The Stork
I awoke with a terrible feeling clutching my heart. I’d been told it was simply a fact of having a baby in the house that I’d wake up with these feelings, but something really did seem wrong. The atmosphere in the house was strange; the light was dulled somehow and the air felt old and stale. There was an almost palpable stillness that defied description.
I rushed to the nursery, and for a moment I was relieved that everything appeared normal. Then a strange shape strode into the light; a ghastly silhouette of a hunched shape on stilts with a huge triangular blade stood out against the moonlit curtains. I flicked on the light, but it too was wrong. The light was dim and somehow sepia-toned, and the shadows seemed to jerk and move as if in the light of a guttering, polluted candle.
A great and awful stork stood beside the crib. It was black and white, but dingy, like a once fine black suit worn to a charcoal gray. It had a featherless, sunburn-pink head and neck splotched with sickly patches of darker skin. It turned its hunched form toward me and looked at me with ageless, grim eyes.
“We storks are charged with the care of all infants,” it began haltingly. “The white storks bring the joy and promise of new life. I…” the stork hesitated, struggling with the words, “…have other duties.” It looked at me once more with its sad, undertaker’s eyes, then spread its massive wings. The light suddenly snapped back to normal, and I was alone in the nursery with the tiny, silent form in the crib.