text: Paul paced the living room with a phone to his ear. He periodically peered through the living room blinds as the windows rattled from the revving of a red Trans Am across the street. His neighbor Willy was behind the wheel, door open, hood popped, forever tinkering. “I already talked to the bylaw officer and they told me to call you. I went through all this last wee...” A series of trebly wraps at the front door distracted Paul. “Forget it, I’ve gotta go.” Paul stuffed the phone into his pocket and attended to the visitor but upon opening the door all he found was a crow standing on his doorstep with a blue ribbon in its mouth. The crow - let us call him Ruffleford - dropped the ribbon onto the concrete pad. “Is that for me? Paul asked as he picked up the ribbon. “I suppose this is a thank you for getting you out of that bind.” Paul had released the bird from a garden net earlier that day. The missing right eye being the sole indicator this was the very same crow. The Trans Am engine roared once again, sending the blood in Paul’s veins rippling. “If you’re still in the giving mood, I’d really appreciate if you could figure a way to get that guy to shut the hell up.” Ruffleford took flight. “I suppose it was a pretty big ask.” Late that same afternoon, Paul stretched his arms and released a gaping yawn. He had taken advantage of the silence to take a nap. Willy and his Trans Am went on an asphalt excursion an hour earlier. Paul lumbered to his living room window while scraping his scruffy cheeks with fingernails in need of a good clipping. He had taken a reprieve from shaving - and personal hygiene in general - during the annual summer shutdown of his employer’s factory. In place of the Trans Am at Willy’s place was a brown Buick. A tall man in a speckled brown waist length coat appeared to be consoling Willy’s wife at the door. The consoler departed and made his way up Paul’s sidewalk. Paul prematurely opened the door, catching the visitor by surprise in a pre-knock fist formation. “Can I help you?” Paul inquired of the caller who promptly displayed law enforcement identification. “I’m Detective Saunders. I am not sure if you’re aware of this, but your neighbor across the street, Willy Daroch, has been in a fatal car accident.” “Oh my God, that’s awful!” Not a small amount of concern tainted Paul’s surprised reaction. A tinge of suspicion made him think Ruffleford was tangled up in this somehow. “At the risk of sounding insensitive, I understand there was no love lost between you two?” Detective Saunders replied. Paul twisted his expression into one of feigned ignorance; in the unlikely event Ruffleford was involved. “The widow says that over the course of the summer, you have filed at least a half dozen noise complaints against the deceased.” “A lot of help the police have been with that...” Paul stopped himself short of a verbose rant. The last thing he needed was to say something that could be interpreted as callous disregard. This unspoken cogitation did not go unnoticed by Detective Saunders. “I mean...” Paul continued, but Detective Saunders interjected “I know what you mean, but that’s more of an issue for the bylaw office.” “So I’ve been told. Are we through here, or is there something else I can help you with? I was sort of in the middle of something.” “The pillow face speaks for itself.” Paul’s face went flush, at first with embarrassment, then anger. “Look, am I suspected of something?” “It would be pretty farfetched to believe someone would go to that much trouble to stage an accident, only to show their hand by desecrating the corpse and steal the car keys, all the while remaining undetected.” Ruffleford’s disembodied shriek caused Paul to shudder. “Desecrated?” “If someone was fool enough to leak that little tidbit to the media-sphere we’d deny it. I just wanted to gauge your reaction when you heard it.” “Did I pass your test?” Paul asked. “We’re done here. Have a good day Mr. Laurence.” Paul retreated into his house once Detective Saunders turned the corner in his Buick, then reached into the deepest recesses of his closet and grabbed a handful of clothing. He then staked a pitchfork into the center of his backyard lawn and erected a makeshift scarecrow, using dead leaves as filling. As ridiculous as it may have seemed to him, if Ruffleford was involved in Willy’s death, Paul thought it best to distance himself from the avian. He barely put his hand on the patio door handle when Ruffleford cried out behind him. Paul swung around to find the bird perched comfortably on the pitchfork pinnacle. “Get the hell out of here! Don’t you understand you’re not wanted!?” Ruffleford merely inquired with his one unrelenting eye. “Alright then, you’ve forced my hand.” Paul retrieved a .22 rifle from under his bed and assembled a makeshift sniper’s nest at his window facing the backyard. He poked the barrel out the window, directed into the backyard. By this time, Ruffleford had departed. A series of trebly wraps came from the front door. Paul left his domestic hunters blind and opened the front door to find a set of car keys on the step. Paul glanced left, then right - on the lookout for brown Buick’s and the like - before picking up the blood-speckled keys. Ruffleford dive-bombed from the rooftop and scratched Paul about the head and face. The keys hit the ground and Ruffleford promptly ceased his attack, scooped the keys up, and flew over the roof with them firmly in beak. Paul raced to the backyard and scanned the skies. He saw Ruffleford hang the keys on a branch high atop a poplar tree in the park behind his house. In his mind’s eye, he could see his thumb and index fingerprints on the keychain in bas-relief. If he didn’t know any better he’d have sworn that the crow intended to implicate him as the keys dangled like chimes of culpability. An abundance of picnickers and pedestrians dissuaded Paul from embarking on the ascent. He wiled away the hours and his morale sunk like the setting sun as any hope the keys would fall of their own accord faded with the daylight. After ascertaining the position of the keys one last time as they glimmered in the moonlight, Paul began to climb the poplar. He navigated from branch to branch until he reached height parity with the keys but they were out of reach. It was then a simple matter of navigating away from the trunk. Pussyfooting across the branch as it thinned, Paul inched towards the keys. Once he was within arm’s reach, he swiped for the keys but Ruffleford emerged from behind a cluster of leaves with outstretched wings, emitting an ear-piercing cry. Paul lost his footing and reversed his journey in fast forward, cascading downwards until his body finally thudded against a patch of immaculately manicured grass. The next morning a bicycle Cop discovered the corpse and spoke into her CB radio. The right eye of Paul’s corpse had been carved out. “Looks like we’ve got another one of those “accidents”.” The missing eye was aloft, dangling from Ruffleford’s beak. In a nearby birch tree, the wily bird perched on the rim of a nest, filled to the brim with eyeballs in varying states of decay. He placed Paul’s eye on top of the pile like a macabre ocular capstone.