You came home late, again. The office lights had buzzed into your skull until the dull throb became part of your rhythm. Your coworkers filed out hours before, but you stayed, staring at spreadsheets that seemed to multiply the longer you looked at them. Now, your apartment is dark and still unchanged from when you left it this morning.

You drop your bag by the door and head straight for the bedroom. You don’t even take off your shoes. You just want to sleep—to melt into the mattress and disappear.

But the moment your head hits the pillow, you feel it.

Something soft, wrong.

You sit up and reach under it, expecting maybe a sock, or a missed pen, or—God, please—a piece of trash. But what comes out stops your breath.

Feathers.

Not white, not fluffy. These are black, with a wet sheen. They stick to your fingers as you pull them out in clumps. Blood trails behind them in long, congealing streaks. It smells coppery. Fresh.

You stare down, the lamp still off, the room lit only by the fading blue of city light through the blinds. You want to believe you’re dreaming. Or hallucinating.

But you know the difference.

You lift the pillow, and underneath—more feathers. A small pile of them, flattened like a nest. A torn piece of paper rests at the center. The edges are stained dark.

You pick it up, hands trembling.

“He remembers. Do you?”

The words are scrawled in frantic, crooked lines. The ink has bled, but they’re still legible. Each letter feels too close, too familiar.

You back away from the bed, breath hitching.

Your first instinct is to call someone—anyone. But you don’t. You can’t.

Because a memory is starting to scratch at the back of your mind.

A field.

Night.

A bird, black as a cave’s mouth.

You were just a kid. Maybe ten. You and Cal. Best friends. You'd made a game of throwing rocks at the birds that nested in the dead tree near the ravine. The birds cawed and scattered. Most of the time.

But one didn’t fly.

You hit it. Clean. You remember the way it dropped—silent, like a stone. You and Cal ran to it, breathless and laughing, until you saw it twitching in the dirt. Its eye open. Too human. Too bright.

Cal had dared you to finish it. And you did. You don’t remember the sound it made when you brought the rock down. But you remember the silence after.

You never talked about it again.

Cal moved away the next year.

You never saw him again.

Until a week ago.

You saw his name.

In the obituaries.

No cause of death listed. Just a face—older, thinner, but still him.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

The sound jolts you out of the memory. It’s coming from the window.

Your bedroom is on the third floor.

You approach slowly. The tapping continues—insistent, rhythmic. You part the curtain.

Nothing. Just glass.

And your own reflection.

You stare, skin pale, eyes hollow. Behind your reflection—movement.

A shape.

A figure. Tall. Shrouded in black. Not standing, but hovering. Its wings stretch wide, feathered in oil-dark plumage. Blood beads along the tips, dripping onto your hardwood floor though it never lands.

Its face is blank. Not a skull. Not a mask. Just an absence, framed by feathers that twitch in an unseen wind.

You want to scream, but your mouth won’t open. Your body won’t move.

The creature raises one hand. Long, clawed fingers—avian, but wrong. It points at you. Then to the bed.

Then it vanishes.

The blood on the floor is still there.

So are the feathers.

So is the note.

And now, you remember.