The First Sunny Day

Our first really nice day of the year was today. I went out today at 2pm and didn't come back in until about 20 minutes ago. I walked down to the Hudson River and sat on a bench. I ate lunch and meant to just sit outside and read. It didn't work out that way. I'm convinced now that if I didn't have to go to work, and could sit outside as long as I wanted to, I would be published by now. Maybe I just need more drive and focus. (Speaking of focus, I swear I'll finish my posts about heroines. This just wasn't the day for it.) Anyway, here's what came out:

It's warm, practically unbearably so for me in my sweatshirt, up on the streets. I came down to the riverside for the soothing breeze that occasionally picks up to a chill wind. It feels delicious on my sun-warmed arms. I brought books and a blanket I'd been knitting, some small projects I'd been neglecting. Somehow the play of the birds distracts me from all of my intentions. The seagulls spot a female duck eating something out of the gravel on the shoreline. They amass around, sure she has some food source they can't find. She trundles along, ignoring their shrill voices, the blue on her wing shining purple in the sunlight. A raven keeps landing in odd places and letting out a single keening cry. When I look up from retrieving my camera, he is gone and I cannot find him anywhere.

Mallards swim past the rocks in front of my bench. Their green-black heads are metallic in this spring afternoon light. They bob in the waves seeming to move with them but really they're swimming in the opposite direction. The female haunting the shoreline is chased by two rambunctious little girls and takes flight, rebuking them loudly.

A cloud rolls over the sun and the wind grows steadier, gaining more of a bite. It doesn't matter. There is a specific pair of ducks on which I have fixated and will not be distracted from. She is mostly white, a pale princess with mottled beige markings. She paddles with poise, her head held high. Her partner has the same coloring she does but with a black tail and a black head. He follows her at a consistent distance, as if he guards her from the screaming gulls. His head doesn't have the shine the other mallards do. It's as if he were carved from onyx and alabaster.

I've been reading fairy tales lately, dark ones, and it's made me romanticize things. But these two are different. No others like them are swimming here. I wonder what they are, if my mom can identify them as I've been texting her, asking her to do. Part of me hopes she can't, that they truly are something else, and that the ever-young, always faithful part of me is right to believe in what can't be seen.

Work in Progress: Apocalypse by Goose

I'm thinking about doing a series of short stories and calling it Apocalypse Ridiculous. It'll be just what the title sounds like, stories about the world ending in very, very strange ways.
This is the first one I've started, tentatively titled "Apocalypse by Goose."

They descended upon the city in a flurry of feathers. They ate everything in sight, knocking garbage cans over in the twilight like long-necked raccoons. They hissed at the children and chased them for blocks on the slightest provocation. We couldn't shoot them and only the worst of us lacked guilt over poisoning them. The geese were here with their loathsome appetites and we just had to be patient. It had to end some day.

The children thought it was cool, this near ground cover of waterfowl. They fed the birds bread, first tossed on the ground with squeals of glee but advancing quickly to food taken directly from the hand, the child's determined stillness apparent and sharp intake of excited breath audible. It was our mistake, feeding them, and we would pay for it dearly.

They became accustomed to our presence as we became more unnerved by theirs. The geese soon learned that these treats fed to them need not be given but could be taken instead. They discovered our trash cans, brimming with delectable refuse, and raided them accordingly. We tried to chase them off but they simply hissed, chased, and bit when given half a chance. They bit frequently but more out of defense than anything, at least in the beginning. Scientists never could pinpoint just when this casual malice turned into a taste for human blood or why, but it did.