How Do You Feel

(The following is fiction)

How do I feel?

I feel tired.

Sick and tired.

Thanks for asking.

Particularly tired.

Not that you care. You don't.

You should but you don't.

This is entirely the fault of your pigeons, you know. Everything. All these emergency vehicles and the lights and everything.

This is entirely the fault of your pigeons and that hideous, godawful crap you've been feeding them. The smell alone would kill weaker willed sorts and that isn't even getting into the inconstinence it inspires in them, with that floating grey stuff - seriously, what is that, it's more disturbing than that time you caught the rainstorm on fire over that resthome on Thanksgiving with all the little kids screaming and the ambulences and that one guy shouting the line about 'the humanity' like that ever helps - yeah, the grey things, those... anyway, they drifted out of the cage and they killed the cats, yes, both Fluffy and Leatherface, then they burned through the floor and into the Johnson's place and I don't know what Mr. and Mrs. Johnson and all their partially clothed friends were doing before that (but I wished they could have kept the volume down, I was watching vintage Golden Girls) but they started yelling through the melting floor about the smell and I said back that if I didn't complain about the noise then they couldn't complain about the smell or the melting ceiling, and they said "What melting ceiling?", then they said "Oh, THAT melting ceiling, then they started complaining about the melting ceiling - WHINERS - then the pigeons chewed out of their cage and that guy from next door started knocking on the door, and he called out that he wanted sugar, I have no idea what that is all about, the Johnsons were picking up volume about the their cursed ceiling - is it my fault they forgot to acid proof? - and your pets started eating your other pets - the pigeons eating the cats - only it turns out Fluffy either wasn't dead or he got better, because he suddenly wasn't all dead and boy that cat knows how to kill.

Fluffy killed two of the pigeons, which, I might add, were starting to look rather demonic, and the rest of them got respectful, but then those two bird corpses started burning this really eerie neon purple flame and went through the floor and whoo-boy the Johnsons didn't like that no they didn't in fact Mrs J said, "I'm going up there to give them a piece of my mind and I called down, "Hey, could you bring back up those pigeons?" and they said 'sure' and for a moment I was happy because I thought I was going to get your missing pigeons back, eldrich abominations and all, when the guy from next door kicked down our door, looked at me over the huge glowing hole the pigeons had made, said, "You need a doorbell", then went into the kitchen, wisely skirting Fluffy's continued deathmatch with the pigeon horde, and the guy upstairs started to hit the floor, raving something I couldn't hear, probably complaining about the noise, and the next door neighbor took out a measuring cup, opened the cabinet marked 'sundries', and started stealing our sugar, and I said to him, "For shame!", then the people downstairs in the Johnson's Place called up through the floor saying "Stephanie tried to get those pigeons, but she was subsumed in their flames," and I was like, this is why you should always do important things yourself and I just huffed and told them I would be down after Golden Girls to collect the birds and they said, "Oh no, it's turning Stephanie into some sort of Fell Horror, which will likely consume us all," and I said, "Fine, could you send it up when it gained sentience and mobility?" and they said 'sure', then Fluffy started transforming and somewhere about this time the apartment building caught fire - well, really, caught more fire, it having been burning a bit already - and the guy upstairs put in some loud war movie that always upsets his neighbors up there like he always does when he is trying to ignore the rest of us, and then Mrs Johnson burst in, all angry and dressed in a sheet or something, I can't really recall, and she said, "I must complain about - hey, did you know there is a minature black hole at the base of the stairs?", and I said yeah, and told her you'd reported it to the building manager last week, and she said that was bull and he should have fixed it by now and I agreed because, yeah, that just isn't safe, and it is hard enough carrying stuff up those stairs without it making everything weigh the same as a thousand suns, but then Mrs J started chewing me out over the melting ceiling, though I derailed her for a bit saying that it was a melting floor up here, then Fluffy, mid-transformation, finally pulled down a fifth pigeons, then wrapped them all around himself to make some sort of caccoon, and the guy from next door came out of the kitchen with all of our sugar in cups, took one look at Mrs. J and told her, "I love you," and she said, "No one ever told me that," and he said well he had and he stood by it - he was very noble for a sugar thief - and she said, "Well then I love you too," and he said, "Let's run off together!" and she said, "And bake!" and he said, "I've got the sugar!!" so off they went, good for them and mind the black hole.

But now there was a firefight upstairs for real - guess the gang members up there were sick of the war movies, then the sprinklers went off because, hey, building increasingly on fire, and the TV shorted out, which really pissed me off since now I'll never see how that episode of Golden Girls ends, and that sprinkler water was gross and cold and it made the floor collapse, and it made the walls unstable and a window broke and the rest of the pigeons escaped - more power to them and I fear for the world - but there I was, suddenly in the Johnson's appartment and I asked where Mr. Johnson was, and they said he stepped out and they asked where his wife was and I said run off with the sugar thief, and they all said 'ooooo...' and one guy said, "I knew it!", but then an explosion rocked the building and the gas mains went and those explosions where bigger and there was fire everywhere and the walls shook and pieces of masonry started falling and I started to feel really sick - I think it was the water from the sprinklers but it could have been the Johnsons' dog (I'm allergic you know) - and I had to ask the Johnsons' guests why they were all dressed like it was Ancient Greece with sheets 'n things, but I never got an answer because the Fell Horror Stephanie awoke, who rose with a terrible banishee wail, seized two of the guests and offered us the sadistic choice of which she would destroy to consecrate her creation when the gang warfare, small arms fire, and explosives above all collapsed our old ceiling and everyone two floors up was suddenly falling to join us in the Johnsons' apartment, which was starting to feel a bit cramped, and you know, for a Fell Horror, Stephanie was rather pretty with ample... ahem, and also there were feathers, but she told us she was shy about that, and you could hardly notice that she was surely the doom of us all with the full on urban warfare or the remains of the melted ceiling and pigeon ... stuff left by your weird birds all over the place, also the confusion and running about but still the building manager burst in yelling at all of us in a really rude way, and you know I was still pissed that it was so hard to get hot water and the laundry room only had the one working drier and he never closed the minature black hole, so I suggested to everyone that we sacrifice him to Stephanie to seal the deal on her being a Fell Horror and the suggestion was very popular, so she consumed him and drank of his soul, which was fun to watch, and after she'd destroyed him and released her two hostages there was much rejoicing.

So we were all happy, despite the burning, exploding, falling apart building and all being trapped together and I having missed the end of Golden Girls, and the Johnsons' guests gave me and several of the gang members honorary togas and gowns and I finally got to meet the war buff from the apartment above us - did you know he carries a .50 caliber magnum and thinks we are all out to get him, and he might have to 'get us first'? What a character! - but then we had to run when the burning broken building started collapsing, and the Johnsons' apartment was no longer safe, and dagnabbit, that micro-black hole was heading towards an implosive event which would be relatively survivable for everyone who wasn't in the building, but would probably be less survivable for anyone inside, and as things started to fall in towards the stairwell everyone was panicking, and I barely remembered to grab Fluffy's cat caccoon, but thankfully we ran into Mr. J - or sorta, something weird had happened and he and his dog had merged into a half human / half canine thing and when we asked he just said it had been a really weird night - and thankfully he knew a way out that only required two key cards, a few logic puzzles, and some minor combat with the undead, which, since we had the gang members and our upstairs neighbor, really wasn't a problem, and we got out at least sixteen seconds before a completely arbitary guess of when the building would fall into the hole would occur (it was some guest from the party who did the time limit, and he was off. Took another twenty minutes for the building to crumple into some odd implosive ball), and it turns out almost everyone got out, except the building manager, and the Johnsons ran into each other at the emergency cordon that the Fire Department had put up, and they agreed to an amicable divorce, with her getting all baking supplies and a new husband and him keeping the dog, and the guests all went home, and the gang members offically made the war buff their new leader and I think they are taking over the block, and I am applying for emergency housing, but the main thing is I still feel like crap, and I am pretty sure it was the sprinkler water the more I think about it, and you missed ALL of this because you couldn't be bothered to leave work at a reasonable time, and I am tired from all the running and answering questions to the firemen and the police and the animal control people (by the way, all those warnings on TV about watching the skies and be afraid and curfew? Your pigeons, again) and it comes down to this:

I am leaving you.

For Stephanie.

She's a wonderful person for a Fell Horror, and she's there when I need her.

Oh, and we're taking Fluffy.

That's how I feel.