This is one of my stories from Suppose: Drabbles, Flash Fiction, and Short Stories.

Pablo is confused and afraid. Will his trauma haunt him? Or will he be able to move forward with his life? Why can’t he forget his past?

And ever has it been known that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation. ~ Khalil Gibran

—

Pablo shivered.

A fog of pale shadows and shapes surrounded him. He strained to hear, but all he could distinguish were occasional fragments of Kirsten’s distant sobs, partially muffled by the sounds of a windstorm and the squawks of nearby birds.

Kirsten spoke to Leslie, a friendly woman Pablo had met a few minutes previously. “I hate to leave him like this, but it’s for the best. In his condition, he needs special care. I feel so guilty, though.”

Pablo moaned to the empty room.

A door slammed, and the sobbing stopped.

The radio diverted his attention with a faint melody, resurrecting images from better days.

Sharing breakfast toast smeared with peanut butter. Waiting in anticipation for Kirsten to get home from work. Dancing to their favorite tunes. Sitting together while they watched TV.

He swayed, and closed his eyes. The images drifted further back in time.

Hot, humid days. Watching birds from a lofty vantage point above the valley. The insistent cries of the young ones demanding food. Playful spats and reconciliations with his sister.

He envisioned the men who had shackled him along with his siblings and neighbors. And relived the desperation he felt while watching most of the prisoners suffer and die. He re-experienced the anxiety that consumed him when his tormenters separated him from the few sad captives who managed to survive.

A violent tremble shook him.

More scenes fluttered into his isolated world: insistent, repugnant memories.

Lonely existence in a cell. Separation from the other inmates. Scars from his ordeal. Lingering pain. Pining for lost companions.

But Kirsten had rescued him, taken him into her home.

And he had fallen in love with her.

A pleasant sensation flew down his spine as he remembered her tender touch.

He scrutinized the room. Unfamiliar scents floated through the air. His universe was a terrifying, alien landscape fraught with unseen perils. He focused through a semi-opaque veil to examine a confusing assemblage of indistinct forms and colors, and he flinched as an unfamiliar object from above brushed his head.

Pablo shuffled to the side, step by step. If he moved too far, he might walk into something, or he might fall. And Kirsten wasn’t there to protect him.

Another woman came near. He concentrated and recognized Leslie’s sympathetic voice. But many of the words were foreign. Where was Kirsten? He ached for her, not this person he barely knew.

Leslie continued to murmur. When she reached for him, he lunged forward. But she evaded him. Her silken voice became a perpetual thrum emanating from somewhere in his gloomy twilight. After several minutes, she vanished.

An eternity passed before the door reopened and announced the approach of Kirsten’s comforting scent. Pablo peered in her direction, and his face grew warm as he blushed. “Kirsten.”

“Hello, Pablo.” She cuddled him. “It’s time for me to leave. Leslie’s going to take care of you. I love you. If there was any other way, I’d do it. I’m so sorry, but I can’t take care of you anymore.”

Pablo felt a tear splash onto his cheek. He kissed her. “See you later.”

“Bye, bye, Pablo. I’ll miss you, baby. Oh, I’ll miss you so much.”

As she trudged toward the exit, he said bye-bye several times, and she answered in kind.

The door closed with an almost inaudible click.

Pablo listened while Kirsten scraped the windshield. She cursed at the frightful cold and slammed the car door. Then the scrunch of tires on frozen snow faded into silence.

He wailed a sorrowful, throaty lamentation for the person he adored. Kirsten had explained her intentions to him, but until this moment, he had never truly understood. He tried to break out of his enclosure. Cold metal greeted him no matter where he moved. It trapped him in another prison reminiscent of the one that had confined him so many years ago. And he couldn’t escape this one either.

He uttered a raspy sob. Exhaustion consumed him.

~*~

Pablo was jolted awake by the clatter of Leslie unlocking the cell. “Come here, Pablo. Everything’s going to be all right. This is your new home.”

His peripheral vision revealed the presence of a hand held out in a gesture of encouragement. He ruffled his feathers as he groped with his beak to find a secure foothold. He sniffed at her skin. Leslie smelled like unfamiliar birds, perhaps the flock that Pablo had been listening to since his arrival.

Leslie patted him. “You stepped up. You’re a good boy. Would you like to see the other birds?”

“Yeah.”

“Kirsten has to go to the hospital, and she can’t care for you anymore, but you’ll meet lots of new friends here, and I’ll talk to the vet about fixing your eyes.”

The bird sounds became a welcoming melody that increased in volume as Leslie neared the aviary. Pablo could distinguish the shapes of manzanita playstands and fluttering wings. He leaned into Leslie’s chest and laid his head against her. Then he ran his cheek over the texture of her sweater. The calls of the other birds, although foreign to him, were comforting. He relaxed his stranglehold on her wrist.

She scratched beneath one of his wings. “Good boy. You’ll like it here, I promise.”

He clicked his beak. “Good Pablo. Ohhhh, good bird, Pablo. Pretty bird, Pablo. Good boy.”

Leslie placed him on a perch.

He gurgled a purring chuckle from deep within his throat. This was his perch. He had memorized every groove and bump in the manzanita. He knew where the food and water dishes sat, where the barriers blocked the edges. And it smelled like Kirsten.

He strutted and pranced, comforted by the sudden discovery of a familiar object in his environment.

Aromas wafted through the air: bananas, oranges, his favorite bird pellets. But what was that? A scent from the past. He swiveled his head from left to right, trying to discern its source. A flash of red wings from another scarlet macaw crossed his field of vision. He stretched toward her … farther … farther …

Leslie’s voice warned, “Pablo, be careful. Do you want to go and sit with Sherry?”

“Yeah!”

She picked him up, and his claws dug into her arm as he extended his body as far as he could. She placed him on the other bird’s perch.

Pablo bobbed several times. Then he filled his crop with partially digested food for the sister from his first life. Sherry licked his cheek, preened his feathers, and whispered soft coos while she groomed him. Pablo unfurled one wing to pull her close.

Her scent tugged him into the past, to a world that existed long before his eyes had betrayed him, to the nestlings and their home at the roof of a verdant jungle. He recalled joyful hours in the nest with his mother and two siblings while they waited for his father to return with food.

But the memories soured.

Metal monsters destroying ancient trees on the hillside. Poachers with noisy chain saws. Shrieks of terror from nestlings as their homes plummeted to the floor of the forest. Thunderous bangs that stilled the adult birds when they swooped down to protect their babies. A dark, constricting box. Young birds struggling and trampling one another as they shared the blackness with the trophy tail feathers that had been wrenched from their parents’ still-twitching bodies.

Pablo shivered.

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You’ll find more short fiction like this in Suppose: Drabbles, Flash Fiction, and Short Stories.

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