kaolin fire presents :: writing :: fiction

"HelloBudgie"

words

"Is everything ready?" The voice was light and female. And anxious.

"Yes. I've got all my shit together. Have you fed Louie?"

"Her name's not Louie. Its Lu-lu. And if she's ever going to learn her name, can you *please* call her that?"

"It's not like she's listening to us at this very moment, is she? What sort of hearing does a parakeet have?"

"Just... Oh, I don't know. Just... I'd like it if you'd help me with this. I've never gotten a parakeet to speak before. I really want Lu-lu to."

Jason groaned slightly. "Are you going to leave that tape on the entire time we're gone?"

"I was planning on it. If you're really worried, I'll chip in extra for the electricity."

"No. That's alright. I just wonder about the neighbor's sanity, if that blasted thing actually bleeds through the walls." He stuck his tongue out at her, and mimicked. "Hello, Budgie. Hello, Budgie. Hello, Budg..."

A playful fist stopped him in mid-repeat, and he stepped back, laughing. Kriss ducked into the main room one last time, and turned on the tape player. Light strains of "Hello, Budgie. Hello, Budgie. Hello, Budgie." drifted back out the door.

"It's really going to be nice to be out of there for a week." Jason grunted his agreement, shouldering two suitcases. Kriss locked and bolted the main door and the security door. It was going to be a good break.

Inside, Lu-lu, who definitely did not think of herself as Lu-lu, was slowly being woken up. She blinked slowly, fluffed out her feathers, and let down her other leg so she could stretch out. "Ri'eet," she cried. It was the prettiest sound she knew. She distinctly thought of herself as Ri'eet. She was, after all, the prettiest bird that she knew. Being the only bird she knew had no bearing on that.

Her feathers dully caught the light just filtering in from outside the fourth story windows. Daylight came slowly on this side of the building. She didn't know that, of course. She had no conception of the outside: weather, seasons, and even cats were all outside her ken. She just knew that it wasn't time for her to wake yet, and there was a strange noise that kept drawing her attention. Then memory hit. She had heard this before.

The worst thing about it was she couldn't do anything while the noise played. It wasn't so much that it distracted her from what she was doing but that it drew her attention hypnotically. Try all she might, she just couldn't act normally with it on. The best thing to do, she knew, was to wait it out. She could wait it out. She had every other time. She closed her eyes, puffed out her feathers for warmth, and pretended to sleep. It would go away.

The tape player droned on. Fifteen minutes passed and the phrase changed to "You're cute." After another fifteen minutes, it became "How bout a cracker?"

Ri'eet was not doing well. She could not sleep, and a nervous twitch was developing in her right leg. She opened her eyes again. Ri'eet hopped around a little, trying to get her leg to stop. After a short bit, it calmed down, and she went back to perching on one leg, pretending to go to sleep. The noise had to stop soon.

"Come on over here. Come on over here. Come on over here." The tape droned on in its artificial cheer. Much research had gone into this tape. The phrases were picked especially for how vigorously parakeets responded to it, how likely a parakeet was going to respond, and how able a parakeet was to copy the sounds. Then, each individual phrase was digitized and electronically filtered to make it more appealing, from a perceived parakeet's point of view, and to fall perfectly within the verbal range of a parakeet. As far as any human was concerned this made the tape seem rather odd. Parakeets never noticed the difference.

Blessed silence! The noise had stopped! Ri'eet happily tweeted a few bars, shook herself out, and hopped over in front of her mirror to preen. Absent-mindedly she flicked a bead back and forth under her mirror. She really was a beautiful thing. Her feathers were a vibrant shade of light blue, with black stripes demarking the middle of her wings horizontally. She hopped onto the side of the cage to climb down to her food.

*click*. The noise startled her so much she fell straight down to the bottom of the cage, with a pride-bruising thump. Just as she gathered her wits enough to begin to wonder what had caused the thunderous snap, the tape began to play again.

"Hello, Budgie. Hello, Budgie. Hello, Budgie."

Her leg started twitching almost immediately, making it near impossible for her to climb back up to her perch. It really didn't do to ignore it from anywhere else. Ri'eet stretched her wings out a little to see if there was room for her to fly up, but the cage was small. The slight movement of her wings up and down inadvertantly knocked some feed through the bars under her. That wouldn't do at all. She would just have to suffer the noise from where she was, and hope for the best.

"Hello, Budgie. Hello, Budgie. Hello, Budgie."

"Hello, Budgie. Hello, Budgie. Hello, Budgie."

"Hello, Budgie. Hello, Budgie. Hello, Budgie."

It was getting to be very difficult to stand with her leg twitching so ferociously. She couldn't stand on it directly because then her entire body would shake. And she was afraid that if she tried to tuck it under her feathers, she'd wind up gouging herself rather badly. She tweeted furiously at the noise, tring to get it to stop. This was not the beginnings of a good day, and she definitely was not happy about it.

"Hello, Budgie. Hello, Budgie. Hello, Budgie." The tape droned on without the slightest note of her troubles or her rebuttal. It was a pretty standard tape.

Carefully, Ri'eet walked over to her food and tried to chew on some of it, hoping that the noise from her gullet would reverbrate and drown out the hideous attack. To no avail. She simply couldn't coordinate her body well enough to keep the seed in her mouth. Half-cracked shells fell onto the floor of her cage. Ri'eet shook her head angrily and tweeted her loudest yet. The shouting wasn't getting her anywhere in particular but it felt good to vent.

"You're cute. You're cute. You're cute."

Her energy was beginning to wane. The nervous twitching and slightly off-kilter stance were wearing her out. Ri'eet looked at her seeds mournfully. She was really getting tired.

"How bout a cracker? How bout a cracker? How bout a cracker?"

The room was beginning to warm from the sun's gentle ministrations through the plexiglass windows. A slight delirium wsa beginning to form in Ri'eets mind. Once, just once, she felt herself repeating one of the invading sounds inside her skull. "How bout a cracker?" There was an oddly pleasant feeling in her breast when she thought it, which she clamped down upon immediately.

"Come on over here. Come on over here. Come on over here."

Now her head was beginning to twitch nervously as well. Ri'eet was becoming very disoriented; the room was bouncing erratically up and down, shifting massively from left to right, and she was starting to feel feverish.

"Come on over here. Come on over here. Come on over here."

A second voice chimed in with the first one. Something about it was much more soothing, and in fact almost completely blocked out the first. It had musical overtones that she swore were distinctly her own. She clamped her beak shut and the second voice stopped. Ri'eet noticed that she wasn't trembling. The first voice started pounding on her psyche again, harder than before. The shakes came back quickly.

She hopped into a corner of the cage and attempted to brace herself there. Her head was slowly and methodically banging against the side of the cage. That stopped the sound a little. She chirped as loud as she could, trying to drive any other sound out of her mind.

"Come on *thud* over here *thud*. Come on *thud* over here *thud* Come on *thud* over here *thud*."

The more she banged her head the less she noticed the voice.

"Come *thud* on *thud* over *thud* here *thud*. Come *thud* on *thud* over *thud* here *thud*. Come *thud* on *thud* over *thud* here *thud*."

"*thud* *thud* *thud* *thud* *thud* *thud*"

"*thud* *thud* *thud* *thud* *thud* *thud*"

Suddenly, the noise stopped again. She rushed over to her food and began to wolf down the seeds. Chaff flew left and right, and among it seeds uneaten. Ri'eet didn't care. She needed sustenance and had no clue how long the respite would last. The onrush of food heightened her sagging energy levels, and she hopped over to her water. More carefully, she pecked at the surface of it and began to quench her thirst.

*click*

The noise restarted as suddenly as it had stopped, but with a bang. It caught her such that she jumped straight into her water. And when the voice started as well her control dropped and her bowels let loose, right into her water. She hopped dejectedly back to the corner, and slowly began to beat her head against the wall. Ri'eet was really becoming worried. It had never gone on for this long before. And she really could not trust her water supply. Ri'eet would just have to tough it out until the water was refilled.

"*thud* *thud* *thud* *thud* *thud* *thud*"

"*thud* *thud* *thud* *thud* *thud* *thud*"

"*thud* *thud* *thud* *thud* *thud* *thud*"

Ri'eet's head was beginning to spin. The back and forth and back and forth against the metal bars was jolting her equilibrium. She was afraid that if she stopped, however, she would start to respond to the voice again. She clung tenaciously to her tenuous existance.

"*thud* Hello, *thud* Budgie. *thud* Hello, *thud* Budgie. *thud* Hello, *thud* Budgie."

She was beginning to slow down, and consequently the noise was creeping in to her consciousness. She could feel her control waning. Ri'eet fought with everything she had not to mimic the voice.

"*thud* *thud* *thud* *thud* *thud* *thud*"

Ri'eet stopped. She simply could not keep up the pace. She had lost.



Some faint clicks emanated from the door. Slowly Jason remembered which key went where and opened first the security door and then the main one. He held open the doors for Kriss to step in, and then followed with their bags. The bags were far less kempt than when they had left. The time away had been well worth the hassle of preparing the trip.

"Come on over here. Come on over here. Come on over here."

Kriss walked over to the tape player and turned it off. "Let's not go straight back to being crazy, eh? Let the trip wear off naturally?"

"That sounds good. How's Louie?"

"*Lu-lu. Lu-lu. Right?*"

"Yeah. How's Lu-lu?"

Kriss turned around and looked at the parakeet's cage. "Umm. Jase?"

"What's up?"

"I think you ought to look at this..."

Jason walked over to the cage, putting his arm around Kriss and peering in.

There was shit dropped all over the cage, as if the parakeet had not been able to stay in any one place for any significant amount of time. The seed that should have lasted at least two weeks was entirely gone, mostly strewn over the floor of the cage. The water seemed untouched, although the reason for that was pretty plain. A thin layer of filmy scum had formed over the top, and there was a slowly dissolving turd sitting on the bottom of it. The mirror had been ripped down from the ceiling, presumably from the parakeet having eaten through the string holding it in her hunger. And the parakeet...

Ri'eet hung on to the side of the cage, with her body tilted horizontally, just barely not parallel with the ground. One wing was hanging limp and useless, and there was a constant spasm in one of her legs. Her eyes were glazed over but she was breathing. Just barely. She coughed out a feeble tweet, and shook her head.

"Hello, Budgie. Hello, Budgie. Hello, Budgie. Hello, Budgie. Hello, Budgie. Hello, Budgie...