Being Mr. Kenny

Mrs Mouth had always been known as a harsh, mad woman. Each Tuesday she would sit in her front room eating sandwiches of beans and bacon. She sat watching passers-by waiting for one to fall over, at which point she would rush out and attach a ‘FOOL’ sticker to their forehead. The stickers had been made with industrial strength adhesive, and quite often a visit to Accident and Emergency was required to remove them.

She had been doing this for about three hours one particular day when a bird flew in through the open window and landed on her head. Despite many attempts to remove the bird (it was a magpie) she could not. The magpie remained with her for the rest of the day.

When she woke up the next morning the magpie was still there. The morning after that, the bird still remained fixed to her head. Indeed, it appeared to Mrs Mouth that the bird intended to be a permanent fixture. Mrs Mouth pondered that the bird must leave her head at night to find food, since it remained healthy and alive but she never saw it feed. However, both her attempts to find out were neatly and viciously foiled by the bird.

She made the first attempt during the second week of the bird’s residence on her head. It was quite a simple plan and involved setting up a camera in her room to record the night’s events; she pointed the camera at her bed, switched it on and got under the covers. She fell soundly asleep.

***

She woke up in the early hours of the morning when it was still dark, screaming with a terrible pain in her eyes. It took her a few moments to realise what was happening. The bird was carefully and methodically shredding her eyes to ribbons with its sharp beak. She tried desperately to remove the magpie, but it dug its claws into her scalp and would not budge. She did not recall much of that morning and she awoke, after several days, in a hospital ward. Her neighbour had heard the screams and he and four paramedics had managed to get her into an ambulance. She had lost consciousness before they could administer a sedative.

She did not recall the events of that otherwise peaceful morning, but according to reports she had gone quite berserk, tearing around her room and destroying it in the process. It was obvious to the ambulance-men and her neighbour what was responsible for Mrs Mouth’s injury, and they made a concerted effort to remove it. Between them, the five men lost seven digits, and several pints of blood. It was recommended to avoid any contact with the bird at all costs, something that was instinctively adhered to by anyone who had any doings with Mrs Mouth in those first few weeks.

Interestingly there was never any trace found of the recording equipment, despite many searches being made by the police. The video surfaced a few weeks later but the did not reveal any clues, the recording having been stopped about an hour after it started. The front door was found ajar and forced so the police presumed that she had been the victim of a robbery. Years later Mrs Mouth would remark that her bird had shown remarkable ingenuity. To that day, she said, she did not know how it obtained its comestibles.

Her second attempt was much simpler in design than her first. She thought she might be able to fool the bird into revealing its secret by pretending to be asleep. This was during the few days following the operation, and the stitches in her eyes were still fairly fresh.

That night she noticed the bird seemed to know something was happening because it was unsettled. Normally it would remain quite still as it perched on her head, but on this night it kept moving from one foot to the other, as if it were looking for exactly the best place to roost. After settling for a moment, it began, very carefully, to remove the stitches from her eyes, pulling them out one by one. Once they had been replaced, Mrs Mouth decided that it was a bad idea to try to trick the magpie.

It was many years before she was fully able to cope with being blind. Sometimes, after knocking over a glass, or tearing her jacket she would sit and weep and on those days the magpie would caw softly and gently paw at her head. Mrs Mouth found comfort in this, and in the few months it took to adjust her life to living with him, she grew to love deeply the magpie. She referred to him as ‘her feathered companion’.

It took a while longer for the villagers to follow suit. At first they thought she must be cursed, or that she was a witch. The magpie would stand defiantly, its head cocked, and look menacingly at anyone brave enough to return the stare. In the first few years its hatred was absolute. Bit by bit, however, the villagers’ fear diminished, and the bird relented a little, yet never showed affection to any but Mrs Mouth. There was, however, one person to whom the magpie took a liking. When Mrs Mouth went to the butcher’s shop to pick up her sausages each week, he would give the magpie a rasher of bacon. It would devour it as an eagle eats its prey; using its claws to hold the meat so that it could tear pieces off with its beak. Sometimes he had some offal to spare and after eating the liver or kidney (or sometimes lung) the magpie would become quite dozy and remained so for the rest of the day.

Once they had adjusted to Mrs Mouth’s new companion, the villagers would cry out when she walked past, “Look who it is! It is Mrs Mouth and her Magpie!” and she would smile in their direction and wave. People showed her immense kindness and acceptance and in time she became quite a local hero. Those whom she had declared a fool now helped her move around the town and sometimes ran small errands for her. On the third Tuesday of April each year, a festival was held in her honour. It was called Birding Day; the children danced, the women baked cakes, and in the evening a re-enactment of the “Birding” was performed in the village hall.

A favourite topic for discussion amongst the old men of the village was the mystery of the how the bird arrived, how it ate and why it was behaving so strangely for a magpie (as you will know, magpies do not usually live on people’s heads, nor do they eat meat). A number of theories were put forward, none of which were entirely satisfactory. Some said the magpie was mad, but that couldn’t explain how it had remained alive for so long without the need for food. Some people said that the bird had a demon, and that the demon had driven it to behave so unnaturally, and provided for the bird’s needs, but generally people just accepted the fact that a bird lived on Mrs Mouth’s head without the need for an explanation.

The magpie himself was equally feared and respected among the townsfolk. For instance when children misbehaved, they were told that Mouth’s Magpie would pay them a visit in the night and this normally ensured good behaviour. It was a strange but widely-known fact that birds fell silent as Mrs Mouth passed, and some even made little bowing movements in her direction.

***

On the morning of her fifty-third birthday, Mrs Mouth, after a fitful night, awoke with a sense of hollowness. It took her only a few seconds to realise what it was and she sat up suddenly in her bed with a gasp. She felt the top of her head and there were the familiar crusty bird droppings, but there was no magpie. The magpie was never seen by anyone after that, and the only trace she found was a drawer of silver milk-bottle tops, keys, small coins and other shiny items. On her pillow was a single black feather, which she wore in her hair for the remaining years of her life.

Birding Day is still celebrated in her little village, and after she died—having reached the age of ninety-two—the townspeople erected a bronze figure in the centre of the village square, commemorating their beloved Mrs Mouth and her respected Magpie.