“…Dans le dos…” Goes her newly downloaded music. From some random website that she’s only 75 sure won’t contribute to the impending crash of her computer in about 2-3 years.

Bolivar’s systematic conquest of Latin America…

Words float through her mind as she reads to herself, intermingling with the French melodies that she doesn’t understand in the least.

The afternoon is quiet and lulling her into a peaceful calm. The room sells like cancer-food with a tinge of outdoor freshness and the clouds dim the sun’s malign rays to a soft and misleading off-white gray.

Her right foot randomly taps against the harsh fabric of the flame retardant ottoman to the beat of the music.

…Cuba was seized by the French in 175… something…

She can’t read her own handwriting, and makes a note to work on it. She wants to be in a normal profession (not a doctor) and she isn’t male, so there’s no excuse for her lazy letters.

“It’s nice to have a little warning… but not entirely…” says her iPod knockoff, set to random.

As she glances out the window she feels a pressure in her pelvis. She has to pee again, and she’s regretting the expensive smoothie from “breakfast”, if you can ever call what she eats there “meals”.

“sssSSSSHOOOOUUUEEEEEEEEEEEEP”

She pauses. Still staring at the page of her notebook she listens for where the alien noise came from. It was loud and the pitch rose towards the end of it, in a sort of futuristic mechanical squeal.

There it went again.

…and again a few moments later.

She thinks about all the things she has to do today before six o’clock and goes back to her notebook. She studies more, trying to absorb the information. …until she hears it again.

This time she stands up and walks over to the window, to try and find the source of the auditory creature.

There are expensive cars in the parking lot, and people are running around the track field across the street. Most of the trees are leafless on this mid-winter afternoon.

A bird hops along the roof of a building, occasionally picking at the moss growing between the tiles. It pricks its head back and forth, searching, hopping, picking, pricking…

…she hears the noise… ….fading… …at the edges… …whiteness… …her eyes… …vision… …cracking away… …eyes feel… …the bird…

gone.

She’s sitting in her chair, feet up against the ruff fabric of the fire retardant ottoman, writing in her notebook,

‘…sitting in her chair, feet up against the ruff fabric...’