Seven pigeons walked in circles on the concrete in front of Marley’s park bench and he just stared at them. He wanted to get to his bench, but he didn’t want to disturb the birds. They were going clockwise and he wondered if birds always circled in a clockwise fashion. Soon they began to pick up the pace. Their circles became more manic. Their regular jerky pigeon movements were sped up now. “Whoa,” Marley whispered to himself. Their pace became even faster and more frenetic and he began to giggle uncontrollably. Then he got a little scared. What was wrong with these birds? How could they be going so fast? He stepped up towards them, now wanting to scare them away or at least scare them back into being normal pigeons. But they kept chasing each other and zooming around their perfect circle. They made a whirring sound and produced a light breeze. Marley stomped his feet. “Hey!” he shouted.
They kept spinning, now releasing high-pitched cheeping noises. He stepped closer and extended his cane about a foot away from the spinning pigeon circle. They were oblivious. He moved closer. He put his hand above them and felt the wind. He looked around. This part of the park was empty. There was only the distant sound of honking horns and cars driving, some with barely audible rock music playing.
He reached his hand down lower towards the spinning. The breeze was stronger. Then he lowered his hand to touch the birds but jumped back in a flash- the flesh on his hand had gotten torn and blood dripped from his palm! Now the blurry bird circle was stained with red and splattered blood as it spun. Marley squeezed his hand and felt tears of pain and anger welling in the corners of his eyes. He picked his cane up from where it had fallen and with both hands swung it at the birds. The cane was thrown out of his hands to clack against an iron park fence. In his fury he launched himself at the birds. They were spinning so fast now that his whole body was torn up when he landed on them- as though he had thrown himself onto the spinning blade of a powerful saw. He was chopped instantly into chunks of flesh that were thrown in a gory circle around the birds, who continued their spattery, devilish spinning.
Soon they spun so fast that their feet cut into the asphalt. They ripped a circle as they spun and cut lower and lower until they disappeared out of view, leaving only an “O” cut into the asphalt park path spattered with bloody entrails and torn clothes and some wet coins and a shredded New York Times with chopped-up pieces of a pencil.
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