The eagle is always with me

The eagle is always with me. I don’t know how it maintains its appetite. I never see it sharpen its beak or its talons, which should be crusted with my blood. I kneel, arms spread, on knees that I alternately can’t feel or that send shooting pains. I can’t move. The eagle can, but it is mostly still.

I don’t know what the worst part is, not for sure. Sometimes I would say that the worst part was the itching feeling when the skin on my abdomen knits itself back together. But that’s only because of how long it lasts, and how, when it is over, the eagle cries and slices right through my skin with its beak. It often wraps talons around just one length of my intestine, pumping its wings and moving the stinging, stagnant air onto organs and viscera. My guts spill forward as it pulls, uncoiling in an unruly mess. The eagle pecks at them, rending and swallowing pieces of my flesh. Once sated, it hops back and stares, or flutters into the rafters. 

I may not see or hear the eagle but I know it has not gone far. Neither of us can leave. 

My entrails slither in reverse, filling my sternum. Stomach and liver pack back up into ribcage, acid splashing into my torn esophagus. That’s about all I remember about anatomy. I’ve had plenty of time to observe and think about it, kneeling in shock, disassociating from raw pain. The gouts of blood from my pumping heart cease as arteries and veins reconnect. Shredded nerves screech in reverse. Then my skin begins to move back into shape. It can be fast or slow. When the eagle opens my belly with a single slash, there’s only a little that needs to renew. Most of the time it scratches frantically, leaving my skin in ribbons that uncurl and quilt back together.

I’ve tried to keep an eye on the eagle. To see the moment when my blood stops staining its feathers. Somehow, I never see it happen. I simply see it again, fresh with hunger, eyes stupid and wet. 

I don’t know how long it’s been. I know that I’m in a church. It seemed abandoned, but it clearly wasn’t too old. There are connections to local power lines, sensibly buried to the edge of the property. No sewage, but that’s no surprise up here. The septic tank might still be mostly empty, its new pump (that I paid for) unused.

The power was important. I came out here, to the edge of the mountains, where it’s cheap. Finding cheap property was easy, too. I liked the idea of converting this place, with its high stone walls, bricked up windows, and commercial power supply. Close to the power transformer, too, which I thought would help raise the odds of keeping it connected. Just because there’s lots of cheap power up here doesn’t mean that the grid doesn’t go down from time to time.

I wonder if people are still coming up here and setting up mining rigs. Plenty of people said that it was a pointless fad. It sure seems pointless now. I wonder why nobody has come to check on this property. Nobody knocks on the doors. No teenagers are sneaking in with six-packs and vapes running low on juice. I don’t even know if there are still teenagers in a town like this, off a mountain road a hundred miles from nowhere. I have neighbors, though, I know that. I still had to work with the town hall for a deed and I had to set up a mortgage with a bank. I’m sure that hasn’t been paid, so you would think that someone would come looking for their money, at least.

Somebody should have heard me. I can’t get used to the pain. The eagle wrenches cries and screams from my throat at all times of day and night. Assuming that there is day and night beyond the bricked windows. There isn’t the kind of damage that might be assumed of an abandoned building. The roof is intact, the mortar of the bricks is uniformly solid. I haven’t even seen any insects or rodents. The only other living being in here, if we are living, anyway, is the eagle.

The electricity is still on, so the scene is constantly lit. When the eagle flies into the rafters, I can track it by the shadows it throws on the ceiling. They are gargantuan, chimerical mixtures of the steady grid thrown by the wooden beams and its wingspan. On ground level, it’s not that big a thing.

I don’t know what I did to deserve this. I don’t know if this is a church, and if it is, I don’t know the god. It looks like a church, with its narrow brick windows stretching nearly from the floor to where the roof begins at an angle. The bricks are cut just so to fit the rounded peak of each window. 

You would think someone would stop by to check on the power. To read the meter or to turn it off. I don’t know if being plunged into darkness would be preferable to the muted, yellow lights mounted to the walls and the chandelier hanging from the rafters. If not the lights, then all of the racks in the basement have to be drawing a significant amount of power. I had them all set up, connected, working away. It was going to be mostly passive income and I was getting in early. Maybe it still is, numbers going that everyone else can see.

I think darkness would be better. I wouldn’t see my own blood and bile glisten, even if I could feel them flow from my punctured liver. I would turn off any sense for a break. I could take refuge in not knowing where the eagle was, even if I would still anticipate the rush of air and its cry as it plummeted towards me. In between, it would just be me and the itching. Maybe that wouldn’t be as bad. I know that there are worse things than an itch that you can never scratch.