Many birds fell from the sky and the newspaper said it was normal. We believed it. This was after the bees. He had to look it up to find out they were turtle doves. They don't really come in pairs. Turtle doves. They look like if pigeons were pretty and brown instead of ugly and the color pigeons are. The turtle doves had blue marks on their beaks, which were also normal.
This was before the dogs.
He believed once that newspapers were required to report everything, more or less, which was why they were so thick. Then he learned about ad revenue, which declines steadily as the ads themselves grow, and its importance. The revenue. There were rumors of a missing black girl. These were only rumors. He looked for her without a picture for reference, and so felt only sharp pangs of concern for every black girl. In the Pic Quik, in the Hardee's.
This was before the snakes.
The newspaper offered nobody any catharsis. It only wound him up more tightly. The newspaper said this was normal. It was also normal, they said, to live in fear. It was normal that year to stay in on weekends. This was after the crabs.
He found a bird on his windshield. Its wings were open not because it fell that way but because the wind was of that mind. If you can imagine the sound he made then you must know how it feels. The Google people had just released a program that let you take a picture of an object and search the internet to find out what it was. The program could recognize a resemblance. Because he didn't have the program to find out he couldn't know for sure what kind of bird. No one could say he didn't try to pull the feathers from his wipers.
Mike Meginnis has stories published or forthcoming in The Lifted Brow, Hobart, The Collagist, Booth, Smokelong Quarterly, elimae, and others. He co-edits Unanny Valley (uncannyvalleymag.com) with his wife, Tracy Bowling.
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