As the Crow Flies

As the crow flies

Darren O’Bannon sped along the dark winding country roads; the rain was unrelenting, it lashed down over the hills that loomed out of the darkness through, stark lightning flashes.

The storm was coming down thick and heavy, Darren’s windscreen wipers were whirring in overtime on his black Jaguar XJS as it roared around a bend, its wheels screeching on the waterlogged road.

Darren pressed his foot down hard on the accelerator. He was driving dangerously fast, with wild abandon, he didn’t care, he held a bottle of Dingle single malt Irish whiskey to his lips, and swigged down another mouthful.

His next tight bend could be his last; he thought and then began to laugh at the morbid thought.

He had lost everything!

His stocks and shares had taken a nosedive. His business was now running insolvent, and his so-called devoted wife was quick to empty their joint bank account and disappear on a plane into the sunset. With her false tits and false lips and false love, for him,

‘Well good fucking riddance, to you too, bitch!’ Darren swore.

Darren was on a suicide drive, he did not expect to see the cold light of another day. He gunned the pedal to the metal, the Jaguar roared like its namesake, lightning flashed outside. Darren took another hefty swig of whiskey and then his headlights illuminated a figure in the road, in front of him, Darren squinted through the rainswept windscreen,

‘Fucking shit!’ he shouted and slammed the brakes on, and threw his jag into a curving, spin.

Something hit his windscreen with a thud, the glass cracked, Darren spun off the road into a ditch, and his supercar shuddered and groaned in protest at coming to a sudden and abrupt stop. The airbags exploded in his face. Darren felt his nose crunch as it smashed into the bag. Darren’s world began to spin, and then he, passed out.

*****

The battlefield was strewn with bodies. Men lay dead or dying in pools of their own seeping blood.

Broken lances and shattered shields littered the ground. The screaming of mutilated horses filled the air.

The bloodstained warrior stood defiant against the enemy Clansmen, he was circled with their bodies, men he had hacked down with sword and axe.

The gods were with him, he was sure, for he had not suffered a single wound or blow from an enemy weapon.

The sky was darkening overhead, a chill air blew across the glens, and the warrior felt invincible as the battle goddess sent a messenger to his side.

A raven as black as coal landed on his shoulder and cawed, His enemies suddenly stopped their surge toward him, some dropped their weapons and fled the field, it was an omen, for death awaited any who challenged him. The warrior raised his sword and roared,

‘Connaught!’

And then an arrow hit him in the throat.

As he lay down on the ground to die, he looked into those raven black eyes, as dawn broke across the sky, he slowly slipped away as the crow flies.

*****

It was a doleful cawing sound of crows that pulled Darren out of his unconscious stupor. Dawn was breaking across the dull grey sky, the clouds hung low and heavy, with more impending rain.

Darren focused on the blood splatter across his windscreen. He had whiplash, two black eyes and a broken nose, for his drunken driving efforts.

‘Fuck!’ Darren groaned and his stomach churned over the thought of who he had hit, and then he noticed several black crow feathers stuck to the windscreen. Darren sighed with relief,

‘Just a crow, I must have hit a stupid, fucking, crow!’ he laughed with relief.

Darren slipped off his seatbelt and staggered out of the car and looked around.

He was in a ditch, his driver’s side, wheel arch, was bent and scratched, but miraculously his Jaguar was in perfect condition, luckily he had come to a stop, just inches from a drystone wall, if he had hit that, then he was in no doubt his death wish would have come true.

The wall was lined with crows, flapping their wings and hopping about and cawing.

‘Er! Sorry about your mate, back there,’ Darren quipped and he turned and pointed to the blood-streaked windscreen. And then he froze, his stomach churned and he went giddy at the knees.

Lying on the opposite side of the road was a body, only it was not a crow, but a woman.

‘Oh, Jesus, no,’ Darren whined and staggered across the road to her, and knelt down by her side.

Her face was obscured by her long black hair; she was quite small and diminutive.

Darren hesitated and then reached for her outstretched waxy white hand and felt for a pulse.

He held his breath and then sighed with relief, there was a pulse and it was strong.

Darren brushed her hair away from her face and gasped, she was beautiful, her features were delicate, her skin was like flawless porcelain, and blood trickled from a cut on her head. She wore a long black gothic hooded cloak with a silver knotwork clasp. Her dress, or gown, was crushed black velvet with a deep crimson tint to it, it too was very gothic. Darren mused if there had been some rock band playing in the nearby area, she had gone to see.

Darren quickly fumbled for his iPhone in his jacket pocket, almost dropping it as he held it up and punched the number for emergency services. A calm voice came from his phone,

‘We are sorry but we are unable to connect you to your call due to a weak transmitter signal.’

‘What the fuck!’ Darren growled and punched the number in again, only to listen to the same calm response.

‘Fuck!’ Darren shouted and he ran his fingers through his short brown hair, trying to decide on what to do next.

Darren ran back to his car and jumped into the driver’s seat and pressed the engine start button.

The car roared into life, Darren sighed with relief and began pumping pedals and jamming the gear stick around, as he manoeuvred his car out of the ditch and back onto the road, then spinning around, he came to a screeching halt beside the unconscious woman.

Within minutes he had laid her on the back seats and headed off down the road back to his remote country cottage.

*****

Darren laid the unconscious young beauty down on the sofa and tried his phone again – No signal!

Darren looked over to the landline in the corner he picked it up and looked at it for a moment suddenly realising he had never used it before. The phone bleeped as though it were engaged.

‘Fuck!’ Darren swore again bloody transmitter must be down!’ he spat.

Darren was in turmoil, he was twelve miles from the nearest village and even further to a hospital in town.

‘At least she is breathing okay!’ Darren reassured himself as he slumped down into his chair and closed his eyes trying to think.

*****

The mortar shelling had at last stopped; the sky was dark with thick black smoke drifting over no man’s land with its miles of twisted barbed wire.

All of his comrades in the trenches next to him gripped their weapons; their faces were ashen with fear as the whistles sounded.

Some crossed themselves, others cursed as they climbed over the muddy walls and charged the enemy lines ahead.

 They made their way across the pockmarked landscape, with its stinking mud, weaving through the maze of barbed wire.

And then the enemy machine guns opened fire, men screamed as they were mowed down, blood splattered across his face as his comrade’s all around him were shot down, yet not one bullet came his way.

He gritted his teeth and threw a grenade; it sailed through the air and plopped down in the trench ahead of him and then exploded.

Men screamed blood and bone showered down over him as he reached the crest of the blood-stained trench.

The carnage sickened him, and then he heard a strange sound, something he had not heard for what seemed a lifetime in this hellish trench war.

A crow cawing, he looked up at the black scavenger as it circled him, in the pre-dawn light, and then a shot rang out.

He fell to the muddy ground as blood stained his chest.

As he lay down on the ground to die, he looked into those raven black eyes, as dawn broke across the sky; he slowly slipped away as the crow flies.

*****

Darren jumped up with a start and gasped in surprise, for the woman was standing in front of him looking down at him with a smile on her face.

‘Oh thank god! you are alright; I am sorry, so sorry!’ Darren babbled on.

The woman just smiled and then raised a delicate finger to her lips.

Come take my hand, at last, you are free.’ she reached out a hand to Darren.

Darren took her delicate hand in hers and squeezed it and smiled.

‘A brave warrior in many lifetimes you have been, many battles you have fought in, and much blood and death, have you seen.’

As if a mist had clouded his mind, his memories, Darren could now see the many lives he had lived, he gasped and tears ran down his cheek.

‘ But in this time of hero-less days, your soul has gone to waste. So as you lay down to die, look into, my eyes, and come with me, as we soar into the dawn skies, as majestic as, the crow flies.’  

Darren’s soul floated up through the roof of his cottage on black raven wings, as he followed his goddess. Far below him the green fields of the countryside passed by, and there was his jaguar car, it had hit the dry stone wall and turned over, throwing his battered and broken body out, through the windscreen.

Darren flapped his wings and cawed loudly, his raven brethren, circling his corpse, rose up into the sky and joined him and their goddess in the clouds, and flew toward the breaking dawn light, on slow, languid, flapping, wings, as majestic as the crow flies.

The End