Cain and the cockatoo

Cain had learned that the name Jesus came from Yeshua—a Hebrew name meaning God saves. He thought this was important to remember.

Cain learned this from a book he dug from the bottom of the pile over there, mixed in with scraps of newspapers. The basement where he resides overflows with remnants of the past—documenting facts, history, and the passage of time.

Manuscripts litter the floor beneath his feet, documenting the lives he narrates.

Cain, like his namesake, was punished. Though Biblical Cain was sentenced to wander Earth dejected from God, our Cain was sentenced to endure solitude in a gray, damp, moldy basement of an unknown location.

Water drips from the ceiling and the gray masonry of the foundation sweats.

Cain’s punishment is simple. He is the writer.

Cain’s punishment is to write into reality the fate and destiny, beginnings and endings of the humans behind the empty names which cross his desk. Whoever passed this judgement onto Cain is quite the comic because they neglected to investigate whether or not Cain was competent to construct very complicated narratives with very grave consequences.

Cain writes at a metal desk in the middle of the room, eerily surrounded by empty desks, though devoid of other humans. It has been this way as long as Cain has been serving his tenure as writer. Cain can’t remember how he arrived at this place, how long he has been writing, nor how long he is supposed to write.

He just continues to write.

The discarded books and newspapers keep him company just as the mysterious cockatoo does. It perches on top of a television that plays the first Lord of the Rings movie on repeat.

“My precious second breakfast,” the bird chirps at odd intervals, mixed throughout the hum of the movie playing in the background. “The wizard is late ... the wizard is late.”

Cain tried asking the bird once what its punishment was, though it seemed obvious. He wondered if the bird had once been human.

In response, the bird simply cocked its head and screeched, uttering a sound so deathly it curdled the bile in Cain’s stomach.

“So, we are not friends.”

Cain returned to his desk and only got up to stretch his legs every so often, avoiding the cockatoo as best as he could from then on.

Both the cockatoo and Cain knew he was not good at his job.

Grammar wasn’t Cain’s issue. Rather, he never could execute an effective narrative which aligned with reality.

Rupert, an old man who assists Cain in his punishment, collects Cain’s manuscripts and takes them elsewhere. Rupert has refused to inform Cain on many occasions as to where the manuscripts go and how they actually alter the fabric of time and space.

“Am I God?” Cain asked Rupert once.

“Hell no!” he shouted, laughing heartily over a glass of bourbon.

Every so often, Rupert sits down with Cain to give him a "quarterly report,” though Cain is unsure if it is actually a quarterly report as time seems to never move forward. Without windows to see the passage of time, Cain’s punishment lingers into oblivion.

“You wrote that Miriam,” Rupert pointed to Miriam’s name on the manuscript, “dies in her sleep.”

“Yes.”

“Well, she did die in her sleep.”

“Oh. Good!”

“Not good,” Rupert said, gruffly. “She died because she was burned alive in a house fire. She was smoking, dropped the cigarette.”

“Oh. No.”

“Oh, yes,” Rupert said, shaking his head. “And when the house caught on fire, it burned the animal boarding place next door to the ground.”

Cain bit his lip.

“You see where I’m going with this?”

Cain slumped into his chair trying to make himself small.

“How many dogs died?

Rupert stood and threw the manuscript into the trash.

“Eleven dogs died, writer!”

Cain covered his eyes with his hands.

“How was I supposed to expect that to happen?”

“You’re not supposed to expect anything,” Rupert said, rubbing his stomach. “You are supposed to lessen the consequences for the lives you write.”

Rupert threw down a stack of manuscripts onto Cain’s desk startling the cockatoo in the back of the room.

“Precious second breakfast,” the creature muttered, tilting his hand to the side.

Cain sat up and hurriedly straightened the papers.

“How am I supposed to make the endings better?”

“You can’t, but you could have at least made Miriam’s life better.”

“How so?”

“She wasted her potential!” Rupert shouted. “The most interesting thing you gave her was that she enjoyed Practical Magic.”

“Yeah, so?”

“That’s all she did, writer! Miriam spent the last five years of her life watching only Practical Magic.”

Cain scrunched his nose in response.

“Try making their lives more interesting so your unintended consequences don’t matter so much,” Rupert said, sighing. “If they’re lives are worth living, then the endings won’t carry as much weight.”

Rupert turned to leave.

“Can you take the cockatoo with you when you go?” Cain asked.

“Why?”

“I don’t like how it's stuck down here … and I think it's trying to kill me in my sleep.”

Rupert smiled, raising an eyebrow.

“Oh? How so?”

Cain swallowed.

“I don’t really want to talk about it.”

Rupert laughed.

“That thing is older than me, writer,” he said. “It has never wanted to leave this place.”

Rupert batted the hanging string from the bulb on the ceiling before disappearing up the staircase.

Cain poured some bird food into a dish for the creature. It chirped and then grunted like a human.

“Were you once like me?” he asked the bird, quietly.

The cockatoo puffed out its chest and screeched, causing the television image to cut out. Cain covered his ears and took three steps backwards, tripping over a pile of forgotten manuscripts.

“Fine! Let us be enemies for eternity.”

Rupert appeared much later with a basket full of Post-it notes with names scrawled across them. He limped his way down the stairs, grunting with each step, a stench following him from where he came.

Cain never knew Rupert to wear anything except a tattered, baby blue flannel and faded carpenter pants.

“Here are some names to keep you busy,” Rupert said through a mouthful of rotting teeth.

Rupert dropped the basket onto Cain’s desk and raked his fingers through a long, white beard.

Cain scrunched his nose and looked up from his typewriter.

“Did your beard get longer, Rupert?”

Rupert squinted and parted his lips. He looked down at the scraggly hairs protruding from his upper lip and chin.

“Dunno, writer,” he said. “I kind of forgot I had a beard. You think these are enough names to last you a while?”

Cain stuck his hand into the basket and swirled the pieces of paper around like confetti, the adhesive sides sticking to his palm.”

“Amanda, Louis, Mikhail, Wren, Lana, et cetera, et cetera …” Cain said, his voice trailing as he rubbed his forehead. “I’m sure this will take a while –”

“You are a slow writer, aren’t you?” Rupert asked, nodding to the last basket he left Cain.

“I’m a terrible writer,” Cain said, laughing. He bent over his desk and reached for a stack of manuscripts. Each one titled with a singular name, dedicated to its owner.

“You really are, aren’t you.”

Cain sighed.

“Who gave me this job anyways? I don’t remember even getting here.”

Rupert shrugged and pulled up a chair. He lit a cigarette and let it dangle from his wrinkled lips.

“If I knew how we both got here I’d know how to get us out.”

“Where do you even go up there?” Cain asked, pointing to the staircase.

“If I told you I’d have to kill you,” Rupert said, pointing to the cockatoo. “Are you two getting along yet?”

Cain looked over his shoulder at the feathered thing. Its eyes were darker than night and cut through his soul.

“I think we’ve reached a compromise,” he said, lightly.

Rupert grunted in response and pointed to Cain’s typewriter.

“Who are you working on right now?”

“Daniel.”

“What’s Daniel’s ending?” Rupert asked, puffing out a ring of smoke.

“Cancer.”

“That’s not a happy ending,” he said, smiling.

Cain furrowed his brows and picked up a wrinkled sheet of paper stained with coffee and cigarette ash.

“These are the rules,” he said, tapping the page. “Deaths must be in balance … certain numbers of disease, natural disasters, fluke tragedies … things of that nature.”

“Ah,” Rupert said, flicking ash onto Cain’s desk. “Your hands are tied.”

“Pretty much …”

Cain leaned on his hands and dug his finger tips along the edges of his eye sockets. He felt the cockatoo’s eyes on him and dared not to look at the creature.

Rupert leaned forward and ran a hand over the page of rules.

“You are too worried about the numbers, writer,” he said. “Perhaps focus more on the words.”

“What do you suggest?”

Rupert smiled.

“Make him care about something,” he said. “Give him passion, dreams … love—”

“He’s an accountant,” Cain said, lowering his eyes.

“Accountants can be interesting people.”

“How would you make him interesting?”

Rupert leaned back in his chair and squinted before sitting up and widening his eyes.

“Maybe he’s really into magic tricks!”

“Magic tricks?”

“Yeah … maybe he uses his love of magic tricks to bond with his children. That way, when he dies of cancer, he can die knowing he loved his kids well.”

Cain ran his fingers over the keys, considering this narrative.

“It could work,” he said, though he didn’t start typing.

Rupert squished the butt of his cigarette on Cain’s desk and stood up.

“I’ll see you soon, writer.”

Once the door closed, Cain pulled out the page he was working on and threw it in the trash.

“The wizard is late … the wizard is late,” the cockatoo said behind him.

“Please be quiet,” Cain asked. “I can’t take you much longer.”

He placed a new page in his typewriter and typed “Daniel” as the header. He continued to type.

“Daniel was born in March and lived in Main until he was twelve …”

Cain spoke as he typed, which was something he did not normally do.

“Daniel had three children and taught them his favorite magic tricks—”

There was a static blip in the room and the television cut out. Cain heard a fluttering of feathers and the cockatoo was suddenly perched next to the typewriter.

“What do you want?” Cain asked his feathered companion.

“Daniel likes magic … Daniel likes magic,” the cockatoo said, bobbing its head and walking up and down the desk as it spoke.

“What did you say?’

“Daniel likes magic … Daniel likes magic,” it said again.

Cain’s face turned hot and his stomach flipped. The space around him turned ten degrees colder and he could have sworn the light above him dimmed.

“You’ve never said that before,” Cain said, softly.

“Daniel, Daniel, Daniel!” the bird shouted, flapping its wings as it spoke.

Cain took a deep breath and continued typing while the bird continued to recite its demonic mantra.

“Daniel died from pancreatic cancer in his sixties surrounded by his children and loving wife,” Cain said as he typed. “His children will open a magic shop following his death, in honor of his love for the art.”

Cain leaned back and admired his work. He smiled, for once.

“I think I did well, cockatoo,” he said.

The bird stopped pacing and faced Cain. It cocked its head and Cain swore it smiled.

“My name is Leonard," the bird said in a deep, human voice.

Cain stood up and stuck his fingers in his hair.

“You're human!”

Leonard laughed.

“I am certainly not a human. I am definitely a bird.”

“You speak like a human!”

Leonard sighed.

“You have done well, writer. Daniel’s story is complete … his life has meaning.”

Cain breathed deeply, suddenly feeling extreme heat escape his body.

“What now?”

Leonard smiled.

Much later, Rupert returned to check in on his writer. He found the room to be empty, despite the desks, discarded books, the television, and the cockatoo.

“Writer?” Rupert asked, looking under a desk. “Are you here?”

“I’m in Saigon … I’m in Saigon,” the cockatoo chirped from its place on top of the television.

Rupert caressed the feathers under the bird's beak. He noticed that the television was no longer playing Lord of the Rings, but was playing Apocalypse Now.

“You did well, writer,” Rupert said, softly. “I will miss Leonard. But I'm glad to have you around a little longer.”