Unholy Trinity: The Nightmare Bird by Jane Bryan
Our church worships at the altar of the Unholy Trinity. Its gospels are delivered as a trio of dark drabbles, linked so that Three become One. All hail the power of the Three.
Dark Scavenger
A moonless night falls heavily across clustered rooftops. Wings beat shabby black feathers against its weight. A blue-black heart throbs perceptibly behind gore-mottled ribs as scabbed talons catch the roof-spine ridge that is the apex of a church. Time-tattered wings fold. A raucous caw tears the sky. Red eyes scan a dreaming village.
The first dream comes.
Red eyes flare to a brilliance that dims the stars. A black tongue flits in pleasure within a cracked beak. A tapped mind nourishes a bottomless dark gullet.
Dreams flow in succession.
Dawn stains the horizon. The scavenger reluctantly departs from the banquet.
Dream Smoke
Valerian, mugwort, passionflower, chamomile. Dried, crumbled, and laced with extract from the blood-red plant that exists outside of man’s nomenclature. The apprentice’s eyes follow intently every measurement, every movement of the master’s hands, knowing the responsibility of the smoke will soon enough fall to him.
“The Nightmare Bird cannot overlook any dream,” the master speaks. “It is compelled to collect all it encounters.” The apprentice holds the pipe, watches the master pack its bowl. “The smoke will bring the dreams that hold the Nightmare Bird to our village and shield the dreamers’ souls.”
The apprentice nods and swallows his fear.
The Nightmare Bird
The new moon hides, and my sanity slips. The stars bear down, biding time. Their malevolence is palpable, terrifying. The trees snicker at my fears from the dark. Do I trust my eyes full of profaned bodies of the fallen, or am I the fallen one?
The stray newcomer destroyed the pipe in reckless incredulity. Too few inhaled the smoke that brings the dreaming. No sleep to dream, no dream as offering, the Nightmare Bird has roosted in my mind.
Beyond the village, an unnatural avian cry rends the heavens like a chorus of countless screams.
The world is forfeit.
Jane Bryan
Jane Bryan was born and grew up (kind of). She is bipedal, omnivorous, and carbon-based. Her interests include speculative fiction, amateur phrenology, air sculpture, and sarcasm. She lives where her stuff is.