It happened again at three a.m. That annoying tit tat scratch that menaced its way to my ears from my roof. I was just a humble middle aged man without a care in the world. Who in the devil would want to wake me at three a.m.? A frown slid onto my face.
“By Jove! Who is tit-tat-scratching on my roof?! I do say! Dear fellow, if you have any respect then you should stop this very instant!” I yelled at the demon. And as always, the noise came to a stop.
The next morning I would awake to the sound of my bird chirping. “Good morning, Everly. It’s a beautiful morning, don’t you agree?…. Ah, yes, me too. Ready for breakfast, Everly?…. Very well, then.”
I strode to the kitchen where Everly’s well proportioned diet laid in a row before my eyes. “I see you got up early, Everly. You fixed your own breakfast. Very good, then, I suppose you’re growing up.”
I walked to the cabinet and looked inside. Cobwebs hung and dust eroded the senses. “My, my, I see it’s time to go to the grocery. Everly! Come at once! The mice have escaped! Turtles and mice and geese and goblins! My, oh, my!”
I ran to Everly who was napping at the bottom of her cage. “Everly, it isn’t nice to sleep when your friend is talking to you. Not nice at all. I suppose you will receive no supper tonight.” I picked Everly up and sat her on her sitting bar… and she fell back down, asleep. “Oh, fine! Sleep! I will talk to Doctor Sallyteedee.”
Leaving the rude bird to have her beauty sleep, I walked to Doctor Sallyteedee’s room. He was a clever old man… nice too. His only flaw was that he was a mute. Couldn’t say a word ever since they dropped that dirty bomb on the city.
“Doctor!” I grinned as I walked into his room. He sat in the corner staring ahead, his green skin shining with an ounce of color. “You are looking better today, dear fellow. Look! You have a smirk… improvement. Improvement!…. I really do wish you could talk. Everly is sleeping and she won’t say a word until she is through. And you, a Doctor of Nuclear Energy! You cannot speak and will not speak. So I am stuck with that conceited Everly….. Are you hungry, Doctor? You may have some jam and bread.” I skipped to the kitchen where I found the raspberry jam and a thin slice of bread. I slid my tongue over the rough texture of the bread. “Still good.” Then I went back to the Doctor.
“Here’s your bread doctor.” I laid it in his hand and it slid to the ground. “Doctor! I spent all my time fixing this for you! And it was my last piece of bread! You are not hungry?! Well, that is very rude! Very rude, indeed!” I stuffed the bread into his mouth. “There, my dear fellow. Isn’t is marvelous!…. Well, fine, then. I will go along with my day and let you think about your next idea to drop a bomb on the city.”
I paced all day. I couldn’t sleep as much as was needed for a middle aged man. All because of that tit-tat-scratching. I thought of ideas: a bird… Everly, even… a lost soul on its way to heaven… or the other place… a demon trying to beckon me to his side… or maybe one of the children of the neighborhood. But they were a quiet sort, so I couldn’t imagine them tit-tat-scratching on my roof. Well, after all of this thinking, I realized it was time to investigate. And that very night was the perfect night.
“It’s a full moon tonight, Everly. I will find the identity of the tit-tat-scratcher tonight. Do you suppose you would like to come?…. No? Fine! I didn’t want you to come no way. I will be much more careful and sneaky on my own.”
So as night slipped into the sky, I laid down with the leg of a broken table, holding it close to my chest. I slid into sleep… at least until three a.m. when it happened again. Tit… tat… scrrrratccchhhh! Tit…tat… scrrrratccchhhh!
I jumped out of bed and whispered, “I’ve got you now, scoundrel.”
I tip-toed down the hall to the string hanging from my ceiling. Slowly, carefully, I pulled it and watched as the stairs to my roof unfolded. A squeak erupted from the roof. I jumped, holding the broken table leg tighter. Breathing heavily, I walked up the stairs. The open air hit my face, sending a shock wave throughout my body. “Ye Gods!” I cried as the cold air wrapped around me and pulled me on top of my roof.
And that’s when I saw it. I saw the intruder, bent over, tit-tat-scratching on my roof. “You!” I screamed, as I ran at it with the table leg held high in the air. I brought it down on its body, stabbing thrashing tearing, blood splattering on my face and clothes. I released a shriek of pleasure and gave the last blow right through the brain of the demon. The broken table leg stuck out of its head, blood curdling out like a waterfall.
“Reveal yourself, demon!” I pulled the demon onto its back and stared, eyes wide and breath quickening, into the eyes of the demon. It was no demon at all… it was I. I was the one tit-tat-scratching on my roof. I was the one with a table leg in my brain. I had killed me and I was dead. “How is it possible?” I cried. I killed me who was the intruder and perpetrator.
I fell to my knees and cried. “How could I kill my only true friend? I am cursed!” My arms fell to the roof and my eyes fell into my arms as tears dispersed. Yet my fingers slid over rough ridges in my roof. I lifted my eyes and in the moonlight read what I had tit-tat-scratched onto my roof:
The bomb was dropped in late noon,
On a sunny day in late June.
Children watched as lovers cried
And in the end all but one died.
Some died from the disease which spread
And others died from the loss of their heads.
Nuclear City, that’s what it become
Where cancer was in everyone
And the lone soul who lost one thing
Lived with a bird who would never sing.
His mind was rot and foul with maggots
His Doctor died from a disease of the rats.
And he scratched this upon his roof to awake his mind
But he gave up because he had lost too much time.
The mind was dead, as was he
In dying, desolate Nuclear City.