The Comfort of Misery
A never-before-released story, one of four I'll be publishing in the next 4-6 weeks.
I’ve got four new stories I’m self-publishing onto my Substack for you all, and those on Instagram were able to vote on their release order.
This week, I’m releasing The Comfort of Misery, a nightmarism short story about old relationships and our favorite black birds—ravens.
Enjoy.
Be well, stay safe, love each other.
AP
CW: violence, sex, relationship drama
A bulge of crumpled sheets nestles between them. One of the pillows is spilled out of its case, the time-stained yellow no longer covered by the light gray. Sal wanted black sheets with a higher thread count. Gabriela chose them because they matched the stonewashed blue of the duvet.
“It’s stuffy,” she says. The disdain is back in her voice. It creeps back so quickly after they fuck. Quicker every time.
He slides off the bed and she turns away to light a cigarette. His skin pebbles as he cracks the window. The crisp autumn air rushes in and sucks the smell of smoke and their bodies past him. He breathes in the cold. It smells like a coming storm—ozone and violence. He shivers. What little afterglow there was is gone.
She wipes between her legs with a t-shirt, one of his, and throws it to him. He lets it hit his chest and catches it as it falls. Is there a genuine moment of pleasure during any of it anymore, or is it the memory of better times that keeps them fucking? The T-shirt is rough. One of his old favorites, a concert t-shirt. His cum is smeared all over the cracked plastic of the band logo. He hopes it washes out.
There’s a rapping at the window.
“The fuck?” Gabriela says. She moves behind him while he bends to look outside.
A raven—or is it a crow? He can’t tell the difference—is perched on the window sill, its head cocked to one side. There’s a small crack where its beak hit the window. A big fucker, much bigger than Sal ever thought these kinds of birds were. It stares back at him, neck still bent, like it can hear his thinking. He asks it gently, “What are you doing here?”
She smacks the glass of the window, making him jump. The bird croaks once and flies away.
“Why’d you do that?” he asks.
She flicks cigarette ash out the open window and turns away. He can tell she’s unsatisfied. How many days before she runs into the arms of that other person she’s fucking? Probably fucking. Sal has no proof. Just a feeling he gets when she looks at him. She slips into sweats and disappears into the house, eager to get as far away from him as she can while still remaining under the same roof.
He looks out the window again. The bird only flew to a nearby tree and has its head cocked to one side again. Like it’s asked him something and is waiting for a response. He cycles through potential questions and their answers before settling on, “Because change scares me.” It’s not even loud enough to be called a whisper, but the bird croaks and spreads its wings. It’s gone, circling above as he shuts the window. It starts to rain.
Gabriela’s back on top of him two days later. She grinds her pelvis on his, bone on bone. It’s the only way she can get off when they fuck and it lets her throw her head back and imagine she’s with someone else.
At least, that’s what Sal thinks. It’s hard for him to focus with her sharp pelvic bone digging into him. Her pace is increasing as she gallops toward an orgasm. If he doesn’t cum before she does, she’ll climb off and he’ll have to finish into a towel while she gets dressed.
So, he focuses on sounds. Gabriela moans like a girl he used to fuck in college. Cara. She had a fat ass and loved giving head. Really loved it. The first time Sal and Cara fucked they were both on shrooms and she had sucked his dick better than anyone ever had or ever would. It’s the gold standard he measures all other blowjobs against.
He cracks open an eye to look at Gabriela on top of him. She’s biting her lip, her eyes are shut hard, her hands are propping up her tits, squeezing them. She’s only blown him three times. It was in the early days, when they were both pretending to be better versions of themselves, before they settled into the ugly scarecrows they actually are. He still goes down on her from time to time, though that’s as much for him as it is for her. He enjoys eating pussy. He’s not wild about the lack of reciprocity.
She’s rocking faster. Grinding harder. The top of his pelvic bone is going to be bruised. She grunts, some barely audible word that could be ‘oh god’ or could be his name but more likely is her lover’s name. It didn’t sound like his.
A loud crack startles them both and she slides off. His cock flops out of her as she jumps up and he nearly falls off the bed.
“God damn it,” she swears, already miles away from the finish line she had been racing toward a moment before. “The fuck was that?”
The bedroom window has a much larger crack across it now. In the dying light of day, with the setting sun on the opposite side of the house coloring the sky ochre-stained orange, two big black birds are visible on the windowsill. One ruffles its feathers and croaks. Gabriela charges the window, shouting and waving her arms. The birds cock their heads at her and take flight into the twilight.
“You going to do something about them?”
Sal sniffs and shrugs, annoyed, but laughing. “The fuck do you want me to do, fly after them?” He gestures towards his softening cock and she scrunches her nose at him before putting on some clothes. Jeans and a t-shirt. Running shoes.
“I’m going to go run some errands,” she says. He doesn’t ask her which. He watches her leave, her old Honda spinning on dead leaves in the driveway, and he can’t bring himself to care. From a nearby tree, two birds watch him. He waves, they croak. He shuts the blinds so he can masturbate in peace.
It’s a week before they fuck again. It’s a proper hate-fuck, this time, in the middle of the day. Sal is rough with Gabriela when he flips her around and gets behind her, not caring she won’t cum that way. She grunts in protest but he’s already thrusting away inside her, so she checks out. From behind it’s easier for him to pretend it’s Cara. The ass is way smaller, but he can shut his eyes. She shuts her eyes, too. They both slip into their own fantasies, miles away from one another.
Cara would wear rainbow socks with individual toes. They went right to the bottom of her kneecaps, which were always banged up, the dark skin even darker with bruises. She was clumsy in the real world. In bed, she was a ballerina.
And she used to laugh. Not a cruel laugh, not the snide cackle of someone judging. No, it was a silly, you’re-in-on-the-joke, kind of thing. Warm. Inviting. They used to have fun while fucking. Didn’t they?
Outside, distant croaking builds to a crescendo as he increases his tempo. He’s getting close. He digs his fingers into Cara’s—Gabriela’s—hips and pulls her back onto him with each thrust. He is in control.
Gabriela straightens and pushes him off of her. He falls backward off the bed, splayed out with his cock bouncing in the air like a tentpole. She’s already pulling on clothes.
“It’s not working,” she’s saying. He doesn’t respond because of course it isn’t. The question is did she mean the sex or the relationship? Both, likely. Didn’t matter that the sex was working for him, though. Doesn’t matter that the relationship was, too, once upon a time. He lays there, his back on the floor, his legs spread on the mattress, while she slips on a sweatshirt. He wonders if she even remembers it’s his.
There’s a maelstrom of bird calls outside. They didn’t stop when the sex stopped. She looks out the window to the swirling mass of birds circling their home. “Do something about the birds, please,” she says, pointing at the dipping and whirling shadows circling the house. He lays his head back on the cold hardwood and doesn’t reply. She slams the front door when she leaves and doesn’t come back until it’s past dark. A dozen black birds watch her carry a bag of groceries into the house. He watches them in the light of the driveway flood. She calls up to him, asking him if he’s hungry. He tells her he ate. She falls asleep on the couch. He sleeps fitfully in between angry thoughts and a steady rapping on the window.
A week later, there are dozens of ravens—he finally watched a YouTube video to figure out the differences between the species—perched around the house. They weigh down the branches of every nearby tree. Some squawk as they chase each other around the front yard. One dive bombs two that are fighting over a shiny wrapper and snatches it from between them before flying to the top of a pine. A few circle overhead lazily.
“You said you were going to do something about them,” she says, holding out a cup of fresh coffee for him.
He hadn’t, but pointing that out won’t do anyone any good. He isn’t planning on doing anything, either. She waits for a response, but he takes the coffee and turns back to the budget spreadsheet stretched across his dual monitors, absently clicking his mouse around both screens. She stays in the doorway to his office for a full minute before retreating to the other side of the house, where she has her art studio. He keys in a formula once she’s gone and the column tabulates. The ravens croak louder.
At night he dreams of them. He’s outside with them, playing, shouting. He bats the air with his arms and slowly starts to fly. There’s wind beneath his wings, tickling his black feathers. He’s a raven. The others swirl around him, happy he’s finally taken to the air. He follows them. They’re a whirlwind now. He dives in through the open window of his bedroom and they bury their beaks into Gabriela’s pale skin while she sleeps. She is screaming when he pecks out her eyes.
When he wakes in the morning, he vomits into the toilet. Flecks of black float in the water in between ropes of blood. They look like pieces of digested feathers. He stumbles back into the empty bedroom and slips into his work uniform: gray sweats, a black tank top, socks. A knit hat and an oversized fleece hoodie. The days are getting colder and he considers throwing on a blanket, too, but then remembers all the blankets are hers. The window is open and a single croak calls his attention outside. Bile crawls up his throat but he cannot resist their call.
The ravens are still. Dozens now, all watching him. They tilt their heads, ruffle their feathers, flap their wings. His mouth tastes of salty metal, his stomach hurts.
Croak.
Sal shuts the window, shuts the curtains, and slips on his headphones. He keeps raising the volume as the calling outside grows louder until the music is distorted and his ears hurt. But he keeps working until Gabriela wrenches the earphone cup off his ear and the tsunami of croaking crashes over him.
“Do something!” she yells over the cacophony. The ravens are swooping and flapping all around the house, clouding the air in black feathers and shiny beaks. His mouth goes dry.
“What the fuck do you want me to do about it?” he yells over the house of his music and the swarm outside. He hasn’t even tried to think of a solution and it isn’t until that moment he realizes he doesn’t want them to go. “They’re fine. They’re just birds.” Placation. Ignoring problems. It’s worked for years, why change now? He puts his headphones back on and doesn’t see her give the back of his head the finger. He doesn’t see the ravens fly into the window. All he sees are rows and columns in a spreadsheet of alternating colors. That’s all he wants to see. It’s not until the big, black birds are pouring in through the shattered glass of the office window, slicing themselves on the shards, and Gabriela is screaming bloody murder, that he sees them. He bats them away, tries to cover her with his own body as he pushes her out of the room and slams the door shut. A wing gets caught in the frame and he has to put his whole weight on the door to shut it. Gabriela is sobbing. She has cuts beneath her eyes where they pecked her, scratches on her face where they clawed her. Blood drips down her cheek, down her chin, dribbling onto the floor. The birds rattle the door, throwing themselves against the wood. Sal leans against it, holding it closed. Feathers fly out of the gap beneath the door and the house is filled with screaming.
They don’t believe Sal at the hospital and ask him to wait outside while they treat her wounds. The nurses behind the desk watch him with narrowed eyes and furrowed brows. An hour later, a cop shows up and talks to the nurses before slipping into the back. A little later the cop comes back out, nods to the nurses, takes a look at Sal, and leaves. When Gabriela comes out, she has bandages over her hands and face. Her eyes are wide and she’s hunched over. She lets Sal put his arm around her shoulder and he pulls her close as they walk out of the ER.
The cop is waiting outside, leaning against the passenger side door of her Honda.
“You have somewhere to stay tonight?” he asks, his eyes only alighting on her for a moment before locking onto Sal’s.
“I’m okay, thanks,” she says, not letting go of Sal’s arm around her shoulder, but she smiles at the man. It’s familiar. Sal rubs the growth on his face like he needs the movements to put together the pieces of this particular puzzle. How did the cop know which car was hers? Part of him dismisses it as paranoia, part of it screams this cop is who Gabriela’s fucking, but mostly Sal is tired and wants to go home. He helps Gabriela into the passenger seat. The cop watches them leave.
When Sal pulls up to the house, Gabriela’s asleep against the window. It’s the painkillers. He’s glad she’s out. Ravens cover every branch of every tree around the front yard. More of them cover the roof, hang onto the gutters, hop around in the grass. In the light of the half moon and the driveway floodlight, it looks like an ocean of undulating black waves.
He gets out and closes the door softly. The birds watch him. Waiting. That feeling of them being angry with him hasn’t gone away, but he doesn’t fear them. They never attacked him, after all. Several minutes of waving his arms and grunting does little to force the creatures away from the house. When he gets back to the car, Gabriela’s sitting up, her eyes wide, her face pale in the moonlight.
She shakes her head when he tries to open the door and he steps away, hands raised. She hisses out a list of things for him to get her from inside the house. He thinks she can tell the birds aren’t attacking him and she’s not happy about it. He tells her he’ll grab her things and she can stay with a friend. He’ll get rid of them. He’ll fix the house. She thanks him and looks like she means it.
The birds part around him as he walks in. They cover every flat surface inside the house, too. Some croak at him or ruffle their feathers. The others are silent. There’s bird shit everywhere. The cold night air whistles through the house from smashed windows. He gathers Gabriela’s things under their watchful eyes. They've torn apart most of her clothes. There's white splotches in the shoes she wanted, so he grabs the cleanest he can find. The birds follow his movements and watch him leave, too.
He drops her off at a friend’s place. Maria, a Colombian transplant and Gabriela’s meanest friend. Gabriella tries to assure him with a smile and thanks him again for taking care of the birds. Maria shoots him a look like he fucking better. They must have already been texting. He watches them disappear upstairs and wonders how the fuck he’s going to manage his promise.
They’re still waiting for him when he returns, because of course he returns. He’s lived there for nine years—lived there before he met Gabriela—and he’s not going to pay for a hotel. The birds didn’t attack him, after all.
So, instead, he walks in through the front door amidst a drizzle of black feathers. The flock of ravens—he wonders what they call a flock of ravens—gathers around him, staring at him from their perches on top of the bookshelves, the banister, the lights. The ones on the stairs part, inviting him upstairs. No beaks and no talons for him. Only a cold welcome to his own home. A tenuous peace. The anger is still there, but the worst of it has passed.
His—their—bedroom is mostly intact. The night air pouring in through the shattered windows is brisk. Broken glass crunches beneath his feet. No birds are perched within the bedroom. No droppings stain anything black and white. The bed is in the same half-made state he left it in that morning, with the ugly duvet pulled mostly tight over flattened pillows. He doesn’t undress before laying down.
The birds stay outside the bedroom, silent. Mollified.
He falls asleep.
He dreams of Cara. And Lorrah. And Javi. A carousel of former lovers, hookups, and crushes parade through his bedroom, each escorted by a pair of ravens. The visitors look down at him solemnly while he sleeps, shaking their heads at the choices he’s made. He tries to argue, but his tongue won’t work. He tries to defend himself, but his arms are wings and all he can do is flap around uselessly on top of the sheets.
When he wakes up it is still dark out. There’s a blanket laid over him and he’s weeping. The house is silent. The birds are gone--he checks. Black feathers, white shit, and shattered glass assure him he didn’t dream the whole thing. The sky is lightening in the predawn morning, showing empty tree branches. Everything is still. Everything is silent.
He revels in the solitude. He didn’t know how much he had missed it. No faint sound of music from the other side of the house, from the art studio. No passive-aggressive slamming of doors. No sound of the TV downstairs while he sleeps alone.
He takes a day off work and spends it cleaning. There are no more birds. He doesn’t send Gabriela a text letting her know the birds are gone until the evening. She doesn’t respond. He imagines she’s getting fucked by the cop and Maria together and, for once, he can’t bring himself to care.
Gabriela doesn’t return until three days later. She seems calmer. Her eyes narrow at some of the repairs he hasn’t yet gotten to, but the house is mostly back to normal. There are no signs of the ravens anywhere around the house. The scratches on her face are mostly healed.
She sleeps in their bed that night. In the middle of the night, she wakes him up and climbs on top of him to ride him. She lets him finish inside her before she climbs off and wipes the cum dripping down her thigh with his sweatpants. She falls asleep soon thereafter. It takes him much longer before he does.
Once again, Sal dreams he’s a raven, pecking at Gabriela’s face, tearing out her eyes. Her pale skin gives way to his black beak, to his little talons. Her flesh is red and bright beneath. He’s not alone. A swarm of black feathers and screaming calls surround him as he tears her apart. When he wakes, he tastes blood and he’s not hungry for the whole day.
A week passes. He doesn’t sleep much. Every time he falls asleep, it’s a wave of anger before the nightmares start. He doesn’t want to live out those dreams over and over. He hates the violence of them, hates that it comes from somewhere inside of him. Hates it even more that he is happy in those nightmares. He spends most of his time in the office, away from Gabriela. Every time he sees her, that salty iron taste fills his mouth. Even she notices something is off. She’s usually the distant one, she’s the avoidant attachment of the pair. Now the shoe’s on the other foot and alarm bells are ringing.
Outside, the ravens come back. Waiting. Not in the hordes they had before. Just one or two peeking out from the tops of trees, letting him know they’re there. Ready.
A knock on his office door and he jumps. He had been dozing, taking a micro-nap as he often does now, hallucinating about his sharp beak popping the soft gel of Gabriela’s eye. She cracks his office door open and leans her head in.
“You hungry? I can make some dinner.”
Her brows are furrowed. She must see his dark, sunken eyes. His pale face. He can see exactly how awful he looks in the worry of her eyes. How long has it been since she showed any worry for him? How long has it been since he’s shown her any, either?
He hasn’t responded. He’s only been staring at her. She’s nervous.
“No, thanks,” he says, and she twists her mouth, wanting to say more. “All good.”
“I’m going over to Maria’s,” she says after loitering in the doorway. “Girls’ night.”
“You fucking her or the cop?” It takes a moment for him to recognize his own voice. The question was so loud. So clear. She blinks at him, confused.
“What are you talking about?” she asks, stepping further into the office. She’s got her arms crossed. Defensive, but strong. Standing. He’s the one sitting in dirty sweats, keyed up and paranoid.
“Never mind,” he says after a moment. The strength in his voice is gone.
Outside, a raven croaks.
She must not hear it. Not with the cold resentment she’s carried for him for five years quickly being replaced by a raging fury.
“You fucking coward. You don’t get to just drop accusations like that, then decide you’re done with the conversation. If you have something to say, spit it out. Act like a fucking adult.”
Each word is a thin slice from a razor and he flinches. “I’m sorry, I’m tired. I haven’t been sleeping much.”
She laughs. “I’ve fucking had it with you. Get your shit together. You’re fucking pathetic right now. Go see a doctor, go see a shrink, get some fucking meds. Something. I’m tired of being the fucking parent in this—”
She screams. It takes him a moment to register he has his hands on either side of her face. She’s flailing, yelling, kicking. Her nails are scratching his face, his neck.
“Fuck you,” he screams back, spittle flying from his face. “This is the end.”
As his thumbs dig into her eyeballs, the windows, the brand new, freshly installed windows, burst in. A tornado of black feathers pours into the office and swirls around the two of them. The wild croaking of the ravens drowns Gabriela out as his fingers do to her eyes what his beak did in his dream. The ravens spin and dive all around, calling out in ecstasy as their brother finally joins them.
He blinks. Gabriela waits in the doorway for his reply.
“Did you hear me?” she says.
A raven croaks outside.
“Yeah. Girls’ night. Have fun.”
The sun sets. She leaves. The light of his two monitors bathes the office in sterile white. He wishes he had confronted her. For both their peace. Part of him wishes he could pack up his things and leave, make her return to an empty house. A small part of him wishes he had killed her. The part that believes she’s already entwined with a naked body. Someone else’s naked body.
He should have done something. Said something more, at least.
He shuts the monitors off and hunts for a bottle of something alcoholic downstairs. He doesn’t hear her come home.
That night, he dreams of flying through an empty forest. The wind beneath his wings is cold. He cries out for his brothers, but there is nothing. No one. Even the anger is gone. Better that than the horrors he’s been dreaming about, though, right? In the morning he puts on his sweatpants, a black tank, and his beanie. He turns on his computer and logs into his work account. Gabriela is asleep on the couch downstairs when he goes to grab coffee. Upstairs, he opens a quarterly earnings report he’s been working on the last two days. The house is silent. The trees are empty. He is alone again.