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This short sketch is inspired by a prompt from Jeff VanderMeer’s Wonderbook. There are examples of some other responses to the prompt on the book’s website and the prompt was used as fodder for an anthology of flash fiction in 2009. As someone learning to write I love seeing where other writers take a tiny spark of an idea and all of the worlds that can diverge from a strange combination of four words. Here’s my take on “Last drink, Bird Head.”
“Last drink, Bird Head.” Marsha said as she pushed a pint glass across the bar.
A man with the body of an average middle aged dad and the head of a bald eagle grabbed the sweaty beer and lifted it slightly in a sign of gratitude. The Bird Head Man’s actual name was Mike.
One of the guys from a group that had been sitting at the back corner table and monopolizing the jukebox all night, walked over and pulled up an empty stool next to Mike, and said, “Hey, Bird Head Man, can I ask you a question?”
Mike had gotten used to being asked questions, mostly the same questions about his head. He’d also gotten used to being called Bird Head, and didn’t mind it from Marsha, or the other regulars at her bar. Marsha’s bar was called “Marsha’s” so he didn’t have high expectations for creative nicknames. He didn’t always like the way it sounded coming from people he didn’t know.
“Sure, if you buy me a shot.” Mike, replied.
The guy agreed and before he could order Mike asked Marsha for 2 shots of Blanton’s. Mike liked the little horse on top of the bottle and he liked that this guy’s question was going to cost him 50 bucks. Mike raised the shot to his new benefactor, bit the glass with the tip of his beak, and in one practiced motion, threw his head back, gulped down the shot, and put it back on the bar with a thud.
Marsha washed glasses and pretended to watch the movie that was playing on the bar’s only TV, some old sci-fi flick in black and white, with giant ants and Nazis. The TV was an old tube model the previous owners had left behind, sitting on top of the beer cooler. It didn’t get any stations, but one of the bartenders had brought in a VCR and old tapes seemed to just show up.
Mike had been asked and had answered the same question countless times, “Why? Why did he get the Bird Head?” At first he was asked in interviews after rallies on TV and all the apps. Sometimes he got paid to answer. People would come up to him in person, at public appearances, local parades. Then, as the fame, the national attention, and the movement waned, he was asked a million times more around town from curious kids and brave strangers like this guy at the bar, or in the checkout line at Kroger or some other place he couldn’t easily walk away. The answer had changed a lot over the years.
He thought about which version of the story he wanted to tell this drunk guy at 2 in the morning. Considering what he could say that would make this guy wander off, so he could enjoy his last beer in peace. He decided to take the history lesson approach, telling this younger dude what things were like, starting as if in mid sentence, “…well it was kind of the wild west then, nobody really knew the limits of what you could do, and the law hadn’t caught up with the technology yet…”
The guy cut him off, still holding his shot, stammered a bit and said, “No, sorry, I wanted to ask you about what happened with Dr. Reynolds? I wanted to ask about when you worked at the school.”
“Also I haven’t introduced myself, My name is Pat.” he gestured to his friends in the corner “We all work together at the school, and you’re kind of a legend. Is it true you bit Dr. Reynolds?”
Mike let out a terrible series of short screeches, intended as a laugh. He tried not to laugh very often, knowing how it sounded and that it frightened people.
“Oh…why did I do that?” Mike, put his hand on Pat’s shoulder. “First off, I didn’t bite him, but I did scare the shit out of him.”
“I’ll tell you the truth. I’d been called into his office to work on his computer half a dozen times, for somebody with a wall covered in framed degrees, he couldn’t follow simple instructions over the phone. Every time I was up there I’d have to listen to him run his mouth. You know how he talks to people when they are around, you should hear the shit he says when people leave his office. The dude treats everybody like they’re an idiot. I’d always try to to get in, get my work done, and get out without my feather’s ruffled…That’s a bird joke.”
Mike lets out another awful laugh, and continued. “I was just tying to be a normal guy, with a normal job, and this dude is just exhausting. So one day, I’m hungover, feeling like shit, and I get called up there to help him fix a printer. First of all, why are you printing anything, what year is it!? I’m listen to this guy talking on the phone, and he’s just lecturing some poor fucker about how it had all been a waste of time and nothing changed and how some people, how we had nothing to show for it. Then he starts talking about me, like I’m not standing right there, and he says something to me about how he felt bad for “people like me.”
“Yeah, that guy has a way with words.” Pat chimed in.
Mike continued, “That was it. I’d had enough. I just summoned up the biggest, shrillest screech I could and just started shrieking and screeching. I was flapping my arms. Doing the whole Eagle routine.” Mike said as he started flapping his arms at the bar. Marsha moved some glasses that had been left on the bar as people left out of the way. “I started yelling at him, really going off.”
“Holy shit. I would’ve paid to see that. What did he do?” Pat asked.
“That’s another question, it’ll cost ya extra. Are you planning on drinking that?” Mike pointed to shot on the bar. Pat waved in his direction and asked him to go on.
Mike downed the shot and responded after a pause. “I kind of blacked out in the moment. I mean, I’m not proud of it. But, somehow I didn’t get fired, I think they were afraid of any more bad press after everything else that had happened, and I ended up working support from home, still do, I guess we’re colleagues. No on-site repairs, no video calls. It is a pretty sweet gig. Plus, that guy was an asshole, I should’ve bit him”