we have enacted our plan.  our trap for caliban and sycorax.

cheryl only really spoke to me in regards to our scheme.  i regret to say that my begging and pleading for her forgiveness was not limited to this blog....and neither were my references to her as "cordelia".

despite the difficulties of working with me, our trap was forged.  it required much skulduggery on our part.  it also required us to look several things up on the internet.  it is a wonder surpassing that of queen mab's court what one can find online these days.

it was decided that i would be the bait.  it was never really a question.  i am the preferential target.  they knew the depths of my hatred, and felt it in kind.

i was to stand, alone, with a makeshift torch and a molotov.  this was the simpler of tasks.

the more difficult, we found, was finding a suitable construction site, one with both the crux of our trap, and the means to deliver it.  sneaking in and operating the machinery in stealth--once the night watchman was carefully subdued--was much easier by comparison.

i stood alone, vulcan's lash in one hand and a vial of his wrath in the other.  mine was to wait.  to observe.

i waited for what felt to be hours before they finally arrived, came suddenly out of the night, the smell of ozone crackling the air, and there they were.  a mother and a child.  they looked so innocent, and i remembered the ice cream.  feeding and laughing and loving.

i wanted to burn them.  i wanted to burn them right then, but they weren't in the right spot.  it was not the plan.  i did not want to be like king ferdinand, all of my labours of hate drowned away.  not when i was so close.  not when i could claim my pound of flesh and any drops of blood i desired.

"so, the base creature and the witch have found me at last, have they?"  i called to them.  "it hast taken thou long enough.  is the murder and its birdhouses so easily avoided?"

"you see this, sweetie?"  sycorax said to her child.  "this is the coward from the diner.  you remember her, right?"

caliban nodded.  "yes, mommy.  i remember.  she left all those people behind."

"oh, she left more than just those people behind."

"still thy tongue!"  i called to them.  my torch approached the makeshift wick of the makeshift bomb.  "or else i shall have to still it myself."

"see how she blusters?  that's how you know she's a coward."  sycorax continued.  "she wasn't nearly this brave when she and her friend killed your aunt and uncle.  remember that, sweetie?"

the little boy tiny fiend nodded.  "she was all curled up and crying, mommy."

"very good, sweetie!  just like she was crying when her terrible, terrible murderer friend killed all our lovely masters."  sycorax locked eyes with me.  "if only you hadn't been so slow, maybe jessica would be alive today, wouldn't she, anya?"

"do not speak of cordelia to me, vermin!"  i growled, and nearly put the flame to wick.  i almost ruined our plan then and there, for surely they were prepared for this.  they would not have come here so brazenly, my weapons of choice in my hands, if they had not been prepared.

cheryl saved me.  she stopped me from ruining everything.

the clamshell excavator above the mother and child opened, and from it, a mass of still warm tar dropped.  they were not in the perfect position, but the shock of the attack, i think, prevented them from avoiding it as they were going to my fire.

when they did not move, under the thickening fluid, and cheryl hopped down from the controls of the machine and ran to me.  i was apologizing for almost ruining everything, and she was just relived i was fine...

...and the next moments are a blur.

sycorax moved from the tar.  she moaned and reached out and tried to stand, and i think cheryl turned, and she was startled and knocked the torch from my hands.

it rolled into the tar.

and they began to burn.

and they screamed, and as we watched, sycorax curled around caliban.  as though trying to protect him.

and cheryl could merely watch.  she watched in horror, and i began to laugh, laugh and laugh and i realized at some point that i wasn't laughing, that i was on my knees sobbing, sobbing until cheryl pulled me away, and sirens grew in the distance.

...there is more.  more, but i do not want to tell it....i think, i think cheryl wishes to, and i shall allow her to do such.  i think it would be best if she told it.

i feel...lost.  i do not....they are dead, and now i do not...

what does one live for, when revenge has been all?  when the lion's share has been taken...what is there left for such a person?

she is cold to me

i keep telling her i'm sorry

i don't want to be alone

please cordelia don't leave me alone again

i'll try better next time

please

please don't leave me alone

out, damn'd spot

i am sorry, cheryl.

i know, you will not forgive me.  perhaps, i should not be forgiven.

as soon as this is posted, i shall tell you the truth, in person.  why the hound is following us.  how we escaped.  we may not get another chance, after engaging sycorax and caliban.

i know.  in truth, i have always known.

lightning struck.  we were battling the monsters, in their home, and lightning struck, and in this lightning was a window.

we did not have long.  so i grabbed your hand and ran through the window, and into our world once more.

we left those people behind.  in the tempest.

we left them to die or worse.

no, that is not correct.

i left them to die, cheryl.  i left them.

i could not grab them.  i could not bring them through the window.  i did not know how long the window provided by jupiter's terrible lash would last.  i could not take the chance there would be another.  i could not lose you, not after just having met you.  it would have been like losing cordelia all over again.

do not hate yourself, sweet cheryl. i made you do it.  it is my fault they died.  or worse.

it is all my fault.

as soon as i post this, i will tell you, in person.  this is a practice speech, of sorts.

i'm sorry, cheryl.  i'm sorry.  this is all my fault.

we just got back in.  my head is swimming.  i am not sure what to make of what i have seen.  i am not sure how to place it.  i am panicked, and thus am finding it a bit difficult to express myself with my typical verbosity.  now i know how hamlet felt on spying claudius, vulnerable and yet praying.  pity has stayed my hand and i must confess i loathe my weakness in observing it.

cheryl and i were out on a stroll.  i would like to say we were holding some ingenious reconnaissance, but in all veracity, we were simply getting some exercise.  i confess to be a bit of a homebody myself, my nigh-crippling ornithophobia being a chief factor in this.  she believed helios's brilliant flame would  bolster my constitution.

fortunately, the pleasant company and warm weather did not dull the edge of our vigilance, and we ducked into an alley before we could be spotted by our enemy.  caliban and sycorax.

they were not lurking, however.  not leading children to their doom.  converting and devouring the unwary.

they were eating ice cream.  they were smiling.  and laughing.  and i hate, i hate them so much for being able to laugh and smile with their loved ones they killed my cordelia they killed by parents and regan and goneril

but they were not killing.  as i watched, sycorax took a napkin and cleaned caliban's face.  with motherly love.  tenderness.  she lifted his spoon and fed him, with an earnest, loving expression.

but i must remember what they are, and they did well enough to remind me, for sycorax again lifted the spoon to caliban's lips and, just for a moment, a beaked head protruded from his mouth, long enough to get its own vile share of confection.

i must remember, even if their actions reach towards heaven, they themselves are below.

they are monsters.  the next i see them i must attempt to end them.

the appearance of love must merely be an affectation.  or perhaps it is a mechanism they use to obfuscate their own shame at what they are, what base creatures they are for allowing the holy temple of their corporeal form to be so desecrated by beasts.

but if it is true, if they are truly a mother and child, and behave thus...i think i hate them more.  i hate them for that purity they profess, when i have lost so much of my own heart, my own soul.  if they truly feel love....then i feel for them nothing but contempt.  if ever in my life i do a good deed on creatures such as they, no matter how they appear, i do repent it, on my very soul.

and whatsoever else shall hap to-night, give it an understanding but no tongue

i cannot fathom how i ever before permitted myself to abide loneliness.

my only companions before this were those i sought from clubs and shops, those who i could bring to my home for a night at best.  just enough to keep away the cold.

but now, now i have an ally.  a friend.  one who knows what i am pursued by.  it is a wondrous feeling, and i shan't give it up if i have any say in the matter.

that said, i saw the beast again today, on a trip to gather some ice.  it stared at me, disapproval obvious.  i froze in its gaze, terrified, for several minutes, before it vanished.  long enough for my companion to come looking for me.

i regret to say i broke down and sobbed when she found me.  i told her the beast was here, its judging eyes upon me.

what great injustice does it know of?  what tale of death and tragedy does it know that we do not?

why can it not let us live in what limited peace we have found?

of dire combustion and confused events, new hatch'd to this woeful time

we have acquired a different place with which to spend our respite, one with, perhaps, not quite so conspicuous a name attached to it.

i am grateful to have companionship after so long.  'tis almost enough to erode some of my trepidations about our current unfortunate predicament.

we do not remember what events may have transpired since our imprisonment in that accursed kitchen.  i appear to have my laptop, but at some point i exhausted my supply of molotov cocktails.  i only hope that what beauteous conflagration i inflicted somehow saw to the death of caliban or sycorax.

i do have doubts on that, now.  i am beginning to be in possession of a great many doubts, to be completely factual.

sheherezade and i performed an expedition to see if we could not, perhaps, acquire some bread with which to break or fast in our recently acquired, temporary abode.  our trip was most fortuitous, until i caught an unfortunate glimpse, an omen more ill than hamlet's father atop the battlements.

i do not wish to speak more of it.  i do not wish to know what it meant.  i am not a person of a duplicitous nature--i have not kept secrets.  all that would shame me i have been most forthright with.

but if this great ebon hound is at our heels...what did we do in that missing time to earn its gaze?

fortunately all it did was gaze, and i quickly lost sight of it.  perhaps it was the merest coincidence i observed it thus?  i know not.

i do not wish to, either.

how she saw this

'tis true

my name is indeed anya.  anya richardson.

in truth, those  who would do me ill already knew  that.

but if it is all the same.

i would prefer to be known as crocodile.

no time for prose

we have just awoken in a strange motel.  i do not know what's going on.

it looks like it is under my name. my real name.

we do not know what is going on.  the last thing we remember was...

well, you appear to know that.  it has been posted.

months ago.

we must have a look around.

more perhaps later

the girl was, indeed, another hiding from the wretched grasp of the murder and did, as well, know the words of the bard i didst speak to her.

any companionship was cut short, however, when in the diner came my nemeses.  caliban and sycorax.  a mother and a child.  a pair of monsters that were neither of those things.  by any name, a rose may yet prick, and pretty feathers may hide the rotten state.

i confess i was not in my right mind when they first arrived.  i rushed to my pack and removed a molotov and tried to light it, crying out, "the villainy you teach me, i will execute, and it shall go hard, but i will better the instruction".

in my rage, i had unfortunately forgotten that society tends to frown on threatening a mother and her young boy with a fuel-based incendiary weapon.  the patrons of the diner, however, had not.

i was knocked to the ground, a large man--one of the cooks--and a pair of college students holding me down.  they were shouting at me but i was too blind with rage to remember what it was they said.

"you have a pentiful lack of wit!  they are both monsters!"  i snarled at them, not helping my case and fighting to get free.   "fortune, giveth me a measure of revenge!"

the hag and her spawn looked at me, smirking behind their feigned fear.  all they had needed to undo me was arrive, and allow my rage to hang me. i now saw its folly, of allowing myself the grip of the eumenides.  i hoped that cordelia would be able to forgive me as her namesake had forgiven lear.

my resignation was postponed, however, by the timely arrival of my new friend, and her taser.  a pop and the smell of ozone signaled my freedom as she pulled me away in the confusion even as the cook went limp.  the students tried for me again, but she pulled me back, into the kitchen.

i confess, i was not, perhaps, in my right mind, as i continued to pull back, towards the diner's main room.  hoping for another chance to end them, i suppose.

any thoughts in that direction, however, were mitigated when we reached the back door, and she threw it open.

in place of an alley, all we saw was a storm-swept beach, extending to the eye's limit.

we are trapped in this accursed place now.  we have closed the kitchen door and engaged the bolt on it.  the witch and her monster child are on the other side, with all those people.  no doubt poisoning them against us....accusing us of this...witchcraft.  if they are not slaying them outright.

i confess, i know not what to do.  this young woman saved my life, and to repay her, i have dragged her directly to my very own hell.

a sad tale's best for winter

they have been following me.

a mother and child, in form though not in spirit.

they are vile beasts, worse, perhaps, than the unclean creatures they have nestled within.

i suppose it was only a matter of time.  the mother and the child.  caliban and sycorax.

i remember seeing  them for the first time.  i remember cordelia, dearest cordelia, running in fear from them.  i remember regan and goneril laughing at her.  but there was something in me, a twist of sympathy.

i could not laugh.  i could only see her pain and

a bird just hit the window.

i am in a diner, making use of free wifi and unlimited coffee, my true dark mistress.

i do not know if it was one of the murder.

however....

another here, a slim, dark haired maiden, showed more than normal concern upon seeing the truth behind the sudden noise.  indeed, she appears to regard the twitching frame of the broken animal with a touch more fear than revulsion...and also appears to be looking for more where that one came from.

this may be a trap.

however, if i can help her...perhaps that will go a measure towards what i am indebted to dearest cordelia.

i remember the day she came to school, looking over her shoulder, nearly tripping over herself.  i remember that we laughed at her because we hated her, because she and her friends oppressed us so.

i didn't realize what it was she was fearing.  who would notice it?  when is the last time you noticed birdsong?  perhaps, while trying to sleep?  perhaps actively enjoying it?

unless looking  for it, one never really notices it unless one needs to.  it is a noise ambient to humanity.

to this day, i do not know what she did to get the murder's attention.  to this day, i do not know why sycorax and caliban came after her, and brought my ruin in their wake.  to this day, i do not know why i decided to help her.  why i, unlike my friends, chose her over the birds.

i would lie if i said i have never regretted it.  there were other options for me.  i could have put my head down.  pretended it had not happened.  gone about my life pretending there were no monsters, that humanity is alone, in the dark.

sometimes i wish i had.  but then, what would her sacrifice have been?  i know of them.  i can spread the word.  tell her story.  i can kill them as they come.  perhaps i can even destroy sycorax and caliban--that wretched witch and her accursed spawn.  it would, perhaps, be the only revenge i could get for her.  the only closure i could achieve for my dearest cordelia.

and then, one day, perhaps i will be fortunate enough to die as she did, and perhaps, someone will take my place, tell my story, and warn the world of the shadows in our ambiance.

wherever i go, a tempest follows

i have gone through seven cities in the past few weeks

every one, i am chased away by the sound of thunder and the crash of jupiter's mighty javelin

this is why i fear no human, filled with pests

because, in truth, the true power of the murder is so much more terrible, so much more awe inspiring, than any mere mortal could be

the point at which they shed the pretense of their mere brutish form

and, in its place, bring the storm

it didn't storm last night.

there was no rain.

there was no wind.

the tree out front is gone.  smoldering.  exploded.  burning.

i need to get out of here.

silence, ho

i won't bore you with the details but, i am on the move yet again.

where i was is no longer safe, so i shall have to be somewhere else.

i wonder, before i go.

how can those who choose to hold those foul avians even pretend to be human?  how can they pretend to belong to a higher cause?  to be a higher life form?

they are debasing themselves.  they are becoming a tool to an animal.  less than human.

and yet, there are those who consider themselves blessed.

a holy birdhouse, if that.  nothing more.

do you know, little nests, what happens to a shell like you that loses too much structural integrity?  what happens to a nest that takes a shotgun blast to the face, perhaps?  or a full body roasting?

you are food.  like all the other unworthy.  you are a useful fur coat.  you are useful camouflage.  you are a pack animal who deems itself a temple.  nothing more.

peace, break thee off

i imagine some may wonder why i am giving so much a fuss over birds

after all, i myself confess to having slain scores of them.

in truth, killing birds is never the problem.  hollow bones.  flammable wings.  a bird can be broken with such accidental ease.

there is a force.  a mind beyond our own.  a soul with many bodies, as many as it can claim.

that is my foe.  others call it what they will.  i first encountered it with crows.

thus, i call it the murder.

as many birds as are slain, as many of their vile devotees, filled with the foul fowl themselves i have burned and shot and run over with farm equipment

in the end, the murder lives on.  breaths on, because it is not a bird.  it is a will.  a force behind them.

perhaps it has a form.  perhaps there is a face to the murder.

i do not wish to know it.

there are times, i think, i have caught a glimpse of the true enemy.  you can see it when they make lightning.  a spark of the divine among the brute intelligence it has claimed.

'tis beautiful, to be honest.  and maddening.  much like the nature it commands, the merest glimpse  of it put spots on the vision of my mind's eye.

but that is a tale for another day.  one i have been putting off telling.

i am not the hero of my story, you see.  much like lear, i was deceived, and the true hero was cast away to her fate.

i merely live in her memory.  live for her memory.  she gave her life for mine unworthy existence.

'tis the least i can do to prolong it.

there was a starling in my kitchen today

i put it in the microwave

and all that entails.

now i need to clean the kitchenette.

it is not a good idea to microwave a starling

just

for your information

exit, pursued by a bear

i had to run today.

a man came to my door.  he looked like a policeman.  wanted to ask me some questions, like what i was doing there.  wanted to see my identification.

when he saw it, he told me to get down on the floor.  he pulled out handcuffs.  he said i was wanted for murder.  and arson.

i will not deny the arson charge.  but i am not guilty of murder.  you can't murder something that's already given its life away.  you can't murder in a war.

so i kicked him in the testicles and rushed past him, running for the door of my apartment building.

i am lucky the doors are glass.  otherwise i would not have seen the blackbird-covered world lying in wait for me.

i turned quickly, and saw the policeman walking towards me.  he did not have a gun, he had a knife, and he was slowly stripping off his jacket.

"you can't outrun the heavens, little crocodile."  he said, tearing his shirt open and sinking the blade bloodlessly into his chest.  "they'll always be watching over you."

i ran towards him now, brushing past him as the first beak began to prod its way from his flesh.

i think he believed me helpless, my only choices being to face the heavens or die in my windowless room.

he underestimated me.  i came back with molotovs.

that's another arson count for me. 'tis a shame, i liked that place, too.

i don't know if i killed the birds.  maybe i did, maybe i didn't.  maybe they can't die.  or maybe it doesn't matter how many birds you kill.

because the flock will never end.