Birds of Paradise by Oliver Langmead (read any book .TXT) 📗

the murder – it simply feels like the way the script plays out. A repeat of something he has done before.

When the deed is done, chaos reigns around him.

Adam stands, drops the trophy, and returns inside. Everyone is running away from him. For a brief moment he glimpses Cassandra – the glittering of her silver dress, and the flash of terror in her wide eyes – and there he finds relief; he no longer feels as if he is flailing on the end of a spear. His relief is brief – no more than the slightest ripple through the placidity of his apathy – and when it leaves, he takes a seat at the heart of the abandoned marquee. He looks at his hands and the blood turning his bright scars red, and wonders why all of this feels so familiar.

The authorities arrive. They tear down the tent with their cars and their boots, and they surround him. Dozens of rifles are pointed at his scarred skull. Adam kneels, and presents his wrists, but they don’t have any handcuffs big enough, so they use zip-ties.

They haul him into a van, close the doors, and leave him in darkness.

* * *

“Hey, pal. You paying attention?”

Over the past two days, Adam has seen a lot of different faces. Some are kind, but most are furious. He lets the interrogations roll over him – lets their words go unheard. He finds a hidden place inside himself and goes there. Even when they try fists, their blows go unfelt. It’s been a long time since Adam last saw his own blood, and their knuckles don’t draw it.

“Listen. You’re fucked. You know that and I know that.”

This man has a drooping moustache, hiding his red face. Behind him, another man, clean shaven, is leaning against the wall. Both have their sleeves rolled up. The moustached man has laid out photocopies of documents on the interview table. They spark recognition, and for the first time Adam begins to pay attention.

“We need your help with something else. What can you tell us about these?”

Some of the documents look ancient. Crumbling at the edges. Their presence means that the LAPD have searched Adam’s apartment – turned it upside down, probably.

“My garden,” he says.

The detectives exchange a glance. “What about your garden, pal?”

Adam realises his mistake immediately. If they haven’t dug it up yet, they definitely will now. He leans back and thinks about his cherry tree. He remembers it as a sapling, no more than a twig. Leaves, so small. He remembers the seasons as they passed over it – remembers the way he would fall asleep against it as it grew tall. He remembers the taste of its cherries.

“Look,” says the man with the moustache. “These certificates don’t make sense. You don’t make sense. You’ve gotta help us out here.”

Reaching for the closest couple of photocopies, Adam reads them. The first says that Adam’s name is Adam Reynolds, and that he was born in Massachusetts a few decades ago. The next one says that Adam’s name is Adam Thompson, and that he was born in Kenya almost a century ago. He remembers both of those lives as if he had read about them once in a book – as if they were other people that occupied his head for a while.

“What do these mean, pal?”

They are keepsakes. That’s all. Mementos nobody was ever meant to find.

Embedded into the wall is a mirror. In it, Adam looks like the shadow of a giant. “I’ll tell you if you give me a book to read,” he says, because he knows he can tell them anything. They won’t believe the truth.

“Sure.” The man with the moustache leans back, opens his arms, inviting Adam to speak.

“I got made before death.”

The rest of the interview goes on as before. Their questions bounce off his skull. Before long, he is led back to his cell by an armed quartet of officers. The cell is far too small, but it has a window that lights up in the evening, and Adam is surprised to find that today somebody has left a book for him to read. He makes a note in his head to try and remember the officer with the moustache. Then, he sits on his bunk and begins to read.

The book is nothing good – a well-thumbed pulp noir – but Adam lets himself become immersed in the words. He watches the book’s city rise in his imagination; builds the streets, fills them with people and rain. The book’s protagonist sails out to the middle of a lake, and there, with a hook, fishes out a sunken corpse, and for a brief moment Adam feels the curve of the hook viscerally, through his chest. The feeling fades as he continues, as the book’s characters come to life for him. He reads, and he reads, until the room grows bright.

The sun is setting.

When Adam looks up, there is the silhouette of a bird across the floor, made enormous by the sun. But before he can turn and see it, it flaps its wings and takes flight.

* * *

Recently, Adam’s been thinking about Eden a lot. The problem he’s been having is that he’s not sure which bits of his memories are real. He distinctly remembers waking up early one day and walking through the field of long grasses; the way the grasses cut little red lines across his palms, and the way the waters of the lake at the base of the hill sparkled as if all of Eden’s stars had been poured into it. But when he remembers that morning, it feels as if he’s wearing shoes. It’s not a case of being unable to recall the feel of the grasses beneath his feet, which he knows he should remember; more that there is something faulty with his memory.

The problem, he thinks, is the tangle of thorns growing in his head. He can feel them scratching at his skull, and all the