Quick note: This is a horror short
The ducks had evaporated. That was a problem.
Never before had this happened in nature. The old stories sometimes mentioned a turkey or two disappearing in dense fog, but the sudden evaporation of every duck on the planet? That was definitely new.
The swans were found, that was easy. The chickens stayed where they were left. Even the owls, long maligned by occult hapinstance, remained as they owl-shaped as they ever were.
Many agreed that something had to be done, but whatever that something was proved to be a bit of a head scratch.
Scientists were called when this sort of thing popped up usually, but as the world cried the scientists failed to heed the call. The scattered few who did answer their phone met the questions with a curt laugh and then the cutting off of their laboratory landline. One scientist, clearly hungover and sick with jaundice, yelled ‘Google it, what do I care?’ into the phone before vomiting into a pot plant and returning to sleep.
Duck evaporation was googled of course: but even in the endless swamp of internet discourse, the hypothetical discussion of evaporating waterfowl had yet to be troubleshooted. So it was that the world had to come to grips with the confusion of this morning by itself. Town parks were left desolate in absence as the only remaining trace of the missing ducks were small mounds of dusty ash and some dense air that lingered in patches. Crumbs of leftover bread were later found by a bench with the word REMEMBER faintly carved into it, but this was suspected to only be the work of a distressed grandmother.
Hunters were hired.
That’s what hunters did, they found ducks. Well, not in this circumstance usually, not in the circumstance of just wanting to know that something was still there, but who else could we call? The prime minister had said ‘Strange times do call for strange measures’ and so every hunter in the country gathered in search. They were not hunters on this day, they were finders. They amassed in the parks and scoured the bush land, blowing their duck whistles to no avail. For two full days they searched and when they returned without even a feather people began to wonder if ducks really ever did exist.
This problem of evaporation was met with a variety of feelings but as time marched on they coalesced into only sadness. The world came to mourn this loss for they did not only lose a friend they lost a part of themselves.
Well… that was before the rains began.
A deluge of feathers and bills cascaded down, damply sloping to the earth with echoless quacks and a ravenous appetite for bread. They had returned but not as we wanted them to.
The fifth seal broken and darkness was now released from its prison. The silent watchers, long pacitent in their lurking, had finally shed their mask. Ducks, again alive and returned to their true form. No prisoners taken, the parks to run red with innocent blood, apocalypse! The horror, the terror that can not be unseen. Crying for mercy the onlookers clawed at their eyes in an attempt to redact the visage of that which is indescribable. No hope was left to be lost.
Maddening and impossible, the beast waddled closer.
‘Quack, quack, quack.’
It was truly good weather for ducks.
Jacob McCray
-2019
Sunday Short Stories 