It Is What It Is

# 68 It Is What It Is

It had been twenty four years since she had last seen it, but the place looked exactly the same. The year had been 1969 and it had been in the middle of the greatest heat wave the county had ever witnessed or been a part of. The old timers still spoke of the horrors the crazy heat had wreaked on the town and its people. They talked in whispers about the scene at the day care center, where the charred corpses of twenty three toddlers had been found, burnt to death from a faulty air conditioner unit. Their skin had been completely obliterated in to only God knows what atmosphere.

    The first callers had had to receive counseling for months afterwards as they described the smell. Oh the smell. It had caked the backs of their throats; it worked its way into the very fibers of their being and stayed there as though they had been born with it. The roads and highways surrounding the countryside had melted and caused huge ruts in the surface, similar to that of a teenager suffering with terrible acne from leading an unhealthy lifestyle on fast food and soft drinks. The old people’s home situated near the town swimming pool had always seen its fair share of death as it had been considered a decent place to die, especially when they had got the services of Matilda Bagley as the head cook.

      She was renowned for her desserts and family members actually looked forward to seeing their old and decrepit parents on that once a month visit to show the obligatory love, just so they could experience her culinary delights. She was a rare one, was Miss Bagley and it wasn’t just for her exquisite cuisine but it was the fact she was quite young to have so much skill in the kitchen. They never really knew where she came from or how she got there and if they had sat down as a group and thought this through, they would have realized at the time, that she seemed to conveniently appear after the mysterious disappearance of old Mrs. Harrity. Maybe it was the fact that Mrs. Harrity had been a crotchety old bag who always seemed to be coughing up phlegm from her two packets a day smoking addiction or the fact that no matter what the temperature, she oozed sweat from her top lip as though it was under pressure from the exhalation of the filthy cigarette smoke.

 The police, who had never really had anything more major to investigate than a few thefts, were at a complete loss as to what had transpired to make Mrs. Harrity disappear and she became one of the many cold cases that were to haunt the police department for the next quarter of a century. Neither the police nor the townspeople ever really thought a young lady like Miss Bagley could be anything more than a sweet young lady with exceptional cooking skills and over the years when certain people went missing and the bodies were never recovered they seemed to enter in to some sort of resemblance to that of mindless zombies whose motto was’ it is what it is’. To be fair the town was known for its itinerant travellers and the influx of newcomers was dependent on the seasonal farm work but even so, it was almost as if a certain kind of personality was targeted and removed from their droll day to day activities.

 If anyone had taken time to think about who had disappeared over the last twenty odd years they would have noticed some very particular attributes that were common. Of the various cold cases that had never been solved, seventeen had been reported missing. Of these, only two were locals, one being the not so lovely Mrs. Harrity and the other one being the overly large, former head mistress from the local high school. Sure, locals had tried to defend her obesity and it had been said that she suffered from some sort of glandular disease called Fattyitis but the local baker, who had never been able to keep a secret, had often told his friends over several beers at the Wild Bull Saloon that the fat bitch, as he called her, had a weekly order of a dozen custard tarts, two dozen chocolate coated doughnuts and an apple pie done in a honey glaze that was from his grandmothers recipe book.

  Yes indeed, these two lovable locals were well and truly missed. Not. The other fifteen itinerants were also all women and not one of them was younger than 50 years old. These common traits had never been noticed nor had they set of any chain of events that may have led to outside forces being brought in to investigate and quite possibly catch what appeared to be the work of a serial killer.

It was a Sunday and the day appeared to be like any other Sunday in downtown Bedrock but the big black bird that was sitting on the top branch of the Sycamore tree knew better. The bird did not know that it was currently five miles from the outskirts of town and if asked it probably would have said it didn’t really care.

    What it did care about, was what was happening directly beneath the 40 foot Sycamore tree that it was currently perched in. A nondescript beat up old Chevy with what looked like peeling apple green colored paint had just pulled in to the dusty driveway of an old ramshackle, weatherboard asbestos house on timber stumps. This bird was an exceptional bird and it was exceptional because it was not only very intelligent but also very old and was nearly the size of decent sized feral cat that could be found in the local woods. If we were to look at his ancestry, we would see that his father had been a crow from the outback of Australia and his mother was one of the many ravens that could be found in and around the town of Bedrock. This bird knew what was about to happen and had seen it numerous times, seventeen to be precise. Yes, that’s correct this great bird is at least 25 years old and has seen many things and knows many things. It knows that when this beat up old Chevy comes to this place there will be some food and not just any food. Oh no, not like worms, not like the delicious red frogs that sometimes frequented the local waterways but a food that was sensational in its debauchery.

    Human flesh, for that was what was about to be delivered to this ramshackle building. He could feel it; he could already taste that sweet meat as he pecked at it with his razor sharp beak. The human who dragged the future meal to its final resting place had changed over the years, even the great bird could tell that. The posture had changed and it was making grunting noises as it strained and struggled to drag the food ever closer.

  The crow could discern what the human was saying and he could hear curses and muttering and then one sentence stood out that made the great bird think the figure had truly lost the plot. It’s been twenty four years since I last saw it and the place looks exactly the same. The bird knew that that the woman came here at least yearly and had a funny feeling that this would be his last meal from this woman. He would make the most of it and share it with his friends. The woman had been hot and bothered and hadn’t buried the body properly and as she was about to get back in the Chevy she heard a noise from the top of the tree. Fark, fark, fark. Bloody crow, she thought as she started the engine and roared off in a cloud of dust and flies. It was as the dust settled that the crows began to land near the hastily buried corpse and began what seemed to be a ritual. It stopped all of a sudden when a youngster broke tradition and announced loudly that there was only one eye. The big black crow gave the young crow a long thoughtful glance and then said so softly that only a few heard it’ it is what it is’ and that was all that mattered.