Water rippled in the glass on the table. Mrs. Apple felt a tremor through the floor. Through the window, she saw a dust cloud billowing. It started east over the tree line, but continued west a ways. She thought she'd heard screaming. She knew she heard it now.

  She hurried to the door and flung it open. A monster of a bird and more besides.

  Feathered drakuls.

  She slammed the door and nearly fell backward over herself.

  Shakily, she forced herself back to the door and locked it. She stepped back as it quaked violently, its handle jiggling, windows all throughout the house rattling. Dust she’d meant to get to came sprinkling down like a soft snow and a reminder: you're slacking in your golden years.

  She hurried for the broom and dustpan but froze. More screaming, hollering and a gut-wrenching squawk. It was so close, so thunderous that it tickled her feet through the floor.

  A horde stormed past chasing screaming townsfolk, a gust of dust and spattering debris clattering into her walls and windows.

  And then stillness. Silence.

  She breathed heavily and noticed. In, out, her heart drumming - thump, thump, thump!

  She stood utterly still. She couldn't remember doing that, not in ages – she'd never had to. A rage against this foreign fear welled inside her. She hurried to the sink and grabbed a heavy ladle. She'd bought it to scoop soups for company she never had. If she survived this attack, maybe she'd put it to use.

  Maybe she'd put it to use now in white knuckles.

  With it, she crept to the front door. There, she stopped. Why couldn't she will herself to grab the knob? This was her house, her yard – her lawn they'd trampled all to hell.

  She just couldn't. She couldn't move. She stood there, frozen, and even quieted her breathing.

  The logs supporting her ceiling crumbled at once in a splintering mess of shards and dangling beams. There, on her floor, was the Flowers boy. What was his name again? She thought maybe she never knew. The freak, the foundling – the pet Mayor Flowers flaunted in touting his potential usefulness. “If, God forbid, Zephyr should ever come under attack….”

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  Well, here was the attack. And here he was, doing what he always did; only now, instead of merely parading all over her shingles, stomping her petunias, he went ahead and burst through the darn things.

  A panic she noticed in his eyes snapped her back to the present. Searching for the cause, she found a monster. A drakul, all of twelve feet tall, stood at the gaping hole her door once filled. The bird was only partially visible, from the grotesquely massive claws to just above its knobby knees. The skin of its legs were peeling and dirty, orange like freshly dug carrots. Its sticky gray body was shrouded by the wall that remained, but its stink pored through, and its head was clearly visible. It had forced it in through a gap in the broken ceiling, and presently struggled to break in further and eat her.

  It was monstrous, dead-eyed, and fixated on her like nothing had been since Bill during their last hoorah.

  She couldn't move, but she didn't have to. The boy – Windston is his name! – hurled himself into the bird. There was a thud of body-on-body impact. The bird's desperate yodeling cut short as it tumbled, Windston with it, down the freshly stained steps of her new front porch – all suddenly a ruinous mess of boards.

  With a sudden raging fire in her gut, the old woman hurled herself out into the sunlight and, with her ladle overhead, rushed the bird and the bastard boy.

  Another bird saw her. It caught her, snatched her up, slung her side-to-side like a puppy with a ragdoll. Her ribs crunched – she could oddly feel that; it was like a noiseless sound inside. Her wind escaped her from both sides. Her mouth went all salty, metallic, coppery. Her limbs tingled and her eyes felt as though they'd burst.

  The monster released her, or she ripped apart. She wasn't sure which. She only knew she was flying now, hopefully far away, to heaven maybe – to Bill, Ferny and Louise. She could see the trees and their flowers. And then she saw the Flowers boy. He was swinging that freaky flaming thing he called a sword, and she was sure he didn't see her coming. Screaming didn't work anymore; nothing came out but bubbling gurgles.

  As he turned, and he swung his sword into her body, she thought... I didn't think it'd feel like that. It didn't hurt. There was no impact. Just warmth rising to heat, and a tingling, tickling feeling. Oozing warmth followed, and just as something heavy was sliding out of her from within.

  Cold and fruitlessly gasping, she lay there bleeding out. And she was oddly fine with that.

  As she twitched and swallowed, she saw the boy again. Windston Flowers. His face was smudged with black blood, hair and feathers pasted to one side, to his cheek. His expression was neutral, neither disturbed, or even disgusted.

  She thought maybe she'd smile. She didn’t know why. There was a flooding feeling inside her; she felt full of bursting from within.

  Someone pushed past the boy, and she was sure it'd be her William.

  But it wasn't. It was Bo – Bo Beeman. She'd never liked him, and she was sure he never liked her. But he knelt down beside her all the same, despite the havoc, the commotion, the frenzy, and just to tell her one more lie.

  "Shh. Don't worry yourself, now. We're gonna get you some help. You're gonna be just fine."