Bloodfeather

Detective Stephen Cohen had never been afraid of the dark.

Maybe this fascination was what led him to pursue a career as a detective. If he was able to brave the physical night, he could find out why people were afraid of it in the farthest corners of the brains of criminals. Unfortunately, his small town’s worst crime was someone stealing a letter off of the local church announcement board to make it a dirty word. So right after he had graduated high school, he moved to the big city where the crimes were much more diverse. He made a name for himself working for a popular agency and he settled into a new routine pretty quickly. Wake up, eat, work, sleep, repeat. Time began blending together until he could only differentiate the days by the amount of traffic at the bar underneath his apartment (Monday night was karaoke, Tuesday night was sports, so on and so forth). He barely remembered to buy groceries, much less have any sort of a social life.

That is, until one night, when he got a text from an old high school friend. He had just stumbled into his apartment after managing to dodge a group of drunk football players celebrating a victory when his phone chimed. This was unusual since the only notifications he usually got were when his grocery order was ready to be picked up. When he opened it up, he saw the name Grape Girl XD as the contact. His eyes widened. There was only one girl he knew whom he would have tolerated putting such an obnoxious nickname in his phone: Alaina MacArthur. 

A: Heyyyyyy Stevie boo

S: Hey Alaina.

A: Awwwwwww the big city didn’t cramp ur style u still use punctuation lol nerd

S: That sentence gave me heartburn. What’s going on?

A: Cant i just want to text an old frined???

(He cringed at her misspelling of ‘friend’.)

S: It’s been almost a year since I left Oakwood. You’ve texted me exactly twice and one of those was intended for Erik Jannsen, unless you somehow think I’m the one with “thighs like Swedish tree trunks”.

A: Okay how do you remember that

A: Like how did you memorize it

S: I used a really advanced technique called ‘scrolling up in the messages and hitting copy and paste’. You’re avoiding the question.

A: Ughhhhh fine detective smartypants

A: Theres been a murder up here and it is wayyyy weird

S: Weird how?

A: Well...the body was covered in owl feathers for one thing

A: And the victim was killed by slash marks to the chest like owl talons

S: Are you trying to tell me that an owl is the culprit? If you want me to come home and visit you could just say so instead of making up some crazy story.

A: *sent image*

A: Does this look like I’m making it up?

Stephen tapped on the image to expand it. The image was of a male body laying in a starfish position with the arms and legs splayed out. True to Alaina’s story, it was indeed coming. He picked up his travel bag - an old duffel bag he hadn’t bothered to replace - and pulled his jacket tighter around himself as he got off the bus. Glancing around, he noticed the terminal was much cleaner than it had been when he had left Oakwood previously. Maybe the mayor had finally found the funding to be able to hire cleaners.

“Stevie!” a shrill voice punctured the bubble of his thoughts. He barely had time to turn before a body was wrapping him in a tight hug. He grunted and tried to move, but found that his arms were pinned in place. “You’re finally back! I missed you so much!”

The voice clicked with a memory - “Alaina?”

The body moved away, allowing Stephen to get a better look. It was a short, lithe woman in a sweatshirt for the state football team and softly worn jeans. Her hair was the most extraordinary thing about her, though; it was dyed neon yellow like a highlighter. She beamed, and it made her face light up to match her hair. “You remember me!”

“I guess I should change your contact name from Grape Girl, huh?” he chuckled, adjusting the shoulder strap of his bag.

“Yeah, make it Pineapple Girl Rawr,” Alaina giggled, running a hand through her hair subconsciously. “You don’t think it looks bad?”

“You’re the only girl I know who can get away looking as fluorescent as a highlighter.” Without discussing it, they both began walking in the direction of the exit.

You haven’t lost that charm of yours I see. I bet all the girls were trying to hit you up in the city.”

“Like I had time for a girl.”

“You’re Stephen Cohen, organizer extraordinaire. If you didn’t have a girl, it wasn’t because you didn’t have time, it’s ‘cause you didn’t want one. I don’t make the rules bud.”

Their banter continued all the way to Alaina’s car, a beat up early 2000s Honda Civic. While driving to the crime scene, Alaina filled him in on the drama he had missed. Several classmates had gotten married, divorced six months later, and unrelatedly developed genital herpes. Surely it had nothing to do with the torrid affairs they had been having with each other, she assured him in a deadpan. The Boys and Girls Club was under new management so it wasn’t just a cover for high schoolers to get volunteer credit while smoking ridiculous amounts of weed. 

“Your parents are doing well,” Alaina continued, keeping her eyes on the road. “Your mom took over the women’s group at the church and your dad is, well, on another freelance project. I think this one is about improving the infrastructure of deer crossings.”

“Are you a professional stalker at this point?” Stephen asked in disbelief.

“You’re not the only one with mad detective skills, Stevie,” she replied smugly. “I just never wanted a career out of it like you did.”

A sudden surge of emotion blew to life in his chest. Was it pride? Probably. He was proud of how she had developed her deductive skills in the year he was gone. That was it.

“You wanted to be an actress, right?” he asked, trying to remember something she had talked about a lot.

“Aww, Stevie, I’m flattered!” she laughed. Her eyes sparkled a little. “Yeah, I’ve been working with a local theater group to practice. Gotta keep my skills sharp!”

“What was your last role?” he asked, surprised that he genuinely was curious. He hadn’t realized how much he had missed having someone to talk to. Or have someone care about talking to him.

“Ophelia, from Hamlet,” Alaina grinned. “I had to wear a wig for that one since the odds of a noblewoman 800 years ago having kiwi green hair are very slim.”

“I missed your green hair stage?”

“Also the lilac stage,” Alaina admitted. She quickly added, “It could be much worse though, I could be out getting herpes.”

“Very true.”

Alaina pulled up to a small trailer on the outskirts of town. Just over the hill, Stephen could see a house and barn. It looked like it had been there forever, but he very distinctly did not remember it being here before he left. The sensation he had felt when he had seen the victim’s photo was stirring in the pit of his stomach again. Something was very wrong here. There weren’t any police vehicles, nor ambulances, nor any crime scene tape. That only led to one conclusion: this was not the crime scene. But if it wasn’t the crime scene, then what was it?

Alaina rolled her window down and made a strange chirping noise. A moment later, a small shape hurtled out of the barn towards them. Alaina extended her arm, and a bird landed on it. Specifically a barn owl…

....with the same color feathers as the ones on the victim.

All of Stephen’s Prime Suspect alarms were going off at once, like a massive traffic collision where everyone is honking and the sirens are blaring and children are screaming. Alaina had alerted him to the crime, sent him pictures of the body, had brought him to the alleged location of death, and had the bird who happened to have the same feathers as the ones found on the body. Every box for this crime was being checked by the human highlighter in the driver’s seat next to him.

“This is Tiffany,” Alaina beamed, oblivious to the sudden crisis Stephen was experiencing. “I got her from a wild bird rescue, ‘cause her wings were broken from falling out of the nest too early -”

“Alaina.”

Alaina stopped talking and turned to him with an unusually serious look. “Yeah?”

Stephen took a deep breath. He wasn’t this affected by other cases, was his connection to Alaina causing his judgment to be skewed? “Did you kill the guy in the picture?”

Alaina didn’t say anything at first, instead stroking Tiffany’s head. Then a wide grin grew across her face and she started laughing.

“Is this funny to you?!” he snapped.

“Stevie...I cannot believe you fell for that!” she guffawed. Tiffany squawked angrily. “Your first guess about me wanting you to come back? It was right!”

“But..But the picture -”

“It was set up,” Alaina giggled. “One of my theater friends was trying out special effects makeup, and Tiffany was molting some feathers. So we decorated him up.”

Stephen’s shock quickly turned into anger. “Why?!”

Alaina’s smile faded. “I, uh, I didn’t think you would come home otherwise. I thought if there was something interesting, you would come back…”

“Why did you want to see me so bad, Alaina?!”

“Because I’ve been infatuated with you since high school, dumbass!” Alaina snapped, getting angry for the first time in the conversation. “You were the only person who made me feel like something other than a sideshow freak, and you’re funny and smart and nice, what was I supposed to do? Not fall for you? I’m a Cancer!”

Stephen paused to consider. Alaina was unfortunately right - he had only come back for the case. At least, he had. Now, talking to her and reconnecting, he was remembering why he had stayed in town so long in the first place. 

Tentatively, he reached his hand out and took Alaina’s free hand in his own. Her breath hitched and she looked at him.

“Let’s try.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. You, me and Tiffany,” he promised. And for the first time since he had left Oakwood, he felt truly happy.