Huzzah! I finally finished this part. Sorry it took so long. Major case of school-overload and writer's block.
I think I may have fried their brains. They were completely horrified at my stories. They, and everyone else on the planet, reasonably should be. It sent a boiling hatred inside me as I retold them.
When I finished, my mom slowly stood up off the couch. "I need to call someone. People need to know about this."
I jumped up. "No!" I impulsively shouted.
"James," she said, "People need to know. You can't hold something like this in the dark. These people need to be punished after what they've done."
I sighed and walked slowly to her. "I know. But I'm just asking you not to tell anyone. I know they're bad, I know that more than anyone. But if there's one thing you can do for me, that's not to tell anybody."
"We have to tell –"
"If we wanted people to know, we'd have told them by now."
There was a tense silence while we stood there, holding our ground. I knew people had to know, but there was no way in heaven or hell I was going to be shown off like a carnival sideshow. If she told anyone about the demon spawns, people would need proof, and I was that proof. Then they'd come look at the freaky bird kid like he's some sort of museum exhibit. Yeah. Not on my life.
"Fine," she finally conceded, a bit dejectedly. "Fine. If you don't want people to know then…then no one will know."
I let out a sigh of relief. Thank goodness.
"Night," I mumbled. "I'm going to bed."
The next day when I woke up, my dad was already gone. Off for his interviews.
Over the course of the day, my mom kept asking me annoying questions about me, the School, my friends (which I kept the info on to a minimum), the whitecoats and everything. She kept bugging me about it, so I went outside to avoid her.
The time passed really, really slowly. We'd all for so long really wanted a normal, decent home life, but none of knew how god damn boring it was.
Eventually, my dad came home. He didn't get the job. Oh. Wonderful.
I sat outside on the curb of the sidewalk with my no-longer-broken radio, turning the transmission dial to pass the time while I waited. I only got a signal once, but it was something about donuts. Finally, what I was waiting for came. Light footsteps approached from the sidewalk. I smiled as I recognized the footsteps of the awesomely hot neighbor chick. Someone was walking with her though, someone with much heavier footfalls.
"Hey, I'll see you later," some guy said. "I have to go somewhere."
"Later," neighbor girl said. He walked away.
I dropped my radio by my mailbox and walked over to her.
"Hey," I greeted.
"Hi."
"So who was that?" I asked her.
"My b…brother," she answered. "Well, not really," she continued quickly. "He's like a brother, but we're not related." Oh, good, the flock and me aren't the only lunatics out there who are like that.
"Buhbrother?" I asked, raising my eyebrow, smiling.
"Yes," she responded. "Buhbrother." She laughed a little, and I joined her.
"I have a quick question for you," I said, remembering something.
"Mm-hmm, what?"
"What's your name?"
She laughed. "Took you long enough. Sheila."
"Sheila…" I repeated, playing the word over my tongue.
"My friends call me Shell."
I smiled. "Shell?"
"Sometimes Seashell."
I laughed. "Nutty people."
She laughed, too. "Yeah, they are. Oh," she exclaimed. "I just remembered, I'm going out with them soon. They'll be here in a minute."
I nodded, almost barely hoping for a second that she might invite me. They're probably all girls, I thought, both drooling at the thought and realizing that she wasn't going to invite me. Damn.
There was a muffled buzzing sound coming from somewhere by Shell's side. There was a shuffling, the zipping of a zipper, and then the buzzing became clearer. A snapping sound as if something was being opened. A click of a button. "Hang on a sec," Shell told me. "Hey," she said. "Yeah, I'm ready. I'm outside right now. 'Kay. See you in a minute." The snapping shut of the thing, more shuffling, the zipper again, and then she stopped.
"Sorry about that," she said. "My friends just called. They'll be here in a minute to pick me up."
I nodded. "Have fun with them," I told her.
The next second, a car engine purred up along side us.
"Later, Iggy," she said, walking away.
"Later," I called back. The car door opened, then shut, then the car drove off.
I sighed. I had really been hoping for that to be more eventful.
Oh well. Plenty of time for things to get interesting. I was going to be here a long time.
I walked back over to my radio, but was stopped by a soft crinkling of a stiff paper under my foot. I bent down and picked it up. It was smooth on one side and even smoother, even slippery, on the other, minus a mark with pen. It felt like a photograph. I felt over the pen mark that had been engraved into it.
It didn't feel like anything but gibberish. I'd work on figuring it out later, to pass the time. Since, I'd have to admit, this normal life stuff, that we – the flock – I sighed sadly at the memory of them – that we had all been wanting for so long?
Starting to get really boring.