Okay, this strange dark fic was inspired by and named after The Cure's song Like cockatoos. (The lyrics are italicised) Not sure why I wrote this, really ... just a plot bunny that refused to go away, I guess. As to which two characters it's about, I'll leave that up to you to decide. R&R, but flames are NOT accepted.
Disclaimer: I disclaim -- I own NOTHING!
She walked out of her house
And looked around
At all the gardens that looked
Back at her house
(Like all the faces
That quiz when you smile . . . )
She was happy living where she was right now. As a teen, she'd enjoyed the family's sea change from the suburbs, but she'd always dreamed of living in a more rural area. So when she was old enough to leave home, she made real her dream. She'd replaced beach with bushland, ocean with billabongs, seagulls and albatross with cockatoos and other parrots.
He also lived near her. She hardly saw him anymore, and when she did, they never spoke to each other, but she didn't let that get to her. The two of them hadn't been on speaking terms for years now.
She was out feeding the birds when she saw him. He was watching her.
And he was standing
At the corner
Where the road turned dark
A part of shiny wet
Like blood the rain fell
Black down on the street
He watched her, then approached without a word. He reached her and they regarded each other in silence. She drew a breath as if to speak but then stopped, realising she didn't have a clue of what she could possibly say to him.
But she never got her chance to speak. She didn't see the knife, but she felt the cold blade as he thrust it into her side.
Then the birds took wing and the rain came down.
And kissed his feet she fell
Her head an inch away from heaven
And her face pressed tight
And all around the night sang out
Like cockatoos
As her strength ebbed away, only a single word could escape her lips: "Why . . . ?"
His steely eyes watched her as she sunk to the ground. "Because I loved you, and you broke me," was his reply.
She was cold now, the rain coming down hard on her. Though her vision was hazy, and she could very well have imagined it, she saw a dark bird before her. A black cockatoo, tail as red as the blood pooling around her, body as dark as what her world was becoming.
The rain continued, and the cockatoo changed. It hadn't been black at all, but white. The bird's yellow crest seemed to shine, a lone star in a world of darkness, making dull everything else around it, even the white of the cockatoo's feathers.
Black is the colour most commonly associated with death, yet it is said that a white bird is an omen of death.
Raucous screaming filled the air around them, but whether it came from the boy or the cockatoo was anyone's guess.
Now she could hear him leaving. She raised her eyes to him, though she could no longer see him for all the rain. "But I loved you . . . "
"There are a thousand things," he said
"I'll never say those things to you again."
And turning on his heel
He left a trace of bubbles
Bleeding in his stead
A lonely girl lying in the rain. A lonely boy trying to forget her. And in the air above, the lonely white bird of death, watching them both.
And in her head
A picture of a boy who left her
Lonely in the rain
(And all around the night sang out
Like cockatoos . . . )