The cold air battered my skin as I rushed through the empty field. Small birds of mysterious colours darted up and down through the drifty breeze, freezing silence cursing my eardrums. There was nothing but grass, crops, hills and long, winding brick walls for miles across. Mist shadowed the land, spreading a tint to the never ending green and brown. The sun was gloomy through the grey blur of the air; nothing but a weak yellow dot in the ever-dying blue of the sky. A sea of death was surrounding me. Not a creature in site. And the maelstrom that I was trapped inside was slowly, gradually, worsening as one by one, the small birds, and other small creatures of the field seemed to disappear. Then I heard it: The lonely, scratchy cry of the dark, slate-black crow. It felt like a parasite burrowing in one side of me and out the other, but not in a normal way. The feathered beast seemed to be trying to attract me in some way. With nothing better to do, I shot towards the sound.
On the way there a thought came to me- why was I in this field? I had been on my way to the shop, but everything else was just blurred. Like I’d stepped into the body of someone else, and left my memory behind. But all my clothes where the same, so maybe it was just… I didn’t know. When I reached the top of a large grassy hill, the call was loud enough to scar someone’s very mind, and sure enough, at the top of a large, twisting, tangling oak tree sat a crow. But not slate black like I had imagined. It was more of a dark, mysterious blue, shining in the gloom quite abnormally, like a demon, lost in our world. And maybe it was.
He glanced once both ways and then stared at me with eyes of lead. The hollow look upon his face seemed to be getting thinner and thinner by the second. The kind of look that forces people to do what they don’t want to do. The kind of look that can drive the weaker mind to insanity. But I stayed put. I could see the feathers, blazing in front of me, but it just didn’t seem real. It was only when he croaked his painful cry out again that my head adjusted. This was no dream, and just as my brain pushed the final thoughts of this moment being an illusion, I had a strange urge. I sprinted back down the hill to the crop field, and tore of a single, un-ripe ear of corn. Then steadied my pace as I made my way back to the tree. Then I was back. One again standing in line with the eerie gaze of the dark hawk.
