Midwich Cuckoo's Nest

Do you know about the cuckoo bird? How many cuckoo birds, after laying their eggs, place them into other bird's nests, so that they raise them? They are called "brood parasites." After they hatch, they push all the other eggs out of the nest.

Vintery, mintery, cutery, corn,
Apple seed and apple thorn,
Wire, briar, limber lock,
Three geese in a flock.
One flew East,
One flew West,
And one flew over the cuckoo's nest.

I'm sorry I haven't been posting. Not since the incident. I've been in the hospital. My wound, where I had cut myself to feel inside, it hadn't closed like before. I almost bled out before the paramedics found me. Still, I was in the hospital for a while.

When the doctors say that the wound was self-inflicted, they made me talk to a shrink. I didn't tell him the real reason I cut myself, nor why I had so many scars, so he probably thought I was suicidal. He proscribed some drugs, but I don't need them.

"Hollow, might as well be dead." That's how Amy put it on my last post. And it's true. I can't feel their brightness anymore. I can't feel the air as they soar or the tingle of their electricity. I will never experience them again.

And I keep asking myself: why? The Carrier said something about a failed experiment. That the Bright Ones - the Convocation was cleaning up after a failed experiment. I thought about Nightjar and him becoming a Camper just to get away from the pain. But why kill Kestrel and Tern? Why leave me human?

And then it came to me: the Carrier said that they sought to eradicate "those who knew." Not those who knew the experiment. Those who "knew." 

Those who knew me.

I'm the experiment. A "failed" experiment. Not an experiment that failed, but an experiment in failure.

I failed at being a Nest. The Convocation left me. But they are still watching me. Seeing what I do. Seeing how long it will take before...what? I take my own life? Before I jump off a building just to experience that momentary feeling of flight again? Or do they want me to still serve them, to kill for them?

Screw them. I may be an experiment in failure, but I will not give them what they want. I'm not a cuckoo bird.

It's time to leave the hospital now.

It's time to go outside.

It's time to fly the coop.

Goodbye.