There’s a park outside London where the trees keep secrets and the air hums with untold stories. Nigel, a chap with calloused hands and a life measured in paycheques, stumbles upon a moment that’ll unravel him. A purse, unguarded on a bench, whispers temptation. He’s no thief, just a man cornered by circumstance.
The park, draped in the solemnity of dusk, watches as Nigel succumbs. He lifts the cash, a weight heavier than coins, and returns the purse to its owner, an elderly lady scattering crumbs for birds, her gaze lost in yesterdays.
It begins as a murmur on the wind. “I know what you’ve done,” whispers a disembodied voice. Nigel whirls around, searches the empty park in vain. He shakes off the words as a trick of his fraying mind.
But the voice persists, insidious as poison, relentless as the tide. Nigel wanders the park’s paths, and the leaves hiss with recrimination while shadows seem to lean in, heavy with judgment.
Reality blurs, the line between guilt and madness thinning. Nigel confides in a mate over a pint, his voice taut with fear and disbelief. “I’m hearing things in the park, a voice saying ‘I seen what you done.’ But I can’t find where it comes from.” His words trip over themselves.
The whispers follow Nigel everywhere, rustles of feathers echoing each accusation. His desperation cresting, Nigel finally flees the park. But even as he runs, the voice pursues, wings beating in the darkness over his head.
In his panicked flight, Nigel fails to see the lorry barreling down the street. It connects with a sickening crunch, leaving his broken body splayed on the pavement.
“I know what you’ve done,” it declares, Nigel’s crime given feathered form. A final cosmic jest, as this guardian of the park delivers justice for his misdeed.
Quoth the parrot, “Nevermore.”
Sometimes you just get in the mood to write a short piece of nonsense. In this case, I liked the theme of a paranoid person haunted by a talking parrot. From there, I wanted to capture elements of Edgar Allen Poe’s Telltale heart and (obviously) The Raven with a bit of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment.
As usual, creating cover art is an adventure. I asked Dall-E to render an image of the elderly woman on a park bench with a wooded background and a parrot perched in a tree behind.
It decided on this. It was hilarious to me, so I kept it. NB: I did not ask for it to be rendered on a faux book cover. smh
Ridley Park 