The Buds

Lucy grew up watching old black and white movies with her aunt Deb, and ever since, she called birds "buds" because that's how some of the characters with a proper accent pronounced it. Buds. She thought it was cute and funny, and never put the r in her pronunciation.

She always noticed birds, and her aunt told her birds were symbols, omens, and signs for things and that she shouldn't be afraid of them, but she she was. So afraid that whenever she went outside, she always walked with hunched shoulders and looking up and around as if they could sweep down on her and grab her up into the air for no reason at all except to attack her and hurt her and kill her.

"There's no reason to be afraid of birds," her aunt Deb said, even though she knew this reassurance probably wouldn't work because Lucy's mother Carol was afraid of dogs that way. She imagined they were lurking in the yard she passed, just ready to pounce on her and tear her apart. This was only part of Carol's problem and why Lucy had to go live with her aunt Deb.

Aunt Deb had hope for Lucy, thinking maybe the new house and the new yard and the new streets would refresh her and settle her little mind, but nothing really changed, and in fact seemed to make it worse.

Lucy would look out her new bedroom window at the birds in the trees. "The buds followed me," she murmured to herself. "Why won't they go away?"

"They aren't following you, honey," Carol told her with a stroke of her hair. "They've always been here."

"Then they've been waiting for me, I just know they have."

"No, they don't want to hurt you. They just want to mind their own business."

"No. I see how they look at me."

"But they aren't looking at you, Luce. They're just singing and building their nests and taking care of their babies."

Lucy went quiet. Aunt Deb would never understand about the buds. Lucy hid a sharp nail file inside her coloring book in case she'd need it against a bud, then took the book and the crayons out to the front porch to color, to take her mind from the buds, but it didn't work. The coloring page turned from a puppy into a bud. Then the one of the cuckoo clock turned into a bud. Then finally she closed the book and closed her eyes against the pictures, but then the sound of the buds in the yard and in the trees and on the high wires grew louder because she just knew they were getting closer and they wouldn't stop comng.

"Aunt Deb!" she tried to say out, but her voice was locked in her throat. The buds were coming closer to her, some perching in high branches more and more, some pecking at the grass in the yard, some landing on the walk that led up to the porch, getting closer to her.

"No," she whispered to herself as she covered her face and especially her eyes because she didn't want to see them again, but she couldn't cover her ears at the same time, and she couldn't stop her heart from pounding.

Now two dark gray buds were getting out of a big budcage on wheels and walking toward her. "Lucy," one of them said. "Don't be afraid."

She stood up to go back inside, but the door opened and a lifesize bud stood in the doorway, white and pretty, while the gray buds and the other colors of buds gathered in closer all around.

"Lucy?" the lifesize bud in the doorway asked. "It'll be all right. We just want to help you."

Aunt Deb. The lifesize white bud sounded like Aunt Deb, and now that Lucy was looking closer, the face of the big bud had changed to look like hers.

Then it happened, just as Lucy knew it would. The two big gray buds picked her up and carried her kicking and screaming to the big budcage on wheels, to peck her, hurt her, and kill her.

The end