He was at the end of his rope. He went down the hall and starting banging on the door where the bird was. When it began the week before, he thought the chirping pleasant, and by extension the bird. He smiled at its sunny energy and came to whistle the song when he was making breakfast or stepping into of the shower. But then the volume increased. The first day the bird got louder he thought that maybe a door or window had been left open, and that the sound was flooding the hall or the air shaft. The second day it got louder again, and again on the third. Now he did not need to whistle the bird’s song in the shower because he could hear it over the sound of the water, and he could not bear to whistle it at breakfast because it was taking his appetite. On the fourth day he heard not only the melody, now at a nearly intolerable volume, but a new tone in the performance of the song that he could only describe as mocking. That was the last straw. He went down the hall and banged on the door until he heard a series of locks clicking permissively. He did not know what he would see when the door opened but he could not have known that it would be his own face, twenty years older, as surprised to see him as he was to see it. Nor could he have known that he would begin shouting to overcome the chirping, only to realize with a start that it was coming from the mouth of the older face.
©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
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