The rain slapped at the door, and the wind moaned as it pressed against the paneling of the house. Of course, there was no intelligence in the weather, as any small child could tell you, but the whole ordeal seemed a little too purposeful to be a simple matter of air fronts, evaporation and condensation.

There was that odd sense of tension that you get when the whole world seems to want to make you miserable. Almost as if the entire globe – including its extensive population of things unconsidered and things unseen – just really, really wanted you to break down and cry. Or, if not cry, then at least to swallow a bullet to two.

That feeling had been there from the moment of my birth, and had lifted on only seven occasions. (Strange, that, for isn't seven the magical number of completion? Maybe I should take that as a hint that there would be no pleasant breaks for me from now on. Maybe something is not-quite-inconspicuously trying to tell me that my happy little life has gone on long enough. Then again, there's that thing called paranoia.)

But, equally strangely, for each of those happy occasions, there had been a bird.

Next to me, Yullie yawned and stretched her arms. She gazed fuzzily at me, and murmured something.

"I suppose so. It's in the closet, bottom shelf."

She returned holding the battered board, and laid it at my feet. We rock-paper-scissored to see who would go first. Paper beats rock, I win.

I closed my eyes and let myself drain away through my feet. Instantly, the planchette slid across the board under my hands, and landed on the letter "I" Then, the thing moved again, coming to a rest on "W". Then "A", "L", "K", and finally I pulled my fingers back, ignoring the planchette as it continued to slide across the board.

"She's listening to Greenday."

Yullie grinned, and pulled the board closer to her.

Robin.

The bird flew down and rubbed against it's Lord, staining it's breast with the crimson of His blood. The Lord was pleased, and marked the bird and all it's descendants with the blood of His Son.

Approximately two thousand years later, the bird flew down and pattered across the grass, fooling the simple worms into coming close to the surface. How the creature could hear the moving earth was a mystery to me; the man down the street was mowing his lawn. The man was middle-aged, and he mowed his grass every Saturday morning at six o'clock. I once threw eggs at his door. He cleaned the mess for an hour, and then mowed his lawn at seven o'clock instead.

Oddly enough, there was a blood-marked bird on every lawn on the street – excluding the one where the man mowed his lawn, of course. I noticed briefly that a robin was perched in a nearby tree.

I should have known something was going to happen that day. But, being only thirteen years old, I didn't dwell on it much.

Until that day, I had never realised that I was one of the gifted. I didn't even care to think that I could be special in any way. For most of my conscious life, I had only wanted to blend in, in hopes that the great, universal dislike for me would abate. Sadly, neither conformity nor individualism could save me from a hatred born onto me even before I was conceived.

Returning to that day, the day of the Robins, I now see that I should have noticed something special in that. The bird that once stained itself with blood was now hopping and twittering about on every lawn on my street.

There had, on that occasion, also been a bus.

The bus, I am sure of it now, was meant for me. But, luckily – or unluckily, depending whose eyes you see through – I had been distracted, and the forces of the universe had been caught off guard, and had let themselves slip. His name was Ryan, and he was spread across the road.

What had happened is that all the birds had leapt into the air at once, and had dived at my shadow. In an understandable panic, I had leapt aside, and the bus that had been speeding uncontrollably down the street zoomed past, hit a blind hill, and crushed a young man beneath it's drunken tires.

I now hold several theories about the nature of these universal forces, if they exist. There still remains the possibility of insanity and paranoia, but I, personally, prefer to think that the universe is just out to get me. You can make your own judgement. Back to my theories:

For one, they seem to have no control over the birds. I do not understand this, but seven experiences have taught me to believe it. The birds are on my side, although what the feud is, I don't know.

Secondly, I believe that the forces aren't omnipotent. They did not see the change in my pathway, nor were they able to recover from the shock of my unpredictability in time to save the innocent young man, named Ryan. He took my place instead.

Thirdly, they hate me for shady reasons that probably have to do with my genetics. And fourthly, though this has more to do with the birds, I believe that shadows aren't natural. I believe that shadows are the mark of them, and that would explain away the birds behaviours. I also have more proof of this, but that comes later. Zipping back to my thirteenth year…

The tension had lifted from my shoulders for the first time, and I almost fainted at the intense release of it. It lasted some five hours, and then the forces bore down on me again. That was what I call the day of the Robins.