The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Harbinger
by Chelle Storey-Daniel

Everyone wonders why the birds gather there.

No birdfeeders stand in the yard and only three mostly-rotted scarecrows, but the crows still gather at the house on Sycamore Lane.

Some folks swear it’s witchcraft and others say the old couple who live there are strange.

I grew up in that house and that strange couple are my parents. What if I told you that at night the birds go into the house? You don’t see it because they go in one by one. What if I said the birds gather around the dining table, all proper-like, and wait patiently for my mother to put their dinner on the table? What if I said their dinner is just hatching? Just catching their first breath as they poke their little heads out of their shells? You see, these crows are special. They’ve been around for hundreds of years, and they eat their own. They do it because they don’t want to be replaced. They don’t want any competition. They want to be needed.

 That house isn’t the only one. Those crows aren’t the only special ones.

My parents are Death. And the crows scout for people destined to die. When you hear a crow calling near you, know they’re reporting back to someone in a house just like that one on Sycamore Lane about your Death Day. Maybe it’s today. Maybe it’s tomorrow. Maybe it’s fifty years.

Now you wonder who I am. I am Death’s right hand and death is very right-handed. I’m there when your brakes won’t work, when you choke on your dinner, when you slip in the shower. I’m there, you see, to make sure you meet your Death Day. And if you’re reading this, it might be close.

All because some very talented crows told my parents, and my parents told me.

I’ll see you soon.

Fiction © Copyright Chelle Storey-Daniel
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com 

Where can you find more of Chelle Storey-Daniel’s work?

For more of Chelle’s writing, please visit:

I Am Chelle – her livejournal.com account.

Or if you’re a Buffy fan, hit up her Fan-fic site: Burning Eden.