One time when his mother actually took him outside the house, they ended inside a room, where she talked heatedly with another man, irritation riddled in both of their voices. Norman had no other choice but to glance around, and his eyes continuously came back to the stuffed birds hanging from the ceiling. "How do you do that?" he asked without realizing he was interrupting the conversation his mother was having.

"Do what?" the man responded.

"The birds."

"It's taxidermy, boy."

It captivated him enough that he decided to learn how to do just that. There was a rather elegant look to them, as if they were just as carefree in death as they were life. They weren't frightening like other animals; they were just birds.

His mother never attempted to stop him, because learning about taxidermy kept Norman from laying in the dirt or throwing rocks at trees and the sides of the house, and although she often called him queer for it, he did it anyway. It was no different from the other things she called him.

The man his mother was now seeing kept coming back, and everytime he returned Norman could feel something uncomfortable tightening in the pit of his stomach, so he retreated outside, where the birds continued swooping and all was quiet. Cars zoomed past, and he watched them in silence before following the flight of the birds again until it got so dark his eyes strained to see the creatures that were no longer there.

"Why are you so obsessed with those birds?" his mother asked him one day.

"I like watching them fly."

"You strange little boy," his mother clicked. She wagged her head at him. "You peculiar little boy, why can't you do something normal?"

"Other boys look a-at women." He cleared his throat as she shook her head harder.

"No, Norman, they might do that, but they also don't chase after birds as if they had nothing better to do."

I don't, he was about to say, but his mother would smack him for indirectly insulting her ability to entertain him, especially not when there was so much he could do around the house. The next day he took to cleaning the windows. His bird was still there.

When that man came back, Norman took to nestling himself into the chair in front of his fireplace and opening a large book, all about stuffing things, and tried his best to block out the sounds of their voices. Normally his mother wasn't so talkative, and now she seemed almost smitten at moments, and a strange pounding in his ears would occur when he noticed it, until he was shaking. It wouldn't stop until the man left, and finally, he'd relax when his mother flipped around and shooed him up the stairs for being a bore again.

"He doesn't like you very much," she told him one night.

"I don't like him very much."

"Excuse me?"

He was accustomed to his mother's slaps by now. It barely made him blink.

"What are you reading, Norman?"

The boys were back, and it did no good trying to avoid their questions anymore.

"Taxidermy."

"Taxidermy? Tommy, isn't that what your dad does?"

"Yeah. Why are you reading about taxidermy? Are you a hunter or something?"

Norman shook his head.

"Then why are you reading about taxidermy?"

"I think it's interesting," Norman answered.

"But why?"

"I don't know," he said softly, "I would like to stuff birds."

"But you don't hunt?"

"No."

One of the boys laughed. "It's just Norman being weird again guys, nothing interesting here."

Norman shuffled home with this books in his arms, the one on taxidermy right on top, and he sprinted across the street when there were no cars coming, until at last, he was home. His mother was waiting there for him in the kitchen.

"Come here, Norman."

He went over to her.

"I'm building a motel."

Norman blinked at her. "What?"

"I'm building a motel."

"Why?"

"Chet said I should."

There was that tension in his chest again, warming his body and making his fingertips and feet tingle.

"With what?"

"Your father's money."

She was using his father's money for another man's plans? It hardly seemed right, he was supposed to be the only man in his mother's life, even if he wasn't fully grown yet, but she had gone and found another anyway. He licked his lips.

"Why do you want to do that?"

"Why are you in any position to question me?" Her voice raised. "Who's the parent? You're always so disrespectful!"

"I'm sorry, ma'am," he mumbled, dropping his eyes to the ground. His fingers clenched around his taxidermy book.

Of course he was over that night, after she hassled Norman to groom himself more, and she pushed him into a chair for dinner and ignored any attempts to discuss the matters of the motel. "He loves it," she told this man Norman despised, and Norman bitterly stabbed his fork into a Brussel sprout, for which she scolded him for. When he was done, he ran outside again, although it was getting dark, and the wind nipped harshly at his ears, but he didn't care. He didn't care about anything except what his mother was doing, without his permission, without his agreement, that she cared more about another man than her own son.

The bird was there again, even though it was so late, and he knew it was time. Without thinking, he grabbed a rock nearby, picked it up, and threw it. And then it was another, and another, until the rocks were smashing into something he had lusted after for weeks, until it was as motionless as those animals suspended from wire in that building, until his chest was heaving and the fog in his mind slowly rolled away.

"Norman!"

He stepped away from the bird. It was dead.

"What the hell did you do?"

"I… I only wanted to stuff it…"