Bird Brain

**FLASH FICTION**

BIRD BRAIN
October 2006

"Don’t panic," my husband, Brian, says to me between drops of his own blood. But I do panic as they roll steadily down his forehead in little sporadic rows. Thoroughly disgusted with me, with subjugation in his voice, he puts me down and tells me off as I watch the blood pour from the hole in his head.

Fear drives me to the car, and although I know I’m not yet fully in a panic, I half-suspect how foolish I must look to those around me. Searching frantically for a clean rag, a cloth, a towel, anything that would wipe blood away and make all things like new again, I am aware of the gratuitous verbiage I keep repeating over and over like a madwoman. "I knew someone would get hurt", I muttered, and, "this could have been prevented." I was referring to the steel pole with its sharp, protruding multi-hooks that Brian just gouged himself on.

A groan from my bleeding husband tells me to shut up.

When I return with a red table cloth I find Brian sitting on a brick wall with his head in his hands. The sight distresses me.

"Do you want to go to the hospital?" I ask. The blood drops to the ground in a silent downpour, staining the soil beneath, and he takes the cloth and tells me to carry on as if nothing has happened. He wants me out of his sight. He wants a strong woman; a wife who keeps her wits about her, not a plucked chicken with her head cut off.

Secretly I stand behind the car and say a silent prayer that this is not serious and please don’t let him go unconscious and do please stop the bleeding and suddenly I think of something.

"Would you like some ice?" I ask. "It’ll keep the swelling down."

But all he wants is a hat to keep the sun and the dirt out of the newly dug hole in his scalp and a knife so he can cut the head off his brainless wife.