Young Writers Society

The crooning of pigeons woke me, the sound was far too close to my ear for my own comfort, however, I had strangely become accustomed to it. A slight pressure was applied to the bit of mattress that was to my left.

"Ahh, it's ALivE." a voice quipped, followed by a wheezing laugh.

A current of weed and peach scented breath assaulted my nose. In an odd way, it was comforting that Scooter had decided to break into my garage on this morning in particular.

I squinted at my friend and the medium sized gray pigeon that was perched on her shoulder.

"Hello, my dude." the girl drawlled at me, staring at the state of my face with her rather dilated gray-blue eyes.

"Why have you slept so shitily?" She asked as I rolled out of bed and onto the rug.

"Essay." I mumbled at the floor.

"Ah, I'm sorry buds, that must be why you didn't answer Beans this morning."

Scooter mused, climbing up onto the bed gesturing for the pigeon that was perched next to my pillow to flutter into her lap, a small piece of rolled notebook paper was tied to its ankle

(Leg? I'd been friends with Scooter since before I could remember and I still did not know whether or not pigeons had ankles.) She pulled the note off and handed it to me.

'Go Moning' was scrawled across it, accompanied by a lovely little abstract drawing of a phallus.

"This isn't much of a heads up." I remarked, tossing the note up onto my bed.

The girl chuckled and dragged me off of the floor.

"But you would've gotten the point if you would've read it."

I dug through my chest of drawers to find a decent pair of jeans.

"Well, sorry that I was sleeping, Scoots."

Ugh, I had slept in my binder again. I peeled the warm fabric off my skin and changed into a baggy button up.

If it couldn't be seen, it couldn't exist.

That jogged a memory from the night before.

"That glowy eyed Motherfucker that visited the lot last night didn't help much either."

Scooter quirked an eyebrow.

"It came back?"

She had witnessed many of my complaints about the strange creatures that lurked about town, but she didn't mind, and usually she believed me.

I nodded, crouching down to fish a pair of shoes out from under the bed.

"I think you should try to communicate with it. Y'know? To show that you're not a threat." She mused, flopping onto the bed to stare up at the ceiling.

It was a wacky idea, and I didn't have the mental faculty to consider it at that particular moment, and so I just sort of 'mhmm'ed and left it at that.

"If it is an alien, it's probably just here for, like research, right?"

a pigeon that had perched itself on the top of my bookshelf cooed in agreement.

"So, you should be fine, as long as it doesn't probe you or something." Her eyes went blurry before she continued.

"I had an uncle who was probed once, it ruined his life."

Well that was ominous.

Scooter noticed the look on my face.

"Oh! But I'm sure you'll be fine buddy, you don't live in Florida, that was my uncle's main mistake." She patted me on the back as I finished tying my shoes.

"Gee, thanks Scoots." I muttered, sitting up and stuffing the ancient school issued laptop into my satchel before I turned to study Scooter.

"Did you eat?" I asked, striding over to my father's decrepit mini fridge and searching the strange little box for something the two of us could consume for breakfast.

"Well, here's the thing, I thought about it this morning, but then there was a murder of crows outside my bedroom window and Edith almost got into a brawl with one of them so I had to scare them away so that they wouldn't hurt her."

Edith was a small cat that Scooter had found in a Wal-Mart dumpster.

I sighed and tossed her a Tupperware full of leftover waffles.

She caught it and began to eat, while I stuffed a take-out box into my bag so I wouldn't have to endure school lunch. I hopped over a waddling pigeon and crouched to examine my motorcycle, the gas gauge was full and he started as smoothly as usual, sending two or three birds flying toward Scooter for safety.

Strange.

The parking lot cryptids had never meddled with my engine before, something about the whole ordeal seemed more ominous than usual.

The issue would have to sort itself when school let out for the day, because Scooter and I had missed first period and demons weren't an adequate excuse to get oneself out of detention.

And so, Scooter and I zoomed off to the high school, her flock of pigeons tagging along behind us. We arrived at the facility and accepted our tardy slips from the office, before ducking into our respective second period classes and fading into the masses.

…..

Approximately half way through the day, I began to loose focus and ended up doodling on my sneakers while musing about whether or not the glowy eyed fuckers could actually kill me if I tried to get closer to them.

On one hand, they were loud when they moved and once one became familiar with their movement patterns it was easy to locate them. On the other hand, they moved quite quickly, I usually did not and seeing as their intentions were unknown, I didn't want to risk getting dragged into a void and winding up on a milk carton .

Perhaps they would give me a head start.

I chuckled, imagining the monster with a stopwatch, tapping it's foot impatiently a few feet from the diesel pumps.

The kid in the seat next to me looked over and raised an eyebrow. I seemed to have disturbed them

Shit.

"Sorry," I whispered.

"'s okay." they whispered in return, giving me a crooked smile.

I hadn't seen this person before. They were skinny and pretty with huge moonish eyes and curly ginger hair that gave me war flashbacks from my Annie phase.

It was then that I discovered that my notebook had been left in the science classroom, and so I reached for the only volume in my backpack that wasn't meant for school.

I tore a corner off a page of my old copy of Lolita and scribbled a note onto it.

'Hey, I'm Klaus (They/them), what are your pronouns?'

I folded the little paper the best I could and flicked it over to the desk beside me.

The person unfolded my strange introduction and smiled.

They pulled a ballpoint pen out from behind their ear and scribbled something on the back.

A few moments later, the note plopped onto my desk, refolded much neater than before.

It read:

'He/Him, thanks for asking :) and if you wish, you can call me Eli, it's nice to meet you.'

When I looked up, he was giving me an inquisitive look, that I was unsure of how exactly to reciprocate.

My head bobbed nearly on its own as a response, the boy had shifted his questioning expression to one of thanks and general friendliness, I didn't know what to do with my face when he was looking at me.

A question was in order to dodge my anxiety. There was room between the old printed words, and so I wrote out the first question that came to mind.

'what is your opinion on the economy?'

The page was refolded and passed again.

Eli caught the crumpled paper, and chuckled at the question.

He had a good smile.

When the page returned to my desk a few moments later, it was discovered that his response was only two words long.

'It's fucked.'

I had found another rational person in the strangely republican masses of the small town high school.

'Agreed.' was my reply.

If Eli had anything else to say, it was interrupted by the bell.

The room filled with various shuffling sounds, as the collective gathered their things and began the exodus.

After my satchel was full, I turned to see Eli was still beside me, standing behind his desk chair, watching the room empty with his wide eyes. An odd expression was distorting his features, it was a sort of distracted panic, which was washed away a few moments later, when the room emptied out.

The boy's shoulders quite literally dropped, and a sigh of relief rushed out of him.

"Are you all right?" I asked, he jumped at the abrupt end to the silence.

"Mm?"

He heaved a moss green backpack over his shoulder.

"Oh, yeah, they're gone now." Eli explained, stepping closer to me and into the aisle.

Evidently, he expected me to know who 'They' were, which I did not.

The boy began to make his way down to the front of the classroom.

"Who's gone?" I inquired, jogging a few steps to keep up with him.

Eli had longer legs than I did.

"Some of my old friends. They take this class," He reached the door and stopped, so that I could catch my breath and not trip over my shoelaces.

"I'm avoiding them, they're why I sat in the back."

So that was why the back of his head looked more familiar than the front.

"I see." was the only apt response I could conjure.

Then there was silence, for a few moments before I noticed the boy's cardigan.

It was a soft looking brown knit, covered in safety pins and home made patches, that were inscribed with sarcastic literary references.

"That's a very neat sweater," I remarked, unsure of what else to say.

When in doubt, fling compliments toward gay people, that's how I wound up befriending Scooter.

Eli was taken aback for a moment, then he smiled and looked down at a mushroom pin that was hanging from his collar.

"Why, thank you. It was my grandpa's"

He slipped out of the classroom, talking over his shoulder.

"He was a communist. He's dead now." The boy explained, ducking behind a row of lockers.

"Oh?"

It wasn't the best mouth noise, but he seemed to understand my meaning.

"Yeah, he seemed really cool there was this one picture of him in-" A shadow fell over his eyes.

"Ah, I'm rambling, sorry." He broke eye contact and stared at the floor.

The about face was so drastic, it gave me whiplash.

"Don't be sorry. I think communism is pretty dope."

Eli laughed, the shadow was burned away by a fresh spark in his eyes.

"I do too. Shit." he was looking at a space over my left shoulder.

"Gotta go, sorry." A wush of air hit me as he turned and began to sprint in the opposite direction.

I thought he was gone, when a flash of red hair appeared from around the corner.

"I'll see you again though, right?" Eli asked.

"It's likely." I leaned against the locker to wave goodbye.

"Good." He grinned at me before the boy disappeared into a back hallway.

A clamor arose behind me, shortly after a group of very mundane and annoyed looking students rushed into the bay.

"She's gone." One of them muttered.

I left so as to avoid a blind rage.

Odd how such bright eyes and such corrupted minds could exist in such close proximity to each other.

……

"Scoots, why are adolescent girls such insufferable bastards?"

Scooter shrugged, I had found her on the roof of the gym, feeding her pigeons.

"Because society, I'm afraid." The pigeon perched on her head cooed sympathetically.

It was disconcerting how much Scooter's birds knew of American English.

"Why?" she asked, pouring out the remainder of her bagged bird seed.

"What happened?"

Once I explained, she patted a nearby pigeon thoughtfully for a full minute before she gave an answer.

"They really are insufferable, aren't they?"

I nodded at Scooter's observation and sat on the ledge, dangling my sneakers off the side of the building.

"But Eli seems cool, right?"

A smile broke across my face as I stared out at the sky.

"Very cool." was my stupid little response.

It was bothersome, that my brain filled itself with a singular person so often. Some may call it a crush, but it was far too underdeveloped to be categorized as such. I did not know the boy well enough to predict whether or not he would be a good partner, but his face had been well proportioned and his odd little smiles were incredibly endearing. The runner's humor spoke for itself. I was being endeared against my will, I realized, huffing a sigh of inevitability as I stared out into the sky above the football field.

The murmuring of the birds nearly muted out the sounds of some distant sports coach.

Grey skies were looming in the close distance, ushered in by the strong, steady, wind. A storm was stirring beneath the surface, and the birds knew it, Scooter's entire entourage was watching the sky with mistrust in their glassy eyes.

A light drizzle began as I followed my friend into the public library to accompany her while she fulfilled her community service shift.

Scooter fell into the rolling chair behind the reference desk and I holed up in the beat up armchair that was sandwiched between the file cabinets that held all the important staff documents.

The library was mostly empty, except for a creaky librarian who was shuffling along the floor with a cart, restocking the historical fiction section. She eyed Scooter with a disapproving look, before disappearing into the stacks.

There was an odd dynamic between the staff and Scooter, who was volunteering to stay out of juvenile detention, almost a game of good cop bad cop to mold her into a better young citizen. One of the librarians would be harsh with her criticism of Scoot's work and the other librarian would play the part of matriarchy mentor.

Mrs. Marky had been assigned Bad Cop this particular afternoon and it was evident by the position of Scooter's shoulders that she was apprehensive about it. Marky was what the youth called a 'hard ass' and even when she was playing nice, her smiles were ice cold.

I wasn't afraid of much but disingenuous old ladies made me incredibly uneasy. This was one of the reasons I had a crippling fear of my own mother, but that was beside the point.

Scooter was nervous, so I gave up the armchair and climbed into the stool beside her, remaining silent. I dug through my school bag to find my math homework and began the tedious process of finishing it.

Scoots chuckled, and stood, lifting a stack of books that was waiting for her on the back counter and carrying it back to her seat so that she could access the computer whilst checking them back in.

"You ever read Frankenstein?" She asked, stamping the first loan slip of the day.

"I have not, is it good?" I countered, finally finding a pen to do math with.

"It is. Here."

She tossed me a small, old looking book that was bound in green canvas.

It was the smallest edition of an eighteenth century monster book I had ever seen.

"Don't get high while you're reading it though, the paranoia… you know." Scooter advised.

I hummed in response, hunching over the desk to stare closer at the slightly useless numbers on my page.

Rain was beginning to fall ardently now, streaking the leaded windows with tears from the sky, blurring the outside world with water and fog.

The door opened and closed many times, admitting all sorts of people who came and went and sometimes came back again.

After my math homework was completed, I watched Scooter as she checked out the visitors' books.

It was fascinating what you could observe about people by studying the books they acquired at a library.

A man with shaking hands, lifted a poetry anthology from the counter along with a cookbook before shuffling out of the building and into the rain.

"What about that one?" Scooter whispered, following my line of sight.

"Either he's just been broken up with, or feeling existential. That poetry was Dockers." It was a guess of course, but that was the fun of it, as long as the assumptions weren't taken to heart there was little harm done.

The very distinct sound of a person crying floated through the quiet library briefly before a girl appeared in the entry with watery eyes and wet hair.

"Klaus!" She ran over to the desk.

I knew her face but not her name, she knew mine, apparently.

She was in my year, and she frequented my gas station, and though I didn't remember introducing myself to her, doesn't mean that I hadn't.

"Yes? What's wrong?" I asked, seeing that she was sniffling.

The girl pushed dripping curls out of her eyes and pulled in a steadying breath.

"You know Burnie, don't you?"

The only Burnie I knew was a dog that I had encountered a year ago, when I still had a sitting business. My dog walking business had fallen through a few months ago, when I had finally paid off my motorcycle.

"Maybe, is he a beagle?" I asked, expecting that he wasn't.

"Mhmm." She nodded, looking relieved.

"He's been missing for three days. I've been looking everywhere, but I need help."

The damp girl pleaded, looking me in the eye. I felt even worse for forgetting her name.

"Ah, I see. Sure, um…" My mind was blank, I didn't know what to ask. A question that my mom asked me when I lost things came to mind.

"Where did you see him last?"

It wasn't very good, but I wasn't sure where else to begin.

"Our backyard, I think, I let him out to run around and he was gone like twenty minutes later." She explained.

"Where do you live?" Shit, that sounded creepy. "I mean, for like, m-mapping purposes, I guess." I was digging myself a hole of misspoken words.

The unnamed girl wasn't phased.

"Norburn Street, we're backed against the woods."

"So you think he's in the forest?" I asked.

She nodded.

"I know he is. A lot of times I can hear him crying at night but I can never find him."

She looked guilty, and I noticed the dark circles that her warm eyes were sunken into.

Poor thing hadn't been sleeping well.

Despite the fact that this all seemed like the set up for a serial killing, I had liked Burnie, and I didn't want him to be eaten.

"Okay, we'll go home and wait for the weather to let up, then we can head out with some supplies. Bring some of his treats and meet me at the graveyard. Okay?" I gave her a smile that I hoped was comforting.

The girl sniffed again.

"Thank you."

Then she disappeared into the rain and I let out a sigh, slumping against the counter so that I didn't have to remain completely upright. Scooter looked up at me from her office chair, spinning once, thoughtfully.

"Isn't she the one that always buys plain chips at the gas station?" She mused, staring at the place the girl had been standing.

"Yup." I responded, stuffing my math things back into their crevice in my bag.

"What was her name again?" She questioned, quirking an eyebrow.

"No idea."

The rain had let up significantly as I rode home to collect my 'traipsing through the woods' kit. Despite my experience with animals and pet sitting, I hadn't done this before, and so I packed a first aid kit and a box of garbage bags, just in case the worst came to pass. Scooter had come back with me and was filling her backpack with what she called 'expedition snacks'.

Originally, I was planning to go alone but Scoots had asked if I needed help and although I knew I could manage without her, the buddy system would be helpful in the search, especially through the Enever's national park forest.

Once I had packed all the things I could think of, the two of us zoomed off once again, this time to the little cemetery that had been planted at the edge of the wood about a hundred years ago.