The Purging Preview

A preview of my current short story undertaking...

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A bald eagle drifted majestically over the desert, wings arced over the vast blue, wise avian eyes plotting his route diligently, sensing the updraft before it came. He blinked meticulously, pumping his golden wings in time with the beat of his heart: slow and dilatory, like the pulse of nature herself. And then when the wind kissed his beak, he let himself coast into the updraft, gliding up, up, up…high into the blue.
The clouds were below; the sky was dark and tenebrous though it was still day; there was only the barest oxygen, but the eagle was not short of breath. He felt the black windless abyss tugging at him, heard lucent stars crying: “Come home, Rael!”
But the eagle ignored the temptation, ducked his wise eyes down to the windswept earth far below, to the brown, valley-pocked desert that was his prison. He would never again let the desert’s sirens woo him into complacency. That had been his mistake, and this his punishment. He felt the wind vanish and the sparse supply of oxygen fall away completely. He had grown too thoughtful; the stars were pulling him back. The light of the moon flashed in his eye as he turned back to the earth, and dove.
The tow of gravity sucked him towards the flat brown vista below, faster and faster, shooting adrenaline through his veins like icy water. The eagle tucked in his wings and passed through a moist patch of cloud: high altitude cirrus. He hit terminal velocity, little more than a golden streak in the sky, chased by sound itself – and then he thrust out his wings and leveled. There was no need to pump his weary wings, so great was his speed. He passed into a speed-blurred valley, gliding only a foot off of a squalid river that ran its course in the valley floor.
A speck caught his eye; above and to his right.
Like a missile – he curved with supernatural ability, arced upon the blue, slammed into a twittering finch of some sort, whistled back over the river with his prey dripping gore into the water, impaled upon his half-parted beak. Lunch.
With the fresh blood pooling under his tiny tongue, he searched for a place to land. Actually, he already had a place in mind; knew it was somewhere along the river, just not its precise location. He smelled barbecue, followed his acute olfactory perception to the source: a paltry town, a quaint collection of shops and residences with only one paved street. The barbecue seemed to be coming from a little steepled, whitewashed church with stained-glass windows and front doors facing the blacktop. Perfect.
The eagle coasted over the riverbank, past a little communal fishing spot, and into town. He readjusted his beak inside the bloody finch, which was still quivering in the spasms of rigor mortis. A thicker stream of blood leaked from the little corpse as the eagle shot up across the church doors and alighted on the steeple. His wise gaze saw the avian splash of blood, artfully squirted at just the right place: over the church doors. If they eagle could have chuckled, he would have guffawed.
Consider it a blood offering.
The eagle leapt one more time, and dropped to land on the grey-shingled roof of the church. When his talons touched the ground, they were boots. His wings were suddenly sleeved arms; his tail was a fully clothed, shaped buttocks; his bosom was a sweaty man’s chest. He was suddenly not an eagle.
He was a man – standing lightly atop the church roof, clad like Johnny Cash, minus the ten-gallon hat. His head was – appropriately – bald, and sure enough, his nose resembled a beak. His eyes were still those wise eagle-eyes, but they looked disturbing and graphic in human eye sockets. The bloody, twitching finch was in his teeth. His clean-shaven chin was covered in blood and hastily-released body fluid, but he didn’t seem to mind. He just stood there and pierced the sky with his gaze.
Eventually, he grew tired of breathing through his nose, and carefully picked the tasty carcass from his unusually sharp incisors. He tucked the bird into his pocket – save it for later. His tongue slid over his teeth – back and forth, back and forth – as he took in the barbecue smells that came from the church below. Voices drifted up through the roof to his extrasensory ears.
Some hear fellowship and well-being, but all I hear is weeping and gnashing of teeth. Yessir, weeping and gnashing of teeth.
He strode to the edge of the roof, careful on the shingles; they looked old enough to give way anytime now. Peeking down at the stained-glass windows decorating the length of the church, it seemed a greater fall than it was. Looked to be forty feet, but he knew it was no more than twenty. And who cared anyway? He could fly.
He confidently stepped off the edge of the roof, and dropped resolutely towards that stained-glass window. His outstretched arms caught the rain gutter at precisely the right time, and he swung in, under the overhang, straight through a glorious depiction of baby Jesus and the Holy Virgin. He flew into the church’s humble sanctuary horizontally; feet first in an unholy burst of colored shards, and launched into an infinitely graceful backflip. He landed on his feet in a powerful stance atop a third-row pew, arms akimbo, smiling ruggedly at the group of horrified churchgoers huddled around a buffet table near the altar.
Everything was silent for a few moments.
And then someone screamed. It was a roly-poly woman with barbecue sauce at both corners of her lips, shouting involuntarily, out of surprise. It took a few moments for a collected man in a white polo to calm her down. The type that acts middle-aged, but looks not a day older than twenty-five.
Ah, the Shepard himself.
The man stepped out from the crowd, closer to the enigmatically-posed figure in black. He stared at the birdman as if he was some sort of gymnast/vigilante with a skewed perception of danger and a pension for quirky entrances. Not that it was far from the truth. The Shepard spoke.
“Just what do you ‘spect your doin’?”
The birdman opened his mouth, bloody teeth and all. “My dear man, I was but enacting the Holy Word. What good would it be to enter said church by the usual routes?” He pointed at the front door with a talonous index finger. “Jesus himself said: ‘No-one comes to the father except through me’. I did just that.” He glanced at the shards all around him. “Although I guess I took Mary down with Him.”
The Shepard looked as if he’d dealt with such disturbances before. If only he knew. He swiveled and spoke to a member of his awestruck flock. “Sandra, phone the police. Tell ‘em the ‘sylum had another escapee.”
Asylum? The birdman, in all his flight through this desert, had never seen any evidence of civilization save this town, and certainly no asylum. Which meant that the Shepard was pulling a fast one.
“I’m truly sorry, pastor, if I offended you. I merely smelt the sweet scent of fellowship - merely followed my nose down the street, yessir. Felt the good Spirit flowing through me, told me to jump through those windows, he did. Can’t ignore the Spirit, now can you?”
“N’matter what you think the Sperit told you, you’ve damaged our property and entered illegally.” He turned back to Sandra. “You got the sheriff on the line yet?”
“Phone lines’re dead.”
“What? You’ve gotta be kiddin’ me. Gimme that phone.”
“I ain’t kidding. Here.”
The Shepard snatched the phone with a look of I’m disappointed in you, and pressed the receiver to his ear. The birdman could see the frown in the Shepard’s eyes. Of course the lines were dead.
The Shepard stepped closer to the birdman, red-faced. “In Jesus’ name, what you? Are you a demon? An angel sent from the Lor– ”
“If you’d shut up, I’d tell you, my friend.” The birdman cleared his throat presumptuously. “I am Rael. I’m not a man persay, but certainly not a demon or an angel or any such thing. I have a purpose here. You see, I have been sent to warn you of the Purging.”

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To be continued... (but probably not on here)