The Pecking Order

You open your eyes to sunlight and the sweet stench of rot. Like the world itself has been left out too long, a forgotten fruit, turning black. You’re on the porch, where the wind moves like a drunk, stumbling in fits and starts. The seagulls are watching.

No, no. Not watching. Perched on the mailbox, the porch rail, the bare branches of the dead tree in the front yard. Beady eyes like wet, black glass. And they’re more than watching. They’re judging you.

You feel like a kid again, standing in the principal's office, guts twisting because they’ve called your parents. The gulls are here, and they’ve come to collect.

First, it’s just a single gull swooping down, close enough that the wind from its wings raises the hairs on your neck. You’re not scared. It’s just a bird. But then there’s another. Then three. Now a swarm, an angry cloud of feathers and beaks and screams that claw the air around you. Wings slapping like dirty laundry hung in a hurricane. You try to swat them away, but they keep coming, and you remember a line your father used to say when he was still alive: "Sometimes you gotta take what’s coming to you." He’d say it in that slow, deliberate way, the way people do when they know what they’re talking about, even if you don’t. You always thought he was talking about karma, the way life balances the scales.

It’s not fear that sets in. It’s the understanding. The way that, one day, a hole in the ground will have your name on it, and you’ll just have to lie down and take it.

They’re biting now, sharp beaks finding soft spots. Your arms. Your neck. The tender flesh of your face. Pain is electric, bright, then dull. You stumble backward, back through the front door, which swings closed with a polite little click, and the gulls—they’re still outside. They perch again, lining the porch, the mailbox, the dead tree, like nothing happened. Like you didn’t matter.

Inside, the silence settles over you like a heavy blanket. You’re bleeding, but only a little. Small holes, like the ones you punch in paper when you need to file something. They’ll heal.

You’re standing there, breath shivering in your chest, and you finally see it—a pile of garbage in the corner. Black bags split open, leaking spoiled leftovers and empty beer cans, attracting flies. The trash you forgot to take out last week. And the week before that. Your eyes trace the trail of filth—crumbs, wrappers, gnawed bones—all the way to the front door.

You look out the window. The seagulls are still there, quiet now, watching. It’s not karma. It’s not fate. It’s just them, waiting, until you clean up your mess.

That’s the twist. No cosmic justice. No reckoning. Just the garbage you never took out, and the gulls that came to remind you.