Wrath of the Red Bird

I can't remember the exact age that I took an interest in writing. I do remember my first self-published work though. It was entitled "Wrath of the Red Bird" and must have totaled no more than 4 loose leaf sheets of stapled-together paper. I was nine.

The short-short story reflected a concept I was nearly obsessed with at that age. I was, and still am, a comic book fan. Terrible of me not to remember the name I gave my main character, a twenty-something woman who was known for her kind heart. I believe the story was thrown out a number of years ago, a victim of one of my late father's cleaning rages. Or, it's somewhere on this continent, in a room I haven't ventured into since a year before my father's death. If not there, then perhaps I left it in Kenya, buried in a box full of memories left in the safe care of my elderly grandmother.

Let's, for the sake easy reference, call the main character of my first short-short story, Petra. As stated, Petra was a woman known for her kind heart. One day, while walking down a suburban street, she looks up to find that a red bird is circling above her. As she watches the bird lays an egg while still in flight and the egg drops to the ground just before her. It doesn't break. She approaches it, fascinated, and picks it up. The egg feels strange and is unlike any other egg Petra has beheld. In her hand, it breaks open and its contents spill out. Amazingly, the yoke of the egg begins to seep into her and she faints.

She wakes to find herself imbued with power, she can fly, she is super strong, she is everything that she has ever wanted to be. But, she is now faced with a struggle. An internal one. Darkness. The darkness that has always lain quietly in her soul begins to rage inside her. It eventually consumes her and instead of hero, she is now villain.

I was nine so forgive the easy solution that I came up with to return her to good. In one of her lucid moments of normalcy and goodness, she turns to a neighbor for help. A young man who, of course, becomes the romantic interest. Together they discover that in order to return her to good, they need only take her to that which no matter how evil she had become she could not destroy. She could not injure children, no matter how hard she tried. She could not injure animals (cute little bunnies especially), no matter how hard she tried. So again and again he takes her to places where that which restores her is found abundantly (orphanages, pet stores, etc.). The yoke finally loses its hold over her and drains away.

It took me years to understand the reason why I wrote the story. I wanted to be like Petra. I wanted to be able to break out of the mold I'd been cast in. I wanted to be powerful. For so many reasons, I wanted to be powerful. But, how oddly mature of me, at nine, to realize the darkness that lay within. How oddly prophetic that my own restoration was borne unto me by my children.