You Get What You Need

October 6th, 2005
Ok. We've reached an understanding.
I deleted most of the bird's blogs on here. He scratched my keyboard up.

Yes, there was a bird blogging on my computer. A raven. He won't tell me his name. He just broke my sculpture of the Disney Castle and kept saying "Nevermore." So I've decided to call him Nevermore. I think he got confused about that old poem, thinking the bird lands on a palace instead of a bust of Pallas. But Hal didn't have any busts of Athena, so there went that reenactment. I ultimately don't care why he broke my figure, I'm just pissed.
I tried locking him outside, once. I put a "return to sender" sticker on his head while he was sleeping and set him on the patio. I had to let him back in because he was threatening to wake up the neighbors. Sometimes he sounds like that bird from Aladdin.

Anyway, I can't send him away. He says he was sent here by my dad. The dead one. Well, the dead one I tried to cut open. He had a little note stuck on his leg.
"Laurel,
Don't try to kill him. That might be harder than it sounds, sometimes. Like I said, he's mouthy and he'll be in your face all the time. I have a feeling that, over time, this will come to be a good thing.
The gun is for you, too. It is very difficult to damage. It will not jam, and you need never reload it. Insight and ammunition are two things Sibyl will never lack. You're a clever girl, and I know you've had some experience with weapons. I'd be surprised if you hadn't noticed it looks nothing like normal guns. It is not metal. It was constructed from one of the columns of the Oracle at Delphi. Take care of it, and the bird. They will take care of you."

No, "love, Dad." No explanation of what use I would have for either. Just that I would eventually be glad I had them both.
And not to kill the bird.

19th Nervous Breakdown (the tales dead men tell)

October 5th, 2005
I am, apparently, quite skilled now in the art of "flipping right the fuck out" when faced with something weird.
But that raven sitting on Hal's... My dining room table is assuring me that I am quite sane.

This doesn't make sense yet, but I'm hoping that by writing it all down it will start to solidify and sort itself out in my head.

I went to my internship, I had my tape recorder and my own scalpel. My supervisor said I was doing well, and that I could handle this one on my own. He'd review my notes later (which was the purpose of the tape recorder) and was going to get the smell of formaldehyde and dead people out of his nose. He made the job seem so glamorous.

I'd arranged all of the tools I expected I'd need. I was to conduct an autopsy on the patient, Phil Palostoya, to determine cause of death. Supposedly something wasn't right in his head, there could have been a tumor or a hemorrhage. I was supposed to figure it out.
I'd laid him out on the table. I kept feeling like I should recognize him.
I'd marked his forehead where I was about to cut, plugged in the bonesaw, took a deep breath. I pulled my mask over my face, turned the saw on and then Mr. Palostoya SAT THE FUCK UP.
I tried to push the bonesaw down on him because, seriously, fuck dead people who move. Then he moved his arms. He grabbed my wrists, and I screamed bloody murder. Not much good over the sound of a saw. Which, by the way, I dropped into his lap the second he touched me.
Or I would have, if he hadn't let me go and grabbed it. Then he turned it off, and looked at me very calmly and said, "You can stop screaming."
I kept screaming, because, seriously, fuck dead people who talk.

And he sat there. And waited. He crossed his dead-guy arms, and moved his dead-guy foot like he was trying to tap it on the floor. Then he stood up and the autopsy sheet fell away and I was faced with a dead, naked guy. This is how a lot of horror movies start, I think.
I asked him to sit back down so I could finish my autopsy. Seriously.
He laughed, closing his eyes and shaking his head. "Laurel, think about how funny that sounds."
It did sound a little weird. I cracked a smile, then did a little snort, then started laughing hysterically. "Ok, yeah. So, no autopsy for you. Um... What do you want?"
"Firstly," my dead guy said, "I want some pants. Then I want to talk to you."
And I realized that this talking dead guy was naked. It really clicked, and became a little uncomfortable.
"Uh, here," I clambered over to the scrubs drawer and held some out without looking at him.
"Alright. Better. So... How's life? It's been tough not telling you how good you look, how proud I've been of you."
"Whuuuh..." I lost all of my verbal skills. Like, they fell into a pit a million miles away from me and decided just to take a nap.

I'll skip the play by play of the conversation, it just makes me look like an idiot. A crazy idiot.
The long and short of it is that that dead guy claimed he was Apollo. No, not Lee Adama. THE Apollo. The sun and fire and music and horses guy. The God. The... guy who knocked my mom up and then ran off to "die" in the Balkans. Turns out he got called back to his hilltop. Makes no difference to my childhood where the hell he was. He wasn't there.
So I'm the daughter of a god, destined for great things and gifted with great talents and he couldn't tell me more about that part but someone would come along soon to tell me more. He did give me a necklace, I don't know and don't wanna know where he'd been carrying it.
It's a pendant made out of carnelian. I called it a harp. He corrected me. "Lyre, sweetie." He said it will help in the strange days to come.
"Of those, there will be plenty," he assured me. "Just trust your eyes. You're not crazy."
He turned, getting ready to just walk out of a coroner's lab, and hesitated. "In a couple of days, you're going to get a visitor. He talks a lot, and most of it will be vulgarities. He's got personality issues but he's really one of the best gifts I could leave you with. He will take every opportunity to be a smartass. He's abrasive, invasive and will have no respect for your personal space. But he will protect you."
"Um... ok... what's his name?"
"You know, I never asked."
And then my dead dad walked out of the lab.

The night after, I was sitting at Hal's house -
Well. I guess it's my house now. 21 and I already have two houses. Hm.
Anyways. I was sitting around, I'd just cooked dinner. The windows were open, letting the smell of the night and the trees in. The sun was still in the process of setting, and I could still smell the smell of the sun-warmed leaves wafting in on the breeze.
I parked my ass at the table, set my plate in front of me and started looking over the textbooks I'd brought over. Practicums were looming in the future, to test my technique as well as my bedside manner. I guess they're trying to weed out the assholes early.

I kept hearing this flapping. And fluttering.
And grunting.

And this bird the size of a fucking ocelot came screaming in through the window by the table. He dropped a gun on the floor, which cracked the tile. The bird itself flies straight into the fridge and knocks himself out cold. I ignored the firearm and picked up the bird. He wasn't too much heavier than a housecat.
Reminded me of the crows I used to beg my mom to let me take care of when I was younger. I made it a little bed in a box I'd used to move some of my books over here, with a soft blanket and a dish of water for when the poor guy woke up.
Then it woke up and started talking. Well, before it started talking it started squawking, did some weird flip thing and was promptly wearing all the water I'd gotten for it.

I think that was when I started hyperventilating and passed out. Really, can you blame me? My best friend (nevermind that he was my only friend) died like, a week ago. My first autopsy ended in the corpse walking out on me. And now there was a bird screaming at me.