The birds were captivating, as beautiful in death as they were in life, once Norman had stuffed them. Otherwise, they were limp and lifeless, causing him to feel a slight unease when they lay in his hands, but getting to work and making them appear almost lifelike again was rewarding. He smiled at his work, more pleased with every bird he stuffed, and ignored his mother.

"Quit stuffing those damn birds," she told him, but she'd disappear with her boyfriend and Norman would play a record until he couldn't hear them anymore. His hands took a few minutes to become calm enough to hold a needle and thread. They were the steadiest they ever were when he sewed them shut, but he always had to keep his handiwork to himself. No one appreciated taxidermy much.

One night, his mother vanished again with that man, and he pretended that their sighs were the wind and his vision was shaking because he was just tired, and he wondered if a human would be just as breathtaking as those birds once stuffed, if they could be restored to the same level of divineness they might have owned in life, and his hands itched to try it but there was nothing to try with. He tried to make himself fall asleep. The wind was just too loud.

And he thought about his mother in those lonely nights when she was trapped in between the walls with him but could be found nowhere, and what she was doing and what she had done, and what it felt like to run a hand down her thigh and taste her lips, until his face was red with embarrassment. He was unable to keep himself from enjoying it, and he wondered if it was so sinful after all. They never stopped.

Months had passed, and he grew a few inches more, until now his head was almost past his mother's, and his frame was even more gangly than ever. Even though her lover came around more and more, his aggravation towards him never became any less. Anytime he was over, he'd eat dinner with them, respectfully and diligently (because his mother's threats had always been enough to whip him into shape, if only for a bit), and then he would slink off upstairs, watching them without their knowledge as they moved into the sitting room. Their conversations always turned into heated whispers, and then Norman had to scurry away to his room to avoid being caught, and then the typical cycle of using Beethoven to block out the sound of restless bedsprings started again.

It was no different any night - well, except for the times their heated whispers turned into slamming doors, but he'd come back the next night and the normal routine commenced again - and although Norman was still annoyed, he was accustomed to it. That night he jogged upstairs again, sticking his legs through the bars of the railing and pressing his face to them so he could have a good view of his mother and the other man. To quell any bitter thoughts that came to him, he picked at the dry skin around his fingers, and think about the bird he planned to stuff next, until he was forced to flee to his room and do just that.

Norman was not expecting, however, for the sudden twist in his mother's usual conversation, when Chet nodded his head and told her, "I think I could say I love you."

What a stupid thing to say, Norman thought instantly, and he expected his mother to react the same way, but she melted in his hands again, like the wax Norman used to watch pool in the candle holder on the mantle. Of course, inside and outside of her bedroom that bastard had a hold of her. Norman clutched onto the railing, vision shaking again as he eyed the man maliciously. He retracted his legs a moment later, retreated to his bedroom, and didn't care if she could hear his door slam.

The birds were waiting for him. His fingers were the only thing in command.

No one had ever attempted calling Norman a people's person, because the matter of fact was that he was not. "He's strange," he heard his mother say in the kitchen one day as he sat out of view. "He's a strange boy. I sometimes wonder if he'll ever need locked up."

"Surely you don't mean that."

"You don't know him well enough. I think he doesn't like you much."

"Norma-"

"Don't worry about him, he's strange."

And Norman sat, nodding his head in small movements, pulling at his fingers until his knuckle popped and he ran away again.

"Was that him?"

There was a pause as Norman made it to the bathroom door.

"I told you, he's strange. Doesn't like people very much."

He turned the shower head on and looked up into it, flinching when a few drops of water hit the side of his face. There came a few hard knocks on the door a minute later.

"Norman, what are you doing in there?"

"Showering."

"Why are you showering right now?"

It was the only piece of total privacy he had from his mother. If he retreated to his room, she could always come in, and in the days before she had that boyfriend, she could run her fingers up the inside of his thigh while her other hand caressed his cheek.

She loved him, he just knew she loved him. Ever since that man came into the picture, she stopped showing that she loved him.

He doused his hair, and her words drowned in the roar of water. Strange, he was strange. He always knew that; she always said he was, and so did the boys at school, and so did his teachers. He was odd, an outsider to the rest of society. The shower head turned off, he dried his hair, and when he left the bathroom, his mother was down with her boyfriend again, where their talking of what color the cabins should be became silent. The familiar sound of smacking lips replaced the word "yellow."