CARDINAL

The first time I saw him, he was perched on a slim tree limb about twenty feet ahead of me. He was quietly settled, motionless. No fear or nervousness showed in the stillness of his feet, his black face and eyes focused on me. My feet were anchored as I stared back at him; two strangers waiting to see who would blink first.

In the early afternoon heat, especially since my position was not shaded. Most of his red body glowed like molten iron or a scorching sunburn. In contrast to the lush, green leaves, he was a fire with no flame from crested head to tail feathers. His black feet clutched the slender limb securely but with a light breeze, he bounced slightly up and down like a child’s teeter-totter. His stillness made me think of a child’s plastic toy fastened to the limb until he blinked. That blink focused my eyes on his black face as if he were wearing a black mask.

Such a splendid vision, I thought, “A male cardinal was so fragile, and yet so handsome. We continued watching each other as a friendly vibe transmitted through the warm air like a friendly phone call from someone able to perceive, think, and feel things.. However, I didn’t realize that it was talking to me until my ears tingled, then tickled, then slowly my hearing improved greatly, and I heard what humans don’t hear thinking and feeling life form in a forest, all the usually silent field and forest noises around me as if the other birds, beetles, bees, flowers, trees, frogs were conversing with their brethren species, or the sounds of eating, digging, wings flapping, animals running away. I could even hear the underground lives of the subsurface creatures.

When my attention had returned to the cardinal, it sprang off the tree limb and glided to the ground at my feet. When I looked down, the cardinal grew to my six-foot height, then sprouted all the visible appendages of a human who was covered by a brilliant red monk’s cloak, head looking downward, the hood concealing half its face. As his head straightened and looked directly at me I could see the red skin and black mask of his bird form. In this context I thought of a burglar, and then The Lone Ranger’s vision appeared in my head, except it was not a mask that could be removed. The black mask looked as if it were tattooed to his face. My mouth, a desert now, remained speechless. His contrasting colors of vivid red and sinister black caused my skin to tingle with heat and sizzle my perspiration. Gazing eye to eye, it did indeed feel as if I was peering into Nietzsche’s abyss.

Standing, fixed in position, I heard a low, rhythmic sound fall from his lips. Mumbling? The words sounded vaguely like Latin, the speech of priests from long ago. I suddenly realized that I felt no fear, yet it was a fearful situation. Why no fear or shock, I asked myself. Why wasn’t I running, screaming, howling and terrified? Why? Because I couldn’t move my legs or lips. The forest sounds dramatically increased to an uncomfortable level, then instant silence. My ears were no longer being assaulted, but I was still dry-mouthed immobile, and cloaked in confusion.

Cardinal’s right arm slowly appeared from under his cloak, like a magical production, then rose like a long bouquet of blood-red but fragrant roses. I was expecting to see a wand in his hand, but there was none as it landed like a feather on my left shoulder. Its warmth pleasantly penetrated my shirt and a prickling sensation followed, then gradually wore off. I was now able to move and speak, though I said nothing and remained stationary.

“Do not be afraid of what you have seen of me,” his lips pronounced as he flipped his monk’s hood off his head. My eyes were continually drawn to his as I began feeling a strange connection growing between us. It was as if he was whispering into my ear, yet I didn’t understand why this was happening to me. The message appeared blurred on my chalkboard brain, then cleared.  Then I saw a trail of black ants marching in single file. “WTF,” I thought. Hell, no. That’s a trail of words marching across my chalkboard brain. “Billions of average people are being made aware of a coming human extinction, just as you are now.”

Still feeling as if sandpaper lined my mouth, I thought he’d have red eyes, but, no, his eyes were cobalt blue. Such strangeness to have blue eyes that had immeasurable depths of blackness like trying to see into a licorice-black room at midnight. Looking closer, not in a daze now, I also noticed that his ginger hair matched his reddish facial skin. His closed lips formed a thin line as if sharply cut. His teeth were white above a strong chin. The protruding chin had a deep Kirk Douglas cleft.

Finally, my tongue found its legs and I started running at the mouth asking nonsense questions plus silly and rambling

declarations as if I were still an eight-year-old kid trying to avoid being punished. In between those embarrassing events my burping and farting overwhelmed my body. I felt barely in control of my urine and bowels. I desperately needed Alka Seltzer and Depends. My silly thought was, “Oh, what a relief it would be if I didn’t foul myself with shit and pee.” See? Just like an eight-year-old kid.

Before any of those repugnant actions occurred Cardinal changed back into bird form, flew upward, and hovered like a hummingbird, then landed on my left shoulder. With his conical beak nearly touching my ear I heard and then felt vibrations that tickled my inner ear.

“What I’m about to do to you will be an uncomfortable test. You will feel the increasing discomfort of having a hyper-sensitive ear.”

I saw a spark in his eyes and a flash of light contained in his pupil. It was as if the spark exploded, a microscopic supernova. The first thing I yelled was, “What the fuck!” then covered my ears, to no avail.

“What do you hear?”

“Damn! I hear urine dripping into my bladder. I hear my feces sliding down my large intestine to fill my colon and rectum. My blood gurgles as it rushes out of my head. As it flows through my capillaries, veins, and arteries it sounds like a swift river. I feel the loudness of my breathing and the functioning of my lungs absorbing oxygen. I hear loud noises all around my immediate environment. I’m at a point where I can’t stand the onslaught of the various noises attacking me. My head is about to explode. Stop, please! This is agony! Why would you do this? A test of what? My knees weakened, I grew dizzy, then nauseous. “Please stop!” It did.

“Do you understand how the gift of hearing is absolutely wonderful, except when you can hear the loudness of everything around you? Then it’s not a pleasant gift but severe pain. Now, is my cardinal bird form still your favorite?”

“I’d have to think about that now. I’m now associating red with unbearable pain.”

“See how the wonderful human gift of hearing can change to pain, if taken to an extreme? All life is like that, including your sex life. Nothing escapes the pain of extremes. Socrates was correct: Everything in moderation; nothing in excess.

“Now try an excess of physical feeling as well as hyper-hearing.”

“Again, I saw the spark in his eyes appear to explode. I now had hyper-feelings. I could feel and hear the sweat gushing out of my skin, and I could feel and hear my body growing by micro millimeters as well as, the hairs pushing their way through to the surface. I wanted to scream at the feelings and the noise of growing hairs. I squinted my eyes in pain and felt my eyelids smashing against the lower lids like a thunderclap. Then the earthquake sound of my every facial movement as well as the cracking sounds of my joints and the stretching and contracting of tendons and muscles. It, like before, was agony. “At the threshold of madness, I screamed in terror as spittle sprayed from my mouth, the spittle looking and feeling like shotgun pellets as they sprayed from my lips.

“Stop this! Stop it! What is the point? Again, why are you doing this? Is this plethora of attacking sounds and feelings a punishment? Punishment for what? What’s the point of this torture? What have I done to deserve this treatment?”

“The Cardinal God now ended the hyper-sounds and feelings, and I was able to step back from the precipice of madness, though I was angered.”

Cardinal God spoke: “I’m one of Nature’s Gods, the bird God. There are many Gods in Nature as the Native Americans used to believe. But where there used to be conflicts, we are now united against the destruction of Mother Nature by an ever-growing disease. Humans are that disease, like cancer, spreading and killing the body of Nature. Nature is desperately trying to survive the careless and rampant destruction that is inherent in humans. Humans thoughtlessly destroy or pollute the air, water, and land. A dozen animals and plants become extinct every year. Everything you call progress is destroying your own environment. Mother Nature’s citizens are losing their homes, food supply, being poisoned with chemicals, running from fires. You are paving the road to your own extinction as well and you are travelling at great speed. Your foolishness is astounding.

“Nature is alive and sentient, not that humans would ever believe that. Since I’m the Bird God, I will lead my winged brethren against humans, the Nature killers. We will invade humanity incessantly. We will be thousands of times worse than that movie called Birds. Millions of bees will look for you, sting you, kill you. We winged creatures will darken the sky with our attacks. It will be a war that you cannot win. All of Nature’s Gods will do the same thing. The sun will scorch you; the rain will become hail and batter you and your material possessions. The four-legged animal God will lead the animals against you, attack and devour as well as spread disease among you. The subsurface creatures will surface to harass you. Your crops will be destroyed, your buildings will collapse, termites will seek and destroy your wooden houses and ants will overwhelm your towns and cities. Many of us will also die, but this is what you humans can expect, extinction so that the earth can recover from your destructive tendencies.

“I am the emissary with the message to change your ways or be extinct in a couple decades. We, the Nature’s Gods, are now sending emissaries to all world leaders. Those leaders will get the same message that I’ve just given you. We will allow you humans twenty-five years to significantly improve the natural environment that has sustained you for thousands of years despite your carelessness, and thoughtless destruction of ninety-five per cent of all insects, animals and plant life that once existed.”

I looked at Cardinal and paused. My thoughts drifted like sand on a windy day. I screamed at Cardinal, “Humans can’t universally agree on anything. What you want won’t happen, not in any measurably significant way. Humans are not only prone to violence, but they also like to destroy things.”

“Then, like the thousands of extinct animals and plants, humans will meet the same fate. Nature Gods were always in conflict until we had to work together to save ourselves from further destruction. Your Gods, the world’s human leaders, must do the same. If not, we will drive you mad and into extinction.”

“For a God, you haven’t studied humans carefully enough. There’s no coming together for the common good because there is no common good except for small groups of people willing to cooperate. We all live differently, eat differently, work differently, dress differently, speak differently, think differently. This prevents most groups or countries of human from agreeing on much of anything. Extinction is waiting for us already. You just need to wait and let us kill ourselves. Humans will do all the work for you.”

 I said, “But to kill all humans would be murder, if you did that. You would be murdering billions of humans, even those trying to help the environment.”

Cardinal God looked at me with a sneer. “We are Gods,” he shouted. We don’t follow all your synthetic ethics any more than your own personal God does. We are above all that and give it no attention at all, except to get a belly laugh or two. With Gods, whatever they do is the right thing to do. Why? Because we are Gods and, thus, error free. We control life and death. But I do like the idea of relaxing while you all kill yourselves. It’ll take too long.”

“What form of humanicide at you talking about?”

“A vengeful, torturous, and lengthy one as you humans have thrust upon us. We will make you not only hypersensitive to hearing and feeling, physical and emotional, but also to smelling, tasting, and sight.”

“We will all die by the hypersensitivity that you can impose on us? That’s being as cruel as humans have been to Nature,” I screamed at him. I heard him say, “Fight fire with fire.”

I massaged my throbbing temples. I felt as if I had too much blood speeding through my head. My head was about to explode. My sense of reality became a shifting illusion accompanied by the loss of common sense. Then I felt as if all blood had drained from my head making me feel light-headed and that I was about to faint.

“You’re about to feel that agonizingly torturous punishment now. Soon you’ll feel like scalping yourself with your bare fingers to stop the popping noise of your hair popping off your head and the unbearable itch of your bald head. You will rip your ears off to stop the piercing sounds, but even pushing a sharp object into your ears to destroy your eardrums won’t stop the noises. You will imagine them. Your skin will grow so tender, so overly sensitive that everything you touch will be painful to you. Your skin will tear, shred, and become abraded easily.

“You will smell all the putrid odors around you, even your own intestinal feces and the stench of other humans as far as a mile away from you. You may attempt to sever your nose, but the smells will continue unabated. You will be able to feel and taste the pollution in the air and you may not be able to drink water due to the pollution content. You’ll want to rip out your own eyes to avoid the unbearable ugliness that’s occurring to everything around you. The voracious birds may pluck out your eyes before you do it. You will feel extremes in temperatures in unending cycles. You will …”

I interrupted him. I begged him. “Please. Please stop! Why are you telling me this?”

“No. I will not stop. The more shocked you are, the more persistent, indomitable you’ll be convincing others of their fate, extermination, extinction. You think the term ‘mother nature’ is a cute bunny, but ‘mother nature’ really is like a mother to you. She always has been, always supporting you. But now she’s sick. Humans are the cause of that sickness. Mother Nature might need a thousand years to restore herself to her former glory.”

I now felt weak, dizzy, and confused. I leaned against a tree for support, but I fell to my knees in an all-encompassing agony. My heartbeat with explosive sounds. I was about to dig into my chest to grab my heart to stop it and stop the turbulent river of blood, but the pain stopped. I sat with my back against the tree, recovering the sanity that I had been losing. I was out of breath, sweating, anguished when I looked up into Cardinal’s black mask and found those blue eyes, those deceitfully wicked orbs that offered no mercy.

Chilled and trembling I sat with my back against the tree. The bark dug into my back, but I didn’t care. Numbness helped me to endure. What I didn’t expect was the tree’s bark slowly splitting open vertically and the bark wrapping around me as a coat would. I felt no harm, but I was being held as if I were in a straitjacket. And yet it was not uncomfortably tight but offered a comforting warmth. I felt drowsy, then I slept. A Tree God? Or one of the Tree God’s followers? I fell asleep and dreamed about Cardinal. Cardinal continued his monologue in my dream.

“We, Nature’s army, will crush the life out of humanity. Take this warning before it’s too late. Unknown to you, we have very slowly evolved into a thinking and feeling life form.”

Cardinal smirked, then added, “When you tipped over a tree root or any root or tangle of plants, we laughed at your thought of calling it an accident. It was no accident. The tree or other vegetation tripped you. The leaves and other forest growth bounced around in the wind, you thought. But there was no breeze in the forest. The laughter of the leaves and other vegetation is what caused the movement, just like when humans laugh, their body shakes. Did you fall against tree bark and cut your hands? Did you get caught in a pricker bush? Did you slip off a rock while crossing a creek? Did your boat ever turn over and you didn’t know, for sure, what caused it? Did a rain cloud seem to be following you and soaking you while nearby areas looked dry? Did your skin burn badly even though you used an elevated level of sunscreen? Did a garden snake, frog or insect scare you with a sudden appearance? Did rats and bats infest your buildings and make you uncomfortable? Did a bird ever shit on you? And the most classic of all, have you ever sat by an open fire and have the smoke come directly at you? When you changed where you’re sitting, did the smoke follow you? You have been entertaining by all these things.”

Cardinal paused for a hearty laugh. His monk’s robe billowed outward making him look three times as wide.

Cardinal continued. “These were not accidents. They were times when we were having fun making fools of you. Have you had increasing weather and heat extremes? Cold areas getting hotter; hot areas getting colder? Has there been an increase in forest fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, earthquakes, viruses, flooding, tsunamis, and rare disease?

“We have Gods of Nature and vast armies that they can command into battle. Some if it will be an unknown form of biological warfare that you, in no way, are prepared for. We are already whittling away the human species with what you call natural disasters. We like unknown or rare viruses, too. Oh, I forgot to mention the fun we have with dust storms. People wandering around blind or half blind. It’s wonderful. The whole forest and fields laugh grandly. You think the wind is moving things, but to fool you again, the Sky God will blow a fake wind. Your ‘top of the food chain’ mentality prevents most humans from seeing the obvious. Without nature, there’s no food. No food? You die.”

“Oh, my God. You’re killing us already? It’s the leaders of all the world’s countries that you need to convince, not a powerless citizen like me.”

I looked at my feet. I felt as if I were swaying but I was standing in the same place as before. When I looked up I felt as if I were exiting a trance. The day was still sunny and mild, the forest still lush. The sounds and sights still pleasing. I drawled, “Oh, my God. You’re killing us already? It’s the leaders of all the world’s countries that you need to convince, not a powerless citizen like me.”

Cardinal looked puzzled. “Which Gods are you referring to? Roman gods, Greek gods, Phoenician gods, Egyptian gods, Aztec gods, or your most recently created Christian God and Islam God? Just how the hell many Gods do you humans need? You certainly have not been aware of Mother Nature’s Gods. None of your constant God-making has helped you so far. You simple humans need to pass along the message. World leaders are already being confronted with what will happen soon. Do you understand the human predicament?”

“Yes.” As I tried walking out of the forest I tripped over a tree root, fell against some tree bark, and cut my fingers as I reached out for support. It was a clumsy day for me, especially when I slipped off a wet, moss-covered creek rock and soaked myself up to my knees. After crossing the creek, I got tangled in a wild raspberry bush, its thorns cutting, scraping, scratching. I paused, frustrated by my obstacles. The wind was calm. I thought I heard muffled laughter but couldn’t see who it was. Despite the pain, I grinned and thought of Cardinal. I grabbed some raspberries, enjoyed their beauty, taste and smell, then thought of the pain I was in. It seemed like an inconsistency, a contradiction, the deceitfulness of our senses. A strong wind filled the area and the raspberry bushes parted, allowing me to step out of their claws. Coincidence? I continued and shortly came to the dirt road that I was looking for. I crossed the road. The wind blew a cloud of dust at me. My eyes began watering to help get the dust grit out of them. I stood by a telephone pole to clear the dust away. I saw double and blurry. I stood still, then felt it starting to rain. More raindrops fell on my shirt. I cleared the dust out of my eyes as whitish raindrops kept pummeling my shirt. I looked up at the sky. No clouds, bright sun. I was standing under the telephone lines while birds were shitting on me. I cursed, “What the fuck, Cardinal. Don’t be an asshole!” I walked toward the house, looked back, and saw a cardinal surrounded by other birds sitting on the telephone wires.