Evil Flowers


 Contents
 
 Title Page
 Copyright Notice
 Birds
 The Thread
 The Thread 2
 The Thread 3
 The Thread 4
 Evil Flowers
 A Bit Like This
 Protest
 Escape
 The Cliffs, When Dead
 White Dove Becomes Black Crow
 The Mational Nuseum
 The Nordics Seen from the Outside
 Leeches on the Wrong Track
 By the Shack
 Digressive Fit
 Slime Eels in the Dark
 Short Monster Analysis
 A Visit to Monk’s House
 Wish, Dream, Observation
 The Point
 The Back Door
 Protest
 The New Potatoes
 Seconds
 Notes
 Also by Gunnhild Øyehaug
 A Note About the Author and Translator
 Newsletter Sign-up
 Copyright
 
 
 
 Guide
 
 Cover
 Start of Content
 Title Page
 Birds
 Notes
 Contents
 Copyright
 
 
 
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 Begin Reading
 Table of Contents
 A Note About the Author and Translator
 Copyright Page
 
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 BIRDS
 
 As I sat on the toilet menstruating, a fairly large part of my brain fell down into the toilet bowl. I’d seen brains on TV, so could easily differentiate a piece of brain from a piece of mucosa. There it was—not black and clumpy, but brownish pink and shiny. I said nothing when I went back into the kitchen, I just sat down and ate my tacos as if nothing had happened. I did a few quick checks to make sure I was still functioning—did I understand requests like “pass me the sour cream” or “can I have the taco sauce, please”? I ran through the names and ages of everyone around the table, my husband and three children, and I looked out the window to see if I still knew where I was. Then, as I chewed, I quickly estimated the dimensions of the kitchen, rattled off the alphabet in my head, ran through the lineage on my side of the family, and Tom’s. Everything seemed to be in working order. But later, when I went back up to my office and sat down to work, I saw something hanging from the yellow desk light that I didn’t recognize. From the way it was hanging, it must have been there for some time, it certainly wasn’t new. It was a peculiar shape, a kind of half-moon, with an uneven curve and a kind of tip at one end. The tip was black. The underside was yellow and the topside a darker yellow and black, and some white with something that resembled a human eye in it, only when I looked closer, it lacked the white of an eye. Across what I would call the back of the half-moon were some cuts that looked like parallel grooves, which ran back toward the flat end. When Hans popped his head in around the door a little later, I took the thing off the lamp and held it up. Hans was ten, so might possibly know what the thing was, if he wasn’t too young. What is this, Hans? I said. He looked at me, a little nervous. It’s … it’s a kind of tit, but I’m not sure what kind, please don’t be angry. Angry, I said, why would I be angry? You normally get angry when I don’t know exactly what kind of bird it is, or what sound it makes. Oh, I said. So what’s a tit? Mommy, you’re the one who can answer that, he said, exasperated, I can only tell you it’s a bird! A small bird from the tit family. He threw up his hands and closed the door. So the thing in front of me was something he called a bird, from the tit family; none of it made any sense to me. I googled. “Bird.” I was presented with a list of things similar to the thing that is called bird in the singular, birds in the plural. It was a living creature, and I could see that they all had that tip coming out of what I’d come to realize was their head, but the tip varied in size and shape, and was actually called a beak. And birds could fly—I had to laugh out loud when I discovered that. These were creatures that could actually fly! I heard a knock on the door. My husband stuck his head in. Hans said that you asked him what sort of tit it was, Tom said. Nina, surely there’s a limit to how many categories you expect them to know, isn’t it enough that they know it’s a tit? Yes, of course, I said. He seemed to soften. I know that your defense is coming up, and I understand, I really do.