"What... What was that?" I looked up from my iPad, distracted. "Huh?" "That noise..." Irina peered through the shades into the salt and pepper winter scene of Cambridge below.
Then, as if in response, a forlorn cry. *Hagurbbbbleblblble* "Is that a turkey?" I said, incredulous. It sounded close... I felt my toes curl in, protective.
"I think its a dog." She was cooking something tasty, rich smells of potato and cheese momentarily distracted me from the creeping cold fear.
"No... Listen" *hagurbbbleblbleble* Yes... It was a turkey, had to be. What else could utter that ancient siren song, that vocal violation? Suddenly I felt possessed by a need... an itching desire. I had to know where it was... Had to know it wasn't here, inside. It sounded so close, sounded like it might be in the apartment hallway.
I stood up, abruptly, to the window. Couldn't see really... The angle wasn't right, but then heard it again, like some demon that hides always on the side of your sight, a peripheral predator.
There! "I see it!" I exclaimed, rather more intense than I meant to be. Irina pushed up close beside me, warm, safe. "Where?"
I gestured below, to a bobbing dark mass near the fence. It seemed to slither forward, rising and falling to a dark, prehistoric song ... A creature ... A... A... Squirrel. A squirrel?
"That's a squirrel" Irina said, eyeing me with something between amusement and concern.
Rubbing my eyes, I stepped from the window, sitting. It was almost 7 now, the hazy overcast dawn now filled the room. I took a gulp of coffee, desperate, on edge. *Hagurbbleblbleble!*
It was closer now!
Close enough to be inside the room. I shuddered, returned to the window. My eyes scanned the scene, jumping from an old sunken wheelbarrow, a piece of discarded siding, a shrunken shrub. Everything was a turkey, and yet nothing was. I suddenly felt that somehow the bird was this immense intellect, and I was but a fevered imagining to its predatory mind. My instinct was to retreat, to hide and escape yet there was nowhere to go!
730... Shit... Work. I had to go to work. Outside. With the turkey.
Irina put a hand on my shoulder, and my mind emerged to the present. "You want a yogurt? I ordered you one from Whole Foods." I realized I had been chewing my lip, tasted hint of copper on my tongue. "Yeah... Sure. Thank you..."
I shoved the yogurt in my bag, shouldered it, now hurrying toward the door. Toward the turkey.
The hallways stairs creaked, bits of slushy water lingered on them from the night before. My heart tightened as I desceded, step by step. Racing thoughts of prehistoric monsters, chasing fearful mammalian ancestors were competing with thoughts of a blandly irritated manager were I to arrive late.
I thought, then, of a picture Irina had shown me a few weeks before; a turkey perched neatly atop an ironwork fence. It had seemed impossible to me that a bird so large could casually reach such a height. It was eye-level, or nearly anyway.
These creatures had lorded it over our predecessors, some 65 million years ago... Would they take a shot at their past subject, at me? I adjusted my glasses atop my facemask... Some protection at least. And I stepped out the front door.
To nothing. Looked to my right, saw only the brown fence and recycling can. Now left, where the drip drip of melting snow sounded a cadence for my beating heart. A mixture of relief and lingering molasses thick tension washed over me.
Had I imagined it? Was the turkey just some... Pandemic anxiety fever dream? I gazed up the window to Irina's apartment. No doubt she was already in the shower, mind already on the day's work ahead. A foggy gasp escaped me, almost by surprise... I hadn't even know I was holding my breath. Safe.
And then I went to work.