Seagull

The sea was there, and even though she could only see it, that sliver of greyish blue barely visible from the kitchen window, it was nevertheless still reassuring in its presence. Reassuring to know that it stretched much further down past the roofs of her neighbours, past the entirety of Craig’s Street and past anything she had ever seen from her window. Reassuring to think of its everlasting presence and the continuous push and pull of the eternal tide. Even behind glass and walls she felt it brought to her mind and body a refreshing, cool breeze. However with it came the sorrow of a thirsty man presented with unreachable water.

Sharren had lived in that house, up on Craig’s Street for many years already, yet she yearned to escape it, to live elsewhere. Perhaps in a cabin up on a snowy peaked mountain or in a beach house near the icy pacific. The house’s stuffy walls and warm stale air were suffocating making her panic as though stuck in a straight jacket or perhaps squeezed into a cocoon. The walls, all a matching abysmal shade of beige made her feel like she was losing her mind. It was everything she ever saw, beige, beige, beige. The furniture, the decorations, the food sometimes, even her dreams were beige! She had a nasty habit to try and get by. She often found herself chewing the skin of her fingertips until they bled then smearing that gorgeous and refreshing vermillion blood on the wall hidden by the flank of her bed, she would create patterns or shapes, often resembling waves. It calmed her to imagine them crashing down on that house, maybe with her in it, if she hadn’t made it to her mountain cabin by then. Of course her husband never found anything as she made sure to regularly paint over her small works of art, just as regularly as she baked potent desserts to mask any odour of her minor paint jobs.

Today she sat by her kitchen window, settled atop a stool. Muffins were rising in the oven to her right. Through the window she could see the rest of Craig’s Street, neatly arranged rows of houses and driveways cooking under the sun. Over the roof of the house in front of her she could barely make out a slice of blue sea. Oh how her heart ached for fresh air, for the feeling of a cool breeze tickling the hair on her forearms. In her head she was sitting on a cool jagged rock perched near the lapping waves of the icy sea, playfully sticking her toes down where the water could reach them at the next wave but pulling them up just in time to avoid the sea's attempt at wetting her. She would glance sideways at the seagulls squawking happily and eating from old bags of chips. Suddenly baby turtles would emerge from a warm nest buried in the cold, beige sand. Their lack of flipper coordination causing them to wobble slowly and helplessly. She found it silly at first watching them struggle and fall over themselves but then the seagulls spotted them. One by one they were torn up and gobbled down, ripped apart then swallowed whole. Sharren watched speechless. It was all in her head, that she knew as a fact. However she couldn’t seem to stop it. She knew it was horrible and she ought to snap out of it, but she just couldn’t take her eyes away. The scene would probably have been described as tragic and gory. To Sharren however she couldn’t help but find it fascinating, maybe even beautiful. The colours, the sounds, the cold. She basked in it. In her head she metamorphosed into one of the seagulls with her soft white plumage and an enormous hunger. Chasing the turtles and relishing the taste of their soft and tender flesh.

She was suddenly interrupted by the beeping sound of her oven timer. The sudden noise startling her and she nearly fell off her stool rushing to get the muffins out of the oven. In her rush she forgot to get oven mitts and yelped in pain when her skin met the burning metal of the muffin tin. She looked down at her finger, a vicious red line branded her skin. hesitantly she brought it up and into her mouth. It tasted like iron, like a damaged spot on a spoon. It wasn’t bad, in fact Sharren found the flavour intriguing. Soon the burn was eased and she carried on finding oven mitts and retrieving the muffins from their hot captor. They looked incredible, dark and chocolaty with a puffy top rising out of the tin. She was happy with them and decided to display her creations on her best and fanciest plate. Chocolate was of course the only flavour she made, the only colour dark enough to obscure any remaining beige from the original batter. She decided to eat one, taste test it, make sure it was just as good as it looked. The biggest one, at the very top of the pyramid she had arranged on the plate. It was moist, delicate, she felt it spring back into shape after she took her first bite. She chewed slowly, letting her tongue get fully coated in the rich flavour. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back feeling the shine of the ceiling light against her eyelids, painting them red. Suddenly her tongue brushed against something unfamiliar. It was hard and fibrous, she tentatively pulled it out of her mouth and examined the object in her hand. It appeared to be some sort of fluff, perhaps a piece of stuffing fell from a tear in her padded oven mitts. It was so heavily coated in rich chocolate batter that it was hard to tell. She brought it over to the sink rinsing away the muffin residue and inspecting what now appeared to be a single small white feather. Then suddenly another appeared in her mouth. She coughed and gagged over the sink as more and more feathers, each one bigger than the last, began building at the back of her throat. Soon her sink began to fill with a mixture of wet sticky feathers tinted yellow with bile. It wouldn’t stop, eventually it began tasting like the burn in her finger, only this time she didn’t find the flavour quite as amusing. Speckles of red began to appear as she retched more and more violently, occasionally splattering the walls. Her vision became rather fuzzy, and the feeling in her fingertips grew dull.

Just as suddenly it all stopped, no feelings of left over nausea or scratching in her throat. It was all peaceful as she washed her sink clean. She huffed in dissatisfaction at the mess still splattered on the wall and went to get her paint.