In the approaching dusk of the third day I felt the distinct known click of my sanity plummeting over the edge of the abyss. Not that I minded any of that because it made my literal analysis of reality skewed beyond any recognition, and that was just the curse my brain needed to keep me alive from thence forth.
Mt. Hebron Villa had been dark for many years. I suffered in this darkness during the most sunny days and moonlit nights. Cursed with just enough affluence to remain in comfort and to belay any thought or attempt I might have at following one of many a pipe dream I constructed for over seven decades now.
My curse had been complete. I was the last of everyone. I lost everything I loved or cared about; or at least as close as I could come to such defined feelings. I used to ponder the concept of what it would be like to endure the loss of your children before you yourself have expired. It’s worse than my nightmares instructed. Sanity remains. Sanity remains as everything else around you wilts faster and faster. A crisp, scooped out, empty shell is all that remains. The shell smells of something just slightly unpleasant, and nothing more. Your mind remains sharp enough. Sharp enough to be able to slice its own existence into many tiny shreds of very clear and painful memory.
I would sit at Mt. Hebron contemplating the good fortune of my virility when I met Teshmeque.
Teshmeque was of avian decent, I think. He had all the outward appearances of a bird, though he never flew really; he sort of lurch-crashed. That’s the best I can describe it. He had wings, but they didn’t function properly. I think he was the way he was because he was meant to be a harbinger; my harbinger, and then my vessel. He would be my vessel to another, long-awaited life… or absolute death. Either of which was fine by me.
I sat in the garden at Mt. Hebron, soaked in Dickle, cursing any god that cared to listen these days and pissing off the neighbors in the process, when Teshmeque came waddling across the lawn at me. I looked queerly at the approaching sight, then at the level of Dickle remaining in my still iced glass, then back at this avian apparition approaching me. My mind wandered back to a parrot I once owned. Dionysus was his name. He was appropriated to outlive my existence as well, but nevertheless beat my children to his grave.
Teshmeque, whose name at that time was unknown to me of course, approached closer with the freakishness of a Japanese dark horror film.
I cocked my head in wonderment; mildly panicked, amused and hoping this oddity would kill me all at the same time.
As if in answer to my thoughts the fucking bird said, “Teshmeque! Here for you!”
He paused now, just before me, on the edge of the patio. He hopped, sort of, onto a raised brick that surrounded my in-ground pool.
“The fuck?” I asked to no one in particular.
“Teshmeque! Here for you!”
I gazed at my glass again. I started to laugh in happiness, thinking the buzz I had managed in conjunction with the shit I had smoked a short time ago had concocted this strange hallucination before me now. Like a controlled dream in an early morning hour, I decided that day to interact with the thing.
“You’re one ugly fucking, gimped up excuse for a bird,” I said to the thing.
“Fuck you! Teshmeque! Here for you!” it says.
I laughed, truly amused, “I had a parrot once that used to say that in…” I was cut off.
“Dionysus!” it said and cocked its head. It made a coughing sound, stared and blinked. The pain of a memory flowed through my body upon hearing this name of the dead spoken aloud. My heart fluttered and I prayed, like I had thousands of times before, that my heart would implode and end my misery. It didn’t, just like it hadn’t the previous thousands of times. I glanced at my glass again and grabbing it, downed the remainder of the beautiful caramel colored liquid.
More violently than my mind seemed to plan I replied once again, “FUCK-A-YOU BIRD!!!”
It shit. It stumbled closer to me, off of the raised brick by the water’s edge where it stumbled (if a bird could stumble) and almost fell in the cold water. I hoped in that moment that it would. Maybe I’d fall in upon it. Make sure it died; whatever the fuck this thing was. This fucking Teshmagoogee thing! This fucking cursed winged beast.
OHHH! The presence of any one of many heralded gods could not befriend me in all of over seven decades, but one fucked up tainted bird can?!!! What madness was this?!
“Be gone you fucked up cretin! You surely don’t please me by your presence here, and serve no purpose. FUCK-A-YOU! Though mildly amusing, I gotta ask that you get the fuck outta here!” I ordered the bird-thing.
It made a chuckling noise and simply replied with, “Teshmeque! Sphincter boner!!!”
“Ok then,” I submitted, “Come on in,” and I guided the stumbling fucked up bird into the house.
