The Cutter and the Crow (a tale from Nowhere)

[Marksman45]

<b>The Cutter & the Crow</b>

Jim the Cutter broke the window of the old house with his thirteen-pound, sheathed the blade, and crawled inside. Behind him, on a tree with a brilliant backdrop of the Wild Moon, an old black crow perched silently.

<i>Waiting for people is tiring</i>, Jim thought as he leaned against the wall, frowning down the front door. <i>Downing, always drowning...</i>

He heard a voice in his head intone, as if in response to his own thoughts, <i>And this sevent house is groaning, a-clutching at its heart, waiting, just as you are, for the moment to start.</i> Jim turned to the direction that this missive seemed to emanate from: the window through which he entered. Through its broken pane, there was nothing but the forest and moonlight. Oh, and a crow, perched on a branch. An old black crow, staring at Jim, staring with a cold cold stare, the kind of stare that makes you cold.

Compelled to turn away from the bird's glare, Jim began contemplating the term <i>sevent</i>. It was not a word he had heard before. In fact, he was not convinced it was a word. But the shape of it, of the sounds, brought to mind images of slow decay, of unsettling angles, of violent invisible curves. Jim looked about the room. It was sparsely furnished, a chair, a desk, a brass bed, a bookshelf with some books. On the desk were several papers and a typewriter.

<i>Wonder what this guy did?</i> Jim thought as he pondered his job.

/Cut to a dirty office. The shadows of the room never attain black, they stop at a sort of sick brown. All light in the room is a sick yellow.

Jim the Cutter stands in front of the desk of Bugg. Bugg, who resembles an obese humanoid cockroach, lounging in his chair in such a way that he seemed to ooze over the armrests rather than actually rest his arms on them, slides an envelope across the desk.

"The address and directions to it are in this envelope. Break in and wait for him to get home." Bugg's voice is dry and raspy.

"Then what?" Jim asks.

Bugg draws his thick, cracked, blue-tinged lips into a grotesque sort of shape, revealing teeth in advanced states of decay; a smile. "Give 'im the wink-wink shoveljob."

/Cut back to the old house, where Jim waits against the wall, his leather-gloved hand itching over the handle of the thirteen-pound.

<i>The night is very long, old Jim</i>, came that foreign voice in his head again, <i>and patience be a virtue, see, and haste can bring such plight; control your urge and your craze 'til it's time, for a jump on the gun before the moment has come could quickly end your rhyme.</i>

Jim daren't look back out the window this time. He laughed nervously at himself. A crow projecting poetry into his head, how ridiculous.

<i>Ah, but your fire will not still, 'stead it stokes and will not choke until the brokenness is done. Your days are young and you yet await your fee, oh and Ready, Ready, must you try always to be! </i>

Absent-mindedly, Jim muttered "You're a crow, not a mockingbird." Great, now he was conversing with his hallucinations. He tried to think of something else. Thought of the reward...

The voice responded to the thought, <i>Metal is metal is nothing. A colour change, a different name, still it all the same will be. You desire too much for yellow o'er black, and countless others have died on that same dead-end track.</i>

Enraged, Jim wheeled to the window and retorted out loud, very loud, "Old foul bird, what do you know?"

In anger at the bird, Jim had not heard the footsteps approaching the porch. There was a tangible silence beyond that door, as of someone stopped and listening. Then came the click of a pistolcock.

<i>You've betrayed my presence!</i> Jim thought sharply at the crow.

<i>You're as dead as a bone on a road! Old Jim, doom is but doom and yours will come soon. And your greed is foolish greencoat murderer too. I am leaving and bereaving my company from you.</i>

The crow flew away, and the empty tree was like too many bones.