(This was an idea I'd had knocking around in my head for quite some time, thinking it could be the premise for a novel, but I've spend most of the past week in bed sick, and I wanted something fresh to write on an old laptop while I didn't have as convenient access to Transliterated on my desktop PC. So I turned part of it into a short story while leaving it open for continuation/elaboration later if I ever come back to it. Enjoy!)
It had been almost a month since Sampson Ward lost his job. No advanced notice, no reason given. All complaining to HR about it on the day-of got him was a boilerplate speech about how Pennsylvania was an at-will-employment state and that there was nothing he could do. He'd really liked that job. He had been an assistant handler at a wildlife research and rehabilitation facility for over a year. Cleaning up after various animals was not glamorous work, but he adored working with all the little critters, and it paid just enough to cover his half of rent and groceries with a little left over.
Without his half for this month, he and his roommate had been forced to cancel their lease on short notice, lest they be swiftly evicted like many of their neighbors had been in the past. Their landlord had been "kind" enough to not penalize them for canceling early, since it saved him money dealing with cops and lawyers and people to empty the place of their belongings. They had both lined up places to couch surf in the short term, albeit separately, so his roommate had already packed up and left the day before. It would still be two days before he could move his stuff back home with his parents. The apartment was still completely packed up, though, save for the bare essentials. He had enough instant noodles and TV dinners left to tide him over until then. Like hell was he going to waste water on dishes when canceling the lease apparently made them responsible for the plumbing bill for the remainder of the month. And so all he could do was sit there, staring at his phone with it plugged into the wall, browsing the nonexistent job listings and waiting for the days to pass.
Tap-taptap-tap-tap. Tap-tap.
A quiet tapping sound at the door caught Sam's attention. It wasn't a proper knock, but he'd recognize that dumb "A Shave and a Haircut" rhythm anywhere. He'd started doing it as a joke between him and his roommate almost a year ago, and it had evolved into a signal that it was one of them at the front door and not a stranger. But... he had to be hearing things, right? His roommate was several states away by now, and the tapping had been barely audible. He held his breath and listened again, deciding that he'd check it out if it repeated.
Tap-taptap-tap-tap. Tap-tap.
He stood up and cautiously approached the door, his already frayed nerves not handling being this on-edge very well. Holding his breath, he opened the door to reveal... nothing. Just empty air, almost mocking him. But then he heard a familiar squawk. Standing at his feet was a large, jet-black raven, the distinctive scars on its head distinguishing it as one of the birds he had been often taking care of and cleaning up afterwards at his former job. Its sudden appearance wasn't the strangest part, however. The bird, Onyx, stared at him with what could only be described as dismay or bewilderment, with a sheet of paper awkwardly held in its beak. A single sentence was written on it, barely legible, written in smeared dirt and mud.
I AM SAM WARD.
Onyx dropped the paper without breaking eye contact, opening and closing its beak in stunned silence. Sam picked up the piece of paper and stared at it, marveling at how it was even made at all. It was written on the back of a yard sale sign ripped off of a nearby telephone pole, and the smudges of mud on the raven's beak made it pretty clear just how it had gone about writing. Unable to process it properly, all he could think to do was pull out his phone and begin dialing his old workplace.
"Stop!" A strained croak came from the oddly behaving bird, barely intelligible as a word. Sam froze and stared at it. "Please. I... I'm..." Each scratchy word took considerable effort, as if it were figuring out how to construct and enunciate each sound as it was made. And even then, it couldn't finish the sentence, trailing off as if the answer simply couldn't be found. By this point, however, Sam had a pretty good idea of why. He stepped aside and let the bird strut past past him into the building.
Sam was at a loss. He'd thought he'd had a decent plan. Escape the facility, fly home, find his roommate and get help. Instead he had found... himself, packed up to move back home because apparently he'd somehow had his mind copied into one of the research birds without his knowledge, and was swiftly fired to prevent him from ever finding out.
The raven had been fed a ridiculous story that there had been an accident on the job, that he and Onyx had been caught in an electrical surge from a faulty wall panel in the enclosure. That he had died, while the experimental chip implanted in the bird's brainstem had short-circuited and captured the structures of neurons in his brain rather than those of the raven like it had been designed to. That was all lies. The real Sam had never experienced any accident. Whatever had been done to him was done deliberately and clandestinely. And he was so caught up in how impossible his situation was that he had been ready to believe whatever he was told. And so here he was, a fake. A copy. He was never human. All his indignation over being treated as a lab experiment had been misplaced. That poor man whose head he had dropped a heavy tool on to steal his keys and escape had been left on the enclosure floor bleeding out from a head wound for nothing. What was even the point if he was just-
"Hey! I know that look! Stop that." His rumination had been interrupted by the real him, who had been busying himself in the kitchen ever since he had proven to his satisfaction that the raven who showed up at his door did indeed have all of his memories. He was carrying a large bowl and the bag of mixed nuts that had been sitting in his cabinet unopened for several months. "You're staring off into space thinking about how worthless you are and wondering what the point in going on is. Come on, we went to therapy for this."
"You did. I'm fake," the raven replied. His lack of skill in forming words was the only thing stopping him from launching into an extended defeatist rant. "Why bother?"
"Because you're alive, for one." He tore open the bag and poured a bunch of its contents into the bowl before setting it in front of him. "Here's how I see it. You're not 'me', because I didn't spend the last month as a bird. But you're still 'you,' right? You're still the same guy who experienced the last thirty years of our life. And I know that guy."
"I know you too," the raven said, sorting through the nuts to find a particularly appealing one. "You're panicking."
"God, yeah." The human buried his face in his hands. "This is all crazy. I have no idea what is going on or what I should do. But I just look at you and see myself and..." He sighed, keeping his face in his hands as the two sat in silence for a long while. Thankfully, the acknowledgement that neither of them had any idea what they were doing was just enough to improve Bird-Sam's mood a bit.
"Thanks." The raven downed a good looking pistachio. It was pretty bland, many things were with a bird's sense of taste, but the salt was nice. It was also the first food he had eaten since escaping the lab, and he voraciously devoured several more as his hunger hit him all at once. Once he'd had his fill, and his head was just a little clearer, he spoke up again. "You know. I liked it. At first. Being this." The words were coming just a little bit easier, but he still had to keep the sentences broken up and simple. "I can fly. I'm small. I have good instincts. Mirrors made me... happy."
"...Really?" Human-Sam looked at him with confusion that slowly shifted to dawning realization. Likely the realization that he actually would feel this way.
"Yeah. But I was an experiment. No freedom. Just data. An object. I started to hate it. This body."
"Well, you don't belong to them. If you want to be both a person and a bird, I'll treat you as a person and a bird." Sam stuck out a closed fist in front of the raven, and the other Sam bumped it with a curled up foot. The look on the human's face was still one of bewilderment that any of this was actually happening, but the sentiment was genuine. "We should probably pick another name for you, if only to make things easier for the two of us. Stick with Onyx, maybe?"
"No!" The raven snapped with a surprising amount of venom. "That's their name! The experiment's name..." His breathing was sharp and ragged, as all the stress of the last month finally boiled over. He never wanted to hear that name ever again.
"Hey, come here..." Human-Sam extended an arm and gestured at it, inviting him to climb on. Not knowing what else to do, the raven did so, and Sam pulled him close, wrapping his other arm around him in an awkward embrace. "I'm sorry. We're going to be okay. We'll figure this out." He started to stroke the back of the raven's head with his thumb, something that would have come off as infantilizing if Raven-Sam didn't know that he'd also try to do the same if their positions were reversed. Plus, it felt really, really good. It was the first time anyone had touched his feathers to comfort him rather than poke and prod and examine him. He didn't want it to stop.
He let out a contented warble and decided to just let it happen. He'd escaped with a job to do, but the rest of his plan could be figured out later. For now, he was home.
