I was so scared, I forgot to breathe. I panted in and out.

The crow-man positioned himself again so the light captured and accentuated his facial features. He posed with his chest out and his arms bent, taking up more space. He practically beamed under the blinding luster of the sun, basking in the warm spotlight. Like a model during a photoshoot.

Obviously, I couldn’t say that the crow-man was ugly and malformed as I expected him to be. He was not a crow-shaped man or a grotesque humanoid either. Ugly rumors, that’s all they were. He was handsome enough that he could pass as the leading actor in a romance movie, he was that good looking. His pretty face had a gorgeous set of human teeth and his charming smile was disarming. Not much crow in there except for his clothes. His black overcoat with two white crests on opposite sides hung loosely over his tightly wrapped shirt and black leggings.

Soon after, two more crows flew down to the side benches. Without a sound, they also transformed into humans and flanked the first one. Their faces were covered by red masks. The masks the crow-men wore were ugly and permanently frowning. They sported thick and bushy angry eyebrows with deeply etched forehead wrinkles. What crawled up their butts?

The rumors were probably about them. They both wore phallic noses, noses as long as a person’s hand and pointed up at the tip. Regardless of the ridiculous design, those masks were hyperrealistic. I would have loved for them to turn to the side and show where the mask ended and the red paint began.

The way the two masked crow-humans stood protectively around him, made me think of bodyguards. Maybe the crow-human had his own bodyguards. This made him a very important crow.

I stared at his flawless chiseled face. The longer I did so, my sense of horror was immediately replaced by a sense of fascination and an immense curiosity. He enjoyed being stared at. I could tell because he tilted his nose up and smiled.

His smile grew wide. He closed his eyes, raised his chin, and extended his arms to the sky as if absorbing the sunlight as plants do or absorbing adoration. Maybe both. He seemed to view himself a virtuoso conductor and his crows were his orchestra, because his opened hands slowly and dramatically grabbed at the air as he pulled it to his chest. He suddently released the invisible energy he harnessed with a quick outstretching of his arms, blasting us with a soft burst of air. The bodyguards bowed slightly in reverence. The theatrics! Was he full of it?

And then he waved at me and winked. Very human of him. “Hello!” Was that really a hello? Or was I imagining all of this?

I jumped back two steps when he started talking, almost laughing at myself for not expecting it. The whole thing was so surreal, why wouldn’t the very important crow-human speak? It just fit with how everything was so crazy. A talking spider and a talking crow. What next?

If he really could speak, I couldn’t wait to hear what this guy — who already seemed so full of himself — had to say. I rolled my eyes involuntarily.