For The Birds

By  Joseph Farley


Placo woke from a recurrent dream. He was flying. No wings. No parachute.
Just air and him. In his underwear.  He used to dream about flying naked,
but then he'd wake with a hard on and not much he could do about it.  Placo
couldn't wait get get the casts off his arms.  Even with the casts he could
have gone downtown and got a blow job, but that was costly and he liked to
grab the woman's hair, pull her closer to him, feel her lips squirm around
his cock.  But, with both hands in casts, Placo wasn't up to grabbing hair
or anything else for that matter.

It had been three weeks since the explosion.   Placo and his cousin had
just returned to Philly from South Carolina.  They brought  a car load of
fireworks with them.  The 4th of July was coming fast, and they hoped to
make good money selling the stuff to friends and kids in the park.  Placo
was unloading boxes when an ash dropped from his cigarette.  The spark that
bounced into the box must have been a small one, but it was enough for
KAPOW!    

The doctor at the ER wanted to amputate, but Placo thought of never being
able to hold a woman by the hair again. He begged the resident for another
option.  Placo got the name of a surgeon, and borrowed some money from his
Aunt Tina.   Tia Tina ran a small whore house, catering mostly to
neighborhood men tired of their wives.  Tia Tina fronted the money but told
Placo he would have to pay her back, at 20 percent interest per month.  
That was a substantial discount, but, after all Placo was family.

Two more weeks and the casts would be off. Then, after a few weeks of
rehab, Placo might be able to get that blow job, just the way he liked it.
Right now, all he had for sex was Mrs. Clemens down the hall.  She got
bored while her husband was at work, but Liza smelled down there, and kept
begging him to eat her.  He didn't have much choice.  Placo
had to do the best he could.  Mrs. Clemens was keeping him in beer, and
even slipped him a bill or two when she could.

There was no real money coming in right now.   All Placo could do was rely
on friends and family. His debts were piling up, but he was thinking all
the time.  He'd make good. Placo had already found the house.   Sidney had
driven him around looking for a job.  They found it.  An old couple in a
bungalow.  No alarm, but seemed loaded.  Twin houses with a wide breezeway.
 Stand of trees to block the view from the street out front, and a ball
field in the rear, separated from the back yard by a cyclone fence.   Placo
watched the old man get into his car and pull out. It must have taken the
geezer a half hour.  It would be all right. Placo touched the cross aroung
his neck.  It would be fine.

Today, Placo had no one to drive him around, but he needed to get his
prescriptions renewed. The doctor insisted on him coming in for a check up
before writing out the notes to the pharmacy for pain killers and
antibiotics.  Placo didn't actually take the pain killers.  Selling the
pills one by one was keeping him in food,  This meant he was in constant
agony, but Placo figured he could handle it.  After all, he'd survived
marriage for five years.  If he could take that, what was a little physical
pain? It was the itching he couldn't stand.

Placo's hands were itching on the bus.  That was bad enough. Then his eyes
started to water and his nose began to run. He sneezed.  Allergies.

Placo looked around.  While he'd been trying to doze, some clown with a
pink  feather boa and an orange feather hat had sat down in front of him. 


"Yo, ma'm," Placo said, "Can you move to another seat?  Your boa and hat
have my allergies going"

The rider in the seat in front of Placo turned around. It wasn't a woman.
Placo wasn't even sure it was a man.  The feathers were not attached to any
clothing. The feathers appeared to grow right out of the man's scalp, arms
and shoulders.   Although the rider had a mouth, it seemed more  beak like
than a normal mouth.

Placo stared. "What da hell?"

"Excuse me,"  said the bird-man, being very polite.  "I'll move to another
seat."

The bird-man started to get up when Placo stopped him.  "Whoa," he said.
"What's with the feathers?"

The bird-man looked at Placo's hands, "What's with the hands?"

Placo looked at his casts. "This?"  he said. "Explosion.  Fireworks. I'm
getting rebuilt like the Six Million Dollar Man."

"Oh,"  the bird-man said. "Must hurt."   He nodded towards the feathers. 
"I'm getting treatments?"

"Treatments?" 

"Genetic treatments."

Placo squinted. He didn't understand. "What do you mean?  You in rehab? 
This an accident?"

"No,"  said the bird-man.  "The accident was being born a man.  I should
have been a bird.  I've always known it.  I may never be able to fly. I'll
be lucky if I can glide, but I know I'll be happier."

Placo's eyes widened. "A bird?  Can they do that?  I been watching a lot of
those talk shows while I've been out of commission, but I haven't seen
anything about that."

"There are lots of us. Trans-specied.  Meant to be birds or leopards or
sloths. But, most don't want to draw attention to themselves. People aren't
very understanding."

Placo wondered, "Then why ain't you hiding your feathers?"

"I'm proud of who I am, and I'm molting.  It itches. Old feathers falling
out, baby down and early flight feathers, new feathers growing in. 
Besides, in this neighborhood folk have seen everything. They don't ask
questions, or are too high to question what they see.  At least on this bus at
this time of the day."

Placo could relate to the itching, so he told the bird-man to stay put. 
They kept talking.  Turned out the bird-guy's name was Phil, and his doctor
was in the same building as Placo's doc.  Phil told Placo there was a
whole underground in the city. Bars and night spots which, after everything
else was closed down, turned into a jungle.  "That when the animals prowl,"
Phil said.

Placo was curious.  Phil invited him to visit one of the bars with him some
night.  Phil and Placo parted at the medical building, heading to different
offices. That night Placo dreamed of flying again - with feathers.


Placo met Phil at the Clothespin sculpture at 15th and Market near 2 a.m. 
Phil was wearing a velvet cape with a hood.  Phil hailed a cab which
deposited them a couple blocks away at an alley.  Shingles for bars and
shoe repair shops dotted the alley way.  Phil paid the driver and led Placo
into one of the dives.

A burly bouncer stood in the doorway. "We're closed."

Phil threw back his hood, revealing his feathers.  He trilled a song like
some lush tropical bird.

"Okay. You're in," said the bouncer. "But what about your friend?"

Phil pointed to the casts on Placo's hands, "Fins in the making."

The bouncer eyed Placo  who stared just as hard back at the man.  Finally,
the bouncer said, "Okay, Big Bird.  But you are responsible for fish-boy
here!" 

The bouncer opened the door into the inner sanctum.  The bar, a dive used
for alcoholic breakfasts by day, had been transformed with plants and
painted screens into a jungle.  A woman who looked part panther sat at the
bar lapping up a martini.   Two tall men with yellow skin, horns and spots
rubbed their elongated necks together while they danced. Phil noticed some
old friends, and glided over, with Placo in tow, to join the flock.

There was a ruffling of feathers and showing off colorful plumes.  "Rex,
T-Bird, Shipley, Wanda. Meet my new pal, Placo."

"Hhhm," said Wanda, flaunting her green crest and red breast feathers.
"Planning to settle down and build a nest?  You've got good taste.  He
could help me feather my nest anytime."

T-Bird, who was tall and thin, with long legs and pink plummage, strutted
around the new arrivals, bobbing his head and cooing.  "Any more in the
nest where he came from?"

"He's just a friend," said Phil.

Shipley cawed, " Hah. We know you better."

"Phil's word is good enough for me," said T-Bird. "I've got dibsies."

"No way," said Wanda. "I saw him first."

The two looked like they were going to fight.  Phil tried to soothe them.
"Calm down! This is no time to re-establish pecking order.  Do you want the
cops crashing in on us again?  Only thing that saved us last time was the
Captain's pet cockatiel."

"She is such a slut," crowed T-Bird. "The Captain should have picked me."

Order was re-established.   Wanda retained pecking rights over T-Bird for
now, although she agreed not to exert her rights tonight.   Placo was
strangely curious about this.  He wondered what openings were hid beneath
Wanda's green tail feathers, which stuck out about a foot from her rear  
Beer, pretzels, worms and seeds were placed on the table by the waitress, a
surly looking cat.   Placo openly leered at her fur covered breasts.

He whispered to Phil, "I'd like to pet that..."

"Don't say it," said Phil. "Katrina's sensitive. And mean. Only likes
felines, feminine felines. She hates birds and hates men even more. Don't
cross her.  Those claws are real sharp, although not entirely retractable. 
She could tear you up in a minute, or she could do it slow and cruel,
playing with you like a mouse."

Placo understood. He kept quiet.  The conversation at the table turn to
genome research and DNA treatment.  Then the subject changed to side
effects.  "Feline's get hairballs. That make's em real ornery, especially
Katrina."  said Shipley.

"Stones," said  Rex, a fat pigeon-like creature. "That's the worst part for
me. I don't have a gizzard, but I still have the urge to eat them.  You
should see my hemorrhoids."    Placo said, "No thanks."

But, Phil's friends agreed on one thing. They all hated being flightless. 
"We can't get our bones to go hollow like in nature," Wanda lamented.  "The
closest thing we got is osteoporosis."

"Even if we could go hollow," T-Bird complained. "We can't get light
enough.  Ornithologists don't know of any bird that could fly, living or extinct, which
was over fifty pounds."

"And don't forget wing span,"  Rex added.  "My fingers and arms have gotten
a little longer from the treatments, but there's no way these wings, if you
can call  these feathers on my arms wings, can lift a body of my
dimensions."

Placo sipped his beer through a straw and felt genuine tears of sympathy
coming to his eyes.  To become a bird and not be able to fly!   It hit home
in some small way.

Somehow, Placo managed to get home with Phil's help.  He remembered Phil
saying something about, "If you're gonna hang with the birds, there's some
rules you must follow.  Don't eat poultry. Don't eat eggs. Don't keep birds
in cages.  Don't hunt ducks or pheasants.  Don't make fun of us, and never,
never take us on an airplane ride.  It's too depressing."

Placo slept. And Placo dreamed.  He had wings.  But, there were no
feathers.  Leathery skin stretched between his outstretched fingers and his
toes.  Placo flew on silent wings, making noises only he could hear. He
flew towards a house where two old geezers lived, with valuables they
didn't need, and sucked them dry.  And when he woke, Placo  needed to think
for a long time about what it meant to be a man and whether it was worth
it.  

Bat's all folks!

This page hosted by Get your ownFree Home Page