The Pandemonium

My fingers stumbled to find the mute button as Boris’s blue-streak of obscenities filled my small flat. Gazing intently at my clients on Zoom, I tried to discern whether they’d heard anything. Was that a repressed smirk on Cressida’s perfectly-lined lips?

Despite Alex repeatedly assuring me that Boris could be subdued with a blanket over his cage, I could hear him screeching through the bedroom door. I walked in and yanked the blanket off, hoping to surprise him into silence. He stared at me sideways, one black beady eye boring into me. He clicked his tongue, like an elderly gent tsk-tsking at my lack of etiquette. He scooched closer to me, his claws clutching the wooden perch, still side-eyeing me. It was unnerving and I was unnerved.

I leaned my head toward him, hoping to establish a level of bonhomie. “Boris” I whispered, aren’t you a pretty boy.” The orange tuft on his head flicked up. I hoped that was good sign, but equally it could be a warning. I had no idea. I’d never taken care of a bird. Alex dropped him off earlier this morning. He must have been desperate to entrust his parakeet to me, given how many plants I’ve killed and my ongoing battle to catch the vole that snuck into my flat nightly to eat my aloe vera plants.

“Just change his water once a day, and feed him twice a day, and I’ll be back in 3 days,” Alex assured me. “And don’t let him out of the cage. He’ll find a way to escape the flat, and he’ll crap everywhere.” I nodded numbly, overwhelmed by the sudden responsibility.

“Effing Pretty” Boris chirped. “Yes,” I concurred, “you’re a pretty boy.” He looked at me quizzically. “Effing Priti Patel” he corrected. And with that we headed into hazardous political waters. Alex was no fan of the UK’s home secretary, Ms Patel, and Boris shared that opinion. “Effing Priti, effing Priti, effing Priti Patel,” he repeated in a singsong voice. My neighbours, staunch conservatives, were no doubt wondering what miscreant I was entertaining through my paper-thin walls.

I went back to my computer and searched for how to shut-up parakeets. Two hours later I was none the wiser, though my spirits were lifted by watching funny animal videos, including a raven using a plastic lid to sled down a snowy rooftop in Russia.

I covered Boris’ cage again and crept into bed. I was half-way through the Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which I was reading as background research for a short-story I was trying to write. After 10 pages, I switched the light off and pulled the duvet up to my chin.

In my dream, a flock of ravens descended on a snowy bank and proceeded to make snow ravens. The handsome man next to me said, “Actually, a group of ravens is referred to as an unkindness, or sometimes a conspiracy of ravens.” I nodded conspiratorially and said, “a group of crows is a murder. Why do you think there are so many negative words about birds?”

The man, who reminded me of a professor I had in college, who in turn, reminded me of Ichabod Crane continued, “Many of the terms we use for collective nouns referring to specific groups of animals came from an English hunting tradition of the Late Middle Ages.”

“Ah,” I added sagely.

“There’s an asylum of cuckoos, a piteousness of doves, a mischief of magpies.”

“Mm hmm,” I encouraged, placing my hand lightly on his thigh, feeling the rough texture of his tweed trousers.

“A murmuration of starlings, a contradiction of sandpipers, a pandemonium of parrots,” Professor Crane purred into my ear. His lean fingers gently brushed the hair from my face as he leaned closer. Little clouds of breath dissipated in the cold air. He tugged more insistently on my hair, his fingers digging into my scalp.

The strange pressure on my skull, as if my head was the snowy bank upon which the ravens were revelling, awoke me. I reached up to smooth my hair and something clamped on my pinky finger. The screaming was simultaneous, loud and equally obscene. “What the f*ck!” I yelled as turned on the bedside lamp. “What the f*ck,” Boris echoed, a bit more calmly, as he perched on my pillow, his head tilted curiously in my direction.

“How the hell did you get out of your cage?” I demanded, looking at him and then still-covered cage, and back at him. He tilted his head the other way. “What the f*ck?” he asked. I started laughing, relieved that bony fingers of my dream was not something more ominous. Boris laughed too, like Woody Woodpecker.. “Ha ha ha ha ha, Ha ha ha ha ha, hahahahaha.”

I walked over to his cage, and removed the blanket. The cage door was closed, but unlatched. I looked at Boris. He was on my bedside table, drinking from my glass of water and crapping on the Wizard of Oz. “Boris” I lamented, “what the hell?!” He started his Woody Woodpecker laugh again. “F*ck,” I breathed out in annoyance. “Can you get back into your cage please?” I asked, gesturing toward the now open door on the cage. He declined. Our conversation was interrupted by a rapid knocking on my front door.

I quickly wrapped a robe around me, and peeped through the peephole, to see the face of my elderly neighbour Emma. Unlocking the door I opened it a crack to see what she wanted. “Dora”, her voice wavered as she looked at me with concern.

“Yes, Emma?”

“I heard screaming. And quite a commotion. Henry thought I should check on you,” she said.

“Oh, er, yes, sorry about that. I was having a bad dream,” I stammered.

“What the f*ck?!”

My eyes darted involuntarily to the bedroom. Boris sounded disturbingly human with that last outburst.

Emma gazed steadily at me, one eyebrow raised in question…or judgement.

“That’s just Boris. He got out of his cage and he won’t go back in, and he’s defecated on the bed, and I’m sorry we disturbed you.”

“What you do in privacy of your own home is your business, but please keep it down,” Emma said as she walked back to the door of her flat.

I shut the door and locked it, shuffled back into my bedroom, laughing as quietly as I could. Boris was back in his cage, the bottom of which was now littered with pages from the Wizard of Oz. I turned off the light and hoped for a dreamless night.