Debut Fiction: 'Migrating Hearts' by Melanie Farquhar

My dreams are filled with dead birds. I wake each morning, clammy and anxious, responsible for another death. One morning - a hatchling, pink and featherless, drowned in a paper cup. Another morning - a nest bereft of fledglings, their little black bodies lying twisted on the ground like discarded sweetie wrappers. I wonder where they come from.

My friend tells me to see a doctor, or a dream interpreter to make sense of the visions, but deep down I know the birds were always in me. Could feel them rising each morning on the dawn breath, swooping and soaring, the cumulative strength of their wings lifting me higher and higher, joyous and free. Even when you left, they continued to sing as the sun yolked the skies. They gave me strength and a lightness, carried me on their wings when I didn’t have the energy to put one foot in front of the other.

I take my friend’s advice and book an appointment. The doctor wires me up, attaches a net of electrodes to my skull and wraps a cuff round my arm to monitor my heartbeat. He tells me to relax, pushes a button, and I am swallowed whole by the wide-open mouth of a machine. It’s hard to fall asleep, the constant hum of the machine keeps me awake, but I must, eventually, because the next thing I know the doctor is standing at my side with a clipboard in his hand.

“Sturnus Vulgaris,” he informs me. “Starlings. Curiously, all of them are dead...” He waits for me to respond, but all I can do is look at his feet and wonder what kind of person would wear beige polyester socks with Crocs. 

“They’re only dreams,” he continues. “Maybe some hopes, maybe some wishes. It’s only temporary. I’m sure you’ll be back to your normal self in no time.”

I leave the doctor one starling lighter, regurgitated in a black oily mess.   

At home I lie in the dark. Remember standing at the pedestrian crossing, you across the road, your arms around her, smiling. I felt the swoop and pitch of a thousand wings, confusion, panic, and the jolt of an electric current stunning them mid-flight, each one free-falling in the hollow of my stomach. I lie in the dark and hear the lonely call of a tawny owl.