Budgie: Apocalypse

Matt was torn from his sleep by an obnoxious ringing sound. He hated the damned alarm clock more than anything, but it was an impotent kind of wrath. Without it he would likely sleep until mid-morning, which was, for Matt’s personal needs, far too late. Without opening his eyes, he groaned and fumbled around on his bedside table, scattering paraphernalia and knocking his lava lamp over so that it leant up against the wall. With the constant klaxoning silenced, he took the liberty of laying there in silence for a few minutes longer before dragging himself out of bed and into the shower. He left the table in a state of disarray. At this time of day, everything was met with a solid wall of apathy. The world could be ending, and Matt wouldn’t care until he was showered and had consumed his handful of wholegrain cereal. Yes, that’s right: milk not included.

After the shower, which was short, sweet and to the point (as his mother had so rigorously taught him in his youth), he descended the stairs to find the lounge-room messy. Worse still, it still contained a certain funk that hung in the air persistently. On his way to the kitchen, he collected several items of sauce encrusted cutlery and dishes that were not his own, and dropped them lazily into the sink, turning the hot water on in an attempt to revert the armour-like reddish substance to a more manageable form. He dipped his hand into a box he had taken from the cupboard and took out a dozen or so Mini-Weets, which were, of course, packed full of wholegrain goodness. He popped them into his unshaven maw one by one, watching the sauce slowly shrink as the water took it away, little by little. Satisfied with the half-hearted cleansing, he turned off the flow and re-entered the lounge-room, tapping on the power button on his computer with his toe, and in the wait, re-arranging other peoples things to create a false air of tidiness.

Matt’s morning routine always contained a pilgrimage to his computer, where he would systematically scour roughly a dozen sites, reading web-comics and the like for a funtastic start to another monotonous day. A popular instant messaging program called MSN was always the final instalment to this daily digital onslaught. He logged on to find three contacts online (seven if you count the randoms he had accumulated from somewhere or other).  One of whom was an old acquaintance from his schooling days, which had concluded last year and yet still felt as though it were an age ago. He began conversing with the person, but hearty greetings and interested inquiries into each other’s general wellbeing aside, he was met with a disappointing lack of interest. In fact, the apathy was palpable. Undeterred, he continued to the next one. The results were more satisfying, thankfully, but a sudden urgent need to leave gripped the other contact, and with a promise to ‘chat l8r’, he was gone.

Fortunately for Matt’s insatiable need for social interaction, Lizz was his third contact. If all else fails, or indeed, if nothing at all fails, Lizz could always be counted on for a chat of some description. He opened the window and dropped a generic line of greeting.

M -Hey, how’s it going? ^_^

There was a long pause as Lizz closed her current window and selflessly sacrificed herself by taking up the role of the person that Matt was talking too.

L -hey. Not too bad. Urself?
M -yeah, alright I guess. It’s as cold as crap here, though.
L -haha, it’s 27 here.
M -D:
L -sucker
M -damn you!
L -get up to much last night?
M -nah, I had an early one. By the state of the house though, I will assume the housemates did, however. It looks like a bomb went off in here...
L -lol
L -haha, renae is chasing chocobo around the house. It looks so cute
M -lol, I can imagine

Matt suddenly realised that he had something to do that was relatively important

M -brb, gotta go feed these damn budgies
L -k

The budgies belonged to Matt’s neighbour, Mrs Goldstein, who was out of town and had commissioned Matt’s services in keeping the creatures fed and watered. He slipped on some thongs and trudged outside. There was a distinct dampness in the air outside, and he knew it would rain soon. It would be wise to move the cage into more adequate cover, but he would do that afterwards. The feeding would come first. As he approached the cage, he heard a kind of alarmed squawking come from inside. He lifted the corner of the tarpaulin-like sheet that covered it to see what was going on inside, but it was too dark to see. He pulled the cover off with an overly cheery cry of greetings and salutations. When he caught a glimpse of the budgies, however, he fell silent.

The budgies were all standing on the bottom of the cage, motionless, all looking with piercing sideways glares at Matt. They were standing in a rough circle around a bloody carcass of what appeared to be one of the budgies. They all had a reddish tint to their feathers around their beaks. They were eating the other budgie. Matt made a sound that expressed his shock and horror at what he had seen. Weren’t budgies herbivorous? That’s what Matt had assumed, anyways. Matt decided that the budgies had had enough to eat and dropped the box on the ground. He walked back into the house in disgust.

M -ok, that was freaky
L -what?
M -one of the budgies got eaten by the others...
L -WTF? D:
M -that’s what I said

There was a loud, clanging crash outside. Damn things must have knocked over the cage somehow. Why the hell were they acting so damn strangely. Matt felt he had better investigate.

M -awe ffs...  they knocked over the cage. Brb

Once again he wandered outside and was, of course, confronted with a fallen cage. It was only as he was picking it up that he realised that the cage door was open, and the birds had escaped. Only the half-eaten bird remained. Matt swore: Mrs Goldstein wouldn’t be happy with this. He’d probably have to try and catch the damned things, and he was busy staring dumbly at the cage and contemplating methods of budgie recovery when the ominous shadow fell upon him. He looked up, directly into the eyes of the beast. A huge flock of budgies was diving towards him. For a few seconds, Matt could do nothing but stand there and stare. It was all too surreal. He had barely turned around and began to run before the swarm was upon him, acting like a single entity, pecking and scratching, and in some cases simply smashing into his back and head. Individually, the blows were insignificant, but together they were fearsome. He burst through the door covered in minute wounds, and panting.

He believed himself to be safe. All he had to do is look up bird removals, or something similar, in the yellow pages, and wait. In reality, however, the fact remains that the back door never closes properly unless one adheres to a strict method of lifting and wiggling. This was a fact that Matt had overlooked in his panic. Soon the house was full of bloodthirsty budgies, swarming with an evil intent. Suddenly, the thought that he might die here hit him with a terrible force. One thing consumed him, the desire to warn people, to let people know what was happening, and perhaps to get help. Holding his hands up in front of his face, he ran to the computer, and began typing hurriedly.

M -lizz thebudgies attacking I dont no what
L -What? Whats going on?
M -help bushgies u ka fj ,m.  Eye
L -Uh, matt, what are you on?

He began typing more, using one hand to swat the budgies away from his face, but the screen went blank. He looked down to see a cluster of budgies chewing at the power cord to his computer, then the last thing he saw was a budgies head hanging from his upper vision, which lunged forward with a squawk, then nothing.

*          *          *

Thousands of kilometres away, Lizz sat at her computer, somewhat confused. What the hell was wrong with Matt today. A brief feeling of concern washed over her, which she dismissed as anxiety: everything was of course fine. She sniffed, staring at the screen, her septum piercing aggravating her sinuses somewhat. It was Renae who cleared Lizz’s mind when she ran in after a tortoise shell cat called Chocobo, squealing. Lizz picked her up and bounced her on her knee as Renae announced she wanted eggs for breakfast. She turned the computer screen off as she got up to fix the eggs, and that was the last she heard of Matt.