so he silently turned his full attention towards the bird, dripping water into his mouth with diligence, trying to determine when the bird might have had enough.

She looked at her son, knowing his stubbornness and his sadness. It was her responsibility to protect him from hurt, but he had purposefully put himself in a situation where pain was inevitable. Irrational anger flared inside her for a brief second, before she quelled it and decided she should try to be supportive.

"Okay," she said, nodding her head, watering her gills, "okay. What do you need me to do?"

He stared at her seriously for a second.

"I have some grain for bread in the cupboard," he said, turning back to the bird. "I was going to grind it up into a powder and mix it with a little bit of water and see if I could get him to eat."

Wordlessly, his mother slid over to the cupboard, got out the grain and the mortar and pestle, poured out some grain, and started to grind.

They both worked in silence for a little while.

Eventually the silence became too much.

"I love you, son," his mother said, "know that I love you, and always will."

"I know you do, mum," he said, continuing to drip water into the mouth that now appeared to be eagerly anticipating every drop.

"I love you too."

She nodded to herself, and got back to grinding.

The bird died.

Of course it did. There were moments when it seemed as if it might pull through, but these moments were few and far between, and they became fewer and further as the day turned to night, and then the night turned to day. The mother and the son had sleeplessly watched vigil, sitting on one rock, her arm around his shoulders.

There was hope, and then there was none.

The son realised the bird had died, silently nodded to himself, then cried. Loud, unselfconscious tears streamed down his face and onto his mother's caring shoulders.

She held him tight, comforting him and thinking to herself, "I knew this was going to happen."

The stream became a trickle, and the mother said to the son, "it's alright. It'll be alright."

The son shook his head violently into her shoulder, his snakes bouncing around and smacking her in the face, "it's not alright. Nothing is ever alright."

"At least the bird died knowing it was being looked after, and loved," she said, "that's something, isn't it?"

"It's something," he said. "It's something."

They at there for a while, him wallowing, her comforting.

Eventually, she stood up. "Well, come on," she said. "This poor creature isn't going to have a funeral for himself."

She started folding the towel up over the bird.

"Do you have anything to bury him in?" she said, over her shoulder, trying to seem proactive.

He stared at her green back for a moment.

He put his hands on his knees and pushed himself up.

"I don't want to bury him," he said, "he's a bird. He should be free."

The funeral pyre looked quite good, considering. He had originally purchased it as an open-flame barbecue, back when he was younger and had delusions that he would sometimes feel like entertaining other people, but it was easily converted into a pyre by the addition of mounds of clumped together sticks and his own sadness.

"From the air you came, and to the air you will return," he said, feeling faintly embarrassed, sparking some flint and seeing the flames roar into life.

His mother and sisters were there, huddled together, worried about their baby brother, but feeling that, in some weird way, this was good for him. He had allowed himself to enter into the world, and his sadness was now directed at something, focused like a pin in his heart, rather than the all encompassing stench of despair that usually clung to him like a fart in the shower.

His father was there, too. He was unsure of what to make of everything, but this was his son's weird thing, and it was clearly important to him. The fact that something was important was something to be encouraged. So he was there. Arms crossed, claws tucked in under the armpits, a look of slightly angry confusion on his face, but he was there, and that was important.

The flames engulfed the poor bird, and the first pieces of ash started to rise up into the air.

It was sad, but it was also strangely liberating.

"Are you okay?" his mother asked, hand on his shoulder.

"I'm okay," he replied, "I'm okay."

The bird he eventually did purchase was a mad looking thing. His eyes were sunk deep into disturbing featherless skin folds, his vibrant green coat sticking out from his body at odd, distracting angles. But he would live a long time, the man at the pet store had said. 70 years on up.

They became inseparable. If his mother or his sisters or his father came to visit, or if he went to visit them, which started to happen much to everyone's surprise, they knew there would be that creepy looking bird on his shoulder, with its intense stare and its grating squawk.

But he started to seem... well, not happy, but... content. Sometimes he would even smile.

And seeing an insane bird pick a fight with one of his beard snakes... well, there was no more pleasurable sight in the world.

THE END.