I jumped as the sound coming from my mouth screeched in the room. My ears rang from the volume of the sound, and I could hear the ringing, which felt like an echo of my voice.
Fear gripped me, frozen, unsure of what to do. I stood in the bathroom alone, staring at myself in the mirror. Spreading my lips as if to look at my teeth, I could see the black pointed growth. My teeth seemed almost shorter than I remembered. Running my tongue against my upper teeth, they felt shorter. I felt the bottom of my mouth; another hard object was in front of my teeth. I assume this was the lower part of the beak.
Beak.
Just thinking about it felt wrong—a beak attached to my body, replacing my mouth. My flexible, omnivorous, fleshy mouth replaced by a rigid, inflexible object built to tear flesh from bone. Realization of what this meant made my heart sink. I know what I need to try next, but I'm struggling to try.
I opened my mouth, took a breath, and attempted to speak.
"He..Hel...Hello," I uttered, "I... am...Lyall. I am a man." As I calmed myself, speaking became easier. Breathing felt different, with every breath, instead of just a simple rise and fall of my chest. I could feel there was more happening inside.
I could feel an urge, an urge to exhale quickly. A slight tickle in my throat felt like it needed it. With little hesitation, I inhaled. I pressed the air out of my lungs with force, hard and quick. The tickle felt like something resisting the flow. I opened my mouth and let the sound free.
"KEEE-AHHHH!" The screech roared from my chest.
I fell to my knees on the ground and held my hands to my throat. I could feel the screech and vibrations throughout my neck. I now carried two voices, my usual, plain-sounding voice. Plus that of another living being, a predator, a wild animal.
A wave of emotion hit me, and I rolled onto my side, lying on the cold bathroom floor. I cried to myself, as I'm sure most probably would have. One hand on my chest and the other covering my mouth in hopes of keeping the voice inside.
I heard a thumping as someone ran up the stairs. Shortly after, the door attempted to open but was held shut by the lock. It pressed and pulled against its frame, the door handle clicking as someone tried to force it open. The thumping shook the floor.
"You in there?!" Rylies voice yelled from the other side of the door, "Lyall? Are you alright?" She kept pulling at the handle, but it did not budge, "Matt, Jerm, someone get a screwdriver or something!" She shouted.
I wanted to say something, but the fear of making that sound again kept me quiet. Maybe if I did nothing, I would wake up. I always woke up as things got too bad, and it was always just a dream, and everything went back to normal.
I closed my eyes and tried to wake myself up. This isn't real, and I would wake up in my bed at any moment.
The door clicked and swung open, hitting my legs and tail as it did. I yelped in pain, pulling my hand from my face as I did. Only for it to snap back into place. An Allen key shoved into the door handle fell out and bounced on the tile floor. Immediately Rylie and Matthew forced their way into the bathroom.
"Did you fall?" Rylie asked frantically, "Are you hurt?" She knelt next to me, looking me over.
I moved my hand, covering my mouth, "No..." I said slowly, trying to keep the other voice inside. I kept my hand cupped and ready to cover my mouth at any moment.
"Why did you scream? It sounded painful." Rylie asked.
I reached up and pulled my upper lip to reveal the beginnings of a beak. Rylie and Matthew stared at me with some confusion and elation.
"Oh, your beak is coming in. Is that what you are all excited about?" Matthew asked, knocking a finger against his own. Both Matthew and Rylie seemed to let out a sigh.
"No... the sound," I said, trying to think of a way to describe the noise.
Matthew snapped his beak shut a few times, resulting in a light-clicking sound. "Like that kind of sound?" he asked.
"No, like a loud, uh, yell," I said, stammering.
"You yelled, so you screamed?" Matthew said, confused. "Of was you're screaming the sound that spooked you?"
Rylie interjected as I went to speak. "Can you make the sound again?"
I shrugged and tried to prepare myself. I sucked in what felt like more air than possible, then breathed out quickly. Nothing, just a normal whoosh of air from my mouth. Maybe I imagined it, or perhaps I was still dreaming. I sucked in air again to try again, same result, no sounds.
Rylie and Matthew looked puzzled at what I saw doing. They helped me stand up on my feet again. Now, all three of us were standing in this little bathroom, and Jeremy and Benji were standing just outside the door, trying to see what was happening. I decided to try one last time. I sucked in a lungful of air and tried to expel it as fast as possible.
Something moved into place, I felt the airflow restrict, and my lungs pressed hard. Out came the dreaded sound, maybe even louder than before. It resonated in my chest and pierced my ears.
"KEEE-AH!"
Both Matthew and Rylie winced at the volume of the screech. I tried to recover my breathing after, but again my lungs didn't feel right. It felt almost as if my lungs expanded twice with each breath. It felt so wrong, but it still seemed to work. They only appeared to be an issue if I thought about breathing.
"Fuck, I thought Jeremy's was loud," Rylie said, rubbing her ear. "No offense," She said, looking towards the door, and Jeremy was peeking into the doorway.
Matthew said with some extra volume, "Can you still speak too?"
"Yeah," I said quietly. "But it feels like I have something in my throat," I said, holding my neck.
"What if you try-" Mathew started to say before being cut off.
"Let's not," Rylie said. "At least if Mr. Hawk wants to scream, let's move out of this little bathroom. I don't think my ears can take it much more. No offense to you" She looked at me with a wink.
"No, moving sounds amazing," I said quietly as Matthew helped pull me to a standing position.
We moved downstairs and sat at the couch, what seems to be the regular meeting place now. I sat on one of the seats beside, Everyone else on the couch or couch arms. Nash had not come in, nor was Wes there. But the seating made it feel almost like an audience waiting for an act and expecting something great.
"So try saying something," Matthew said, looking intently.
"Something? Hello, what great weather we are having," I said in a half-whisper.
"No, say it in a normal voice. Like I'm talking," Matthew said.
"Hello Matthew, I am talking to you like a normal human being," I said slightly louder than usual. Nothing was different except for the slight tickle in my throat.
"Now scream something at me... Well, shout, er, yell? You know what I mean." Matthew said, looking more and more interested with each test.
"MATTHEW, WHY ARE WE PLAYING TWENTY QUESTIONS?" I yelled at him as loud as I could. My throat was slightly irritated after, but my voice sounded normal to me.
"Weird! You can make your hawk noises but still speak," he said, looking surprised.
"Is that a big deal?" I asked, genuinely confused as he could talk with his beak.
"I have a beak, I can speak, but I can't make raven sounds, right?" Matthew said, nodding his head. "But Jeremy has a beak, can't speak, and can only make fisher sounds. But Darren was like Me. One or the other but not both, until now."
"So you cant make squawks?" I asked Matthew. "Does your throat tickle when you breathe?
"Nope, no tickles or anything. We all had either voice, but never both." Matthew continued. "You also have a partial beak; ours all came at once."
"So, is that bad?" I asked Matthew, wondering where he was going with this.
"I wouldn't say so. The beak is going to suck, and I won't lie to you there." Rylie said flatly. "But I can't say I've seen it come partially like that."
I felt the sharp beak tip with my tongue. Mouth open enough that the lips were sealed, but I could worm my tongue past my teeth. My teeth were more petite, a possible sign of their near future fate. If I tried to close my teeth, I could feel the two sections of the beak touch—the top part overlapping the bottom slightly. The pressure was more into my skull than my teeth were.
We sat around and discussed the things I would have to do differently in the near future. As Matthew and Jeremy assured me, drinking, eating, and speaking were the main things. Matthew has it in his head that once he loses his natural human voice, he will still be able to speak with the raven's voice. Rylie disagrees, but as he puts it, 'only time will tell.'
After the initial excitement wore off, things shifted back to normal. I tried to drink from a can and found it hard to curl my lips around the edge when a beak is pressing my lips out. I took a photo of the new development and sent it to Kole. Maybe I could give him a hard time and blame my change on his secret being withheld.
After a short time, the message was read but never responded to. With how Kole uses his phone, he isn't able to accidentally mark messages as read.
"Kole, you there?" I sent. No response, just a read receipt. Did I maybe upset him with my questions as he was leaving? He left quietly, at least quieter than usual.
"Did I say something off before you left last night?" I sent.
This time I saw the three dots saying he was typing, and they kept disappearing and reappearing. After he spent 3 minutes writing and stopping, I received a message.
"What time did Kole leave last night?" it read.
Kole left a bit later, I never really checked the clock, but it was dark enough for the street light to be the only light. But why was it referring to Kole in the third person?
"You left just after dark why?" I sent it back.
The same three dots went back and forth. This time it was a good 10 minutes of typing. This couldn't be Kole, and all his texting is speech dictation. So who was it?
My phone began ringing.
"Hello?" I said into the phone.
It was Kole's mother, "Lyall? Is that you?" She asked.
"Yeah, is Kole there? I didn't mean to upset him if I did." I said, apologizing to her.
"Lyall," she said, her voice breaking slightly. "Kole didn't come home last night, and his bag was found near the park on Elmwood."
I was silent.
"Did he say anything unusual to you last night?" She asked me. I could sense the worry in her voice as she spoke.
"He said something about a. Change a few weeks ago, but he wouldn't tell me what caused it," I said back to her.
She sighed and was quiet for a moment.
"Is everything okay?" I asked her.
"We think he..." she said but stopped, her voice more broken. "We think he had a change last night on his way home."
"What changed? Is he alright? I asked, starting to sound a little frantic.
"We don't know," She started to say.
"Maybe he's at-" I started to say before she interrupted me.
"We think he's gone" Those two words broke her. I could not determine what she said after—a mix of my mind racing and her crying voice.
"Gone where?" I said without thinking.
Everything was quiet. I waited to hear the "but" or even a "wait" from the other line. But the longer I waited, the more I realized there was nothing more to say. I kept thinking that I needed to find him, and he was just lost or hanging out somewhere and dropped his stuff. He's fine, and he has to be.
I spoke into the phone, "Hello? Are you still there?" But there was no response. I tried again, but the same result. I hung up the phone and sat back in my chair. I can't let myself get emotional like this again. I took a deep breath and let out a huge sigh.
The others started to notice something was up. I don't know if it was my expression or even just my silence. Jeremy walked over first and sat down. He looked at me with his head cocked to the side, physically asking, "What's wrong?".
"everything's good," I said shakily. "I'm okay."
Hearing this, Matthew walked over and stood next to me. "Everything is going to be okay, and we are here to help," He said confidently. "My beak was tricky at first, but I was able to adjust."
Jeremy nodded in agreement.
"No, that's...I'm fine," I said before stopping.
I think Matthew thought changing the subject would help. He hesitated, then quickly asked. "What did Kole think of us yesterday? I saw ya talking with him before he left."
I tried to keep calm. I looked at Matthew and tried to answer clearly. "He loved you guys. I think he needed some fun."
Matthew sat down. "Is he going to stop by again soon?"
My head felt light. Dizzy, like I stood up to fast.
"No, he can't," I answered.
Matthew looked at me funny, and I saw his beak move but heard nothing. I needed to sit down, but I looked down and was sitting. I started to lean, and then it faded.
I got up from the chair. The room seemed oddly dim, and no one was to be seen. I walked around the room, trying to navigate in the dim light. The outside sunlight seemed blindingly bright, but none of it made it through the windows. I tried to look out the front door window, but it seemed too bright initially. But upon walking closer, it appeared almost dirty, like something was covering it.
I walked to the front door and opened it. Outside was the woods. It wasn't as crazy bright as it seemed. But it was comforting as if I was supposed to be there. Stepping out into the warm, dry air, I felt the need to run, to take a load off and relax in the woods. Walking out further, the trees seemed so tall. They towered and swayed in the light breeze, leaves rustling and the wood creaking.
".........." I could hear what sounded like someone in the distance. Yelling at something, but I couldn't make out what they were saying. I ignored it and kept walking.
There was no path, just dirt and small plants covering the ground. Each step felt great on my feet, never appreciating the feeling of the land against my talons before. I walked on until reaching the base of a mighty tree. It towered in size over me, and the width seemed like it could have been growing for centuries. I leaned against it as I took a breath. I could not have gone more than 200 feet and was already feeling much better.
I looked to see how far I had gone. But looking backward, I just saw more of the same trees, the same foliage. The house had to be close, and I hadn't been walking that long. I looked around more, the house was near, and I knew it. If only I could have a better view. The ground looked flat all around, so there were no hills to climb. But the trees did have some branches that seemed to have clear views. I'll look from above!
I widened my stance, digging my talons into the dirt, getting myself into position. I could feel my tail fan out and move to help balance, help keep me stable. I lifted my arms from my chest, and my wings unfolded to their colossal span. The light breeze was blowing right into my chest, right into my wings. I bent my legs, and my wings lifted higher, ready for the initial burst to get off the ground.
"........." I heard it again, the voice calling out. I tried to ignore it but heard it again—louder this time.
"........lyall......" it called out. I wanted to ignore it, but I know that name. I looked behind myself, struggling to see around my wing, and lowered it to get a better view.
"Lyall...."
There it was again, that name.
"Lyall..... snap out of it......."
Lyall? What's Lyall?
"Lyall....wake up....hawk boy."
Hawk boy? I'm a hawk boy. Do they mean me? I lowered my wings, folding them neatly to my side.
They are talking to me. I'm Lyall. I'm not a hawk. I'm a human. I need to get out of here! I opened my mouth to scream for help. When I did, it was the loudest I had ever screamed in my life.
"KEEEE-AHHHHH!"
Screaming, I was lying on the floor, and I stopped to see everyone staring at me. My throat ached, my head hurt, and everyone looked at me in terror. I stood up, picked up the chair, and took a seat.
"Sorry about that. I felt dizzy and must have fallen over." I said to the group.
Rylie rubbed her ear, and she spoke. "Dude, you just spent 10 minutes freaking out and screeching on the floor.' she said bluntly. "You do remember that, right?"
"No?" I answered. I attempted to look at my wings but only found arms. My talons appeared to be feet again. "Oh, they weren't real?" I asked, looking again at my arms.
"Where isn't real?" Matthew asked.
"I dreamt I had wings. But I guess I passed out." I said, confused.
"Lyall, you were freaking out just a moment ago and constantly screeching and fighting for any help. Do you not remember any of that?" He asked loudly.
"Was I? I don't remember doing that." I told him, "I was in a forest, and I think I got lost and tried to find my way back. I heard your voice, but I ignored it for some reason."
"You heard me yelling but ignored me?" He said, confused more.
"I heard you, but I didn't know you were talking to me. You were yelling for...." I stopped.
"I was yelling for you, Lyall." He said, concerned.
"Well, it was nothing. I'm fine now, but Kole... he isn't," I said, trying to get back on the previous topic.
Matthew questioned me, "Kole? What could be so important about him right now? You sound like you just had an episode like Dami-"
"Kole's gone." I interrupted, "He never made it home last night, and they found his stuff by the park. I think that's why I passed out. I didn't want to say anything, but we kept talking about him and..."
Matthew sighed. "I'm sorry, Lyall. I didn't know. I'm sure he's safe right now, though. Nothing else can happen to him right now."
The front door swung open. Nash and Wes walked in as Nash shouted. "Good morning, associates!"
Nash looked to see everyone standing distanced from me. Nash looked at me before saying, "Is your lip alright? You look like you lost a fight with a door or something" He waited for a chuckle from anyone but never heard it.
I pulled my lip back to reveal the tiny start of a beak to him.
"Oh shit. You're growing a beak!" He said, shocked.
"Well, it's not browning right now, thankfully. But it has been a fiasco," I chuckled.
Matthew and Rylie walked over to Nash and began filling him in on what had happened. They were trying to get his opinion on what happened during my little episode. As they talked, I moved to sit alone on the couch. Jeremy and Benji walked off to the bar top and sat.
My teeth started to tingle as I sat, and I may have hit them when I fell off the chair and irritated them. Not a huge deal if I did damage them. I won't be needing them for long. I watched the 4 of them talk about me. Nash seemed to think it was just a one-time stress-related thing. Matthew is worried about it being an ongoing occurrence.
My head started to ache. Again it felt like something hit my head from the inside. Probably a similar story to the toothache. I would just wait it out, and eventually, the irritation would go away. I closed my eyes to try and ignore everything happening. I thought of being home and relaxing in my actual room before any of this began.
I started to have a gag-like feeling in my throat. I say gag-like because I didn't wretch like I was spitting something up; instead, I opened my mouth wide, and something began to move. Each time it moved, my mouth uncontrollably pushed open, and my head was forcibly pushed forward each time. My face began to ache, and the bones in my skull strained. My eyes watered from the strain as I kept wretching and pushing.
My lips parted slowly. The black growths were pushed out. At first, my lips burned as they were pushed out of the way. My tongue felt around in my mouth for anything. My teeth and gums were gone, and I could only feel the inside of the beak.
I continued to push harder, the growth pushing out further and further. My lips were now one with the hard growth, and my nose absorbed into the now yellow shell covering my face. The final wave of pushes was so intense I closed my eyes to concentrate everything on it. After what seemed like ages, the sensation stopped. I closed my mouth, expecting to feel my teeth cold with each other, but instead, the two large black shells contacted.
I opened my eyes and could see what had happened. I saw the yellow base leading the sharp, hooked, dark beak between my eyes—a beak built with only one thing in mind, tearing into the raw flesh of my prey.
There was no way around it. From this point, I had the vicious beak of a Red-Tailed Hawk and the ear-piercing screech to match.
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