The Crimson Gull, or My Morning Walk on May 31, 2024
by Bryan Stubbles
Horrific Scribes Extremity Rating:
Bright and early. That’s what they say. Walk in the morning when it’s still cool. Well, I waited until around ten a.m. for my daily constitutional. A crisp 68 degrees fahrenheit. I wore a gray long-sleeved shirt and tan shorts. Comfort over style any day.
The sky shone yellow, as it’s wont to do this time of year. The cold squawk of a seagull burnt its way into my ears. Nature. Life. Blue clouds and green haze decorated the sky. I checked my phone. I was planning to walk just thirty minutes today. A leisurely pace.
My block is a midcentury subdivision in northern Utah. We are bounded on one side by Main Street and the other by the freeway, which is partially blocked by an azure retaining wall. All was well in the neighborhood. I left my lime brick house, ready to meet the uncertain world. I suffer from some anxiety. I love my lovable neighbors, but small talk with them is better in small doses.
Squawk. The seagull asserted itself, though I could not see it. I walked a quiet lap around the block. Nobody out. God be praised. Nothing new. The California Gull was the state bird, so seeing specimens around was nothing new. They liked to hang out at the Great Salt Lake, the dump and the dumpster behind Taco Bell. Trash birds.
A cerise USIC truck was idling near the cluster of mailboxes. A longhaired employee sat in the driver’s seat. They wore a turquoise reflector vest. The truck was idling. Weird. It stood out. The USIC is the government agency that draws markings on the ground before people dig. That way folks don’t cause a power outage with a scoop of a shovel. Neon lines of blue, green and brown criss crossed the street in front of a house for sale. Who knew what was going on in the idling truck.
In my second lap I saw a crimson seagull swoop down like the majestic creature that it was. The neighborhood rabbits ran in fear. They were the color of those Peeps candy. I never figured a seagull could take a rabbit, but perhaps the rabbits knew more than I.
The crimson seagull skipped along the black grass. What a sight!
“Go fuck yourself,” it said. Seagulls can talk. Not as articulate as the famed parrot, but they can. Usually, they sound like parrots muttering under their breath. “Go fuck yourself,” it said. Definitely not as articulate as a parrot.
“Excuse you?” I said.
“I said go fuck yourself,” it said.
“How ‘bout I get my pellet gun.”
“Bad idea, motherfucker.”
“I’ll use the flat head pellets so it’ll punch a hole in ya.”
“I punched a hole in your mom,” it said.
I walked away. Fuck that bird. And its mama. I should be able to go around the block without dealing with an antisocial seagull. I finished my lap. The gull was sitting atop the candy-striped telephone pole. A bird on a wire. A perfect target. But not today. I was gonna walk my walk and ignore the bird.
I could feel its eyes pull at me from its precious perch above the neighborhood. It said nothing. Just watching. Waiting.
My thirty minutes were just about up. I heard a low whistle. The USIC employee was still idling in the car. This time the crimson gull swooped down and grabbed one of the little peep-colored rabbits. The bird’s beak cut the rabbit’s skin, letting the aquamarine blood flow. A flock of seagulls gathered around the still-living rabbit. The gull had buddies. It was as though they were drinking the sweet blood. The poor rabbit twitched up a storm. Did it feel pain? Did I feel like being a hero?
I remember so many Attenborough or National Geographic documentaries. The ones with the lions killing and eating the giraffes. I know it was just nature, but that was some vicious stuff. Besides, these gulls were different. One had told me to go fuck myself. The audacity! Fuck ‘em. I went inside and grabbed my pellet gun. I ran to the other side of the block.
“Step away from the rabbit!” I yelled, pointing my pellet gun at them. The birds snickered as they hopped away on their stupid bird legs.
The rabbit was fucked up. Its leg was where its head should be. Its head was on its stomach. Its tail was stuffed in its mouth. The birds had mutilated the poor thing. What. The. Fuck?
POP!
One seagull’s chest depressed and a mess of feathers exploded out its back. I was glad I was using the flathead target pellets. Pointed pellets that slice through the target were too humane for this lot. I wanted chest depressions and feather explosions.
POP! POP! POP! POP!
I don’t know how many shots I got off. However many it took to run the air out of the gun’s cartridge. Dead crimson gulls littered the black yard, with their feathers falling slowly from the air. Spots of aquamarine appeared where what little blood they had had come out. The birds stood back up.
“You can’t kill us,” one said, like a parrot on ether. They walked towards me.
“We came to play the People Game,” one said.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Come play with us.”
“Play with yourself, ya fuckin’ weirdo,” I said. I felt it. Like a punch. My neck. Was bleeding. And there was a goddamned seagull’s beak stuck in it.
“Drink the drink!” one of the birds yelled. “Absorb the buzz!” I fell on my back. The fall knocked the wind right out of me. A weeping willow hung above me. Blood tears fell from the tree like ocean spray. Waves smashing the coast of my mind. Blood drops dropping and dripping on me. Blood flowing from my neck. I was like Death dying.
I must’ve lost consciousness. The next time I opened my eyelids, a crimson gull was hovering over me like a funky plague doctor.
“You’re people-sized?” I asked.
The giant bird nodded.
“You give us life,” it said.
I looked around. Sure enough, the other birds were the size of people, too. Their beaks dripped with my blood. Seagull vampires who’d grown tall at the expense of my hemoglobin.
“Please just kill me,” I said.
“We cannot kill that which gives us life,” one said.
“Beak him!” one of the gulls ordered, his voice shooting into me like an electric pitchfork.
I pushed myself up. Funny how one has the necessary upper body strength when one is trying to escape death. My old gym teacher would be proud.
I was not curious enough to find out what “beak him” meant. I ran across the crystal pavement until I reached the cerise USIC truck.
“Help!” I yelled at the driver. I opened the door. In doing so, I learned the hard way exactly what “beak him” meant.
The driver had no eyes. They also had a gaping wound on the inside of their right elbow. Precisely where an artery sits. Another open wound adorned their neck right at the carotid artery. Welcome to the beaking.
I threw the worker’s body on the pavement and hopped in the driver’s seat. I gunned it. I had to get away. The truck bounced as I accidentally ran over the body. I zipped a left turn, ready to reach Main Street and hopefully freedom. I didn’t see any crimson gulls. Yay.
I made it to Main Street. Wrecked vehicles littered the street. Moans of the dying filled the air like grape wine. I looked toward the intersection. A banner hung: I LOVE YOU. I ran to it. I was the only able-bodied human on Main Street. People-sized crimson gulls went from car to car, drinking the blood of the dying. Screams and whimpers punctuated the moans. How did I end up in a world populated by super-sized birds? The banner fell on me. I wore it like Rocky wears the American flag in those boxing movies.
“It was that fucker over there!” a seagull voice grumbled. Shit. A group of the birds were in the intersection. Somehow they were carrying baseball bats. Fuck me.
I ran to the Taco Bell kitty-corner from where I was. Mysteriously, it had avoided the gulls’ depredations. I ran inside.
The tan adobe decor was weirdly fake.
“Are you one of them?” a voice asked. I turned. A woman in a dull Taco Bell uniform held what looked like a sharpened mop handle.
“Do I look like a giant fucking vampire sea gull?”
“Sorry. I’m just paranoid,” she said.
“With good reason,” I said. Giant vampire seagulls were rampaging throughout the town it seemed.
“Do you reckon a sharpened stick will kill them like regular vampires?”
“Any other ideas?”
“Alka-Seltzer?” I asked.
Despite being the state bird, they could, according to rumor, be killed with Alka-Seltzer. Something about them not being able to fart. I never knew anyone who did this, so I reckoned it was bullshit.
“Please,” she said, walking away from me in disgust.
“You got another sharpened stick?” I asked.
“The other half of this mop.”
She tossed me the half that still had the mop attached.
“You ready to kill some vampire seagulls?” I asked. She rolled her eyes at me.
“Here,” she said, handing me bags of shitty Taco Bell food that nobody ever picked up.
Only then did I notice the people. The dead people. Maybe my mind had blocked it before. People and pieces of people were strewn across the floor.
“Fuck these rancid motherfuckers,” she said.
Crash! The front window broke. A sea gull had used its beak to do the busting. Anger, hate and fear overwhelmed me like a leaky waterbed.
“Aargh!” I charged the bird with my mop handle and stuck it through his murderous fucking beak. I’d pinned his beak together. He shook his head like crazy. The worker ran forward and stabbed him in the chest. Aquamarine blood squirted out like a burst pimple. The bird thrashed like a psychopathic carnival ride. One down, a bazillion to go.
“Watch your back!” I yelled. The worker turned around. A gull was in the prep area. She threw a plastic container of salad at it. I pulled my mop handle out of the dead gull’s beak. I ran like a fucking madman at the food prep sea gull vampire and jabbed my mop handle into its chest. The chest heaved and picked me up with it. Blood shot out and covered me. The gull tried to beak me, but I popped him one like Sugar Ray. While he was stunned, I twisted the mop stake around in its chest. It collapsed.
“Good work,” the employee said. She threw her stake like a javelin. THUD! It landed in a bird’s cold, cold heart. It exploded.
“I guess they blow up if you throw ‘em,” I said, sounding like the biggest dumbass.
By now the mass of birdy vampires was getting closer. I was on a mission. To distract them I ran outside with my bags of shitty Taco Bell food.
“Here. Eat this!” I yelled. I strategically placed the food bags in different areas around the Taco Bell. By now the wrecked cars were mostly on fire. I could see lemonade smoke rise from my neighborhood. Who knew what the fuck was going on? After depositing my Taco Bell load, I ran back inside and caught my breath.
“You’re out of shape,” the worker told me.
“I try to walk every day.”
I enjoyed the respite from killing.
“They’re gonna come back.”
“They might get sick,” I said. She looked at me as if she were sick of me.
A bird broke in with a baseball bat and hit me in the head. I hit the ground. I just stabbed up. If I didn’t hit its heart, I hit some place painful. It squawked like a proper seagull. My co-fighter grabbed the bat and promptly brained the bird. It wasn’t dead, but vampiring was gonna be a lot harder. I looked ahead and saw a line of birds.
“We’re outnumbered!” I said.
“Thanks, Captain Obvious.”
More like Captain Oblivious. So. Many. Birds.
“To the roof,” she said.
How does one get on the roof of Taco Bell? The worker had a ladder. That’s how.
She grabbed a ladder from the janitor’s closet.
“We only get one shot,” she said.
She grabbed the top end. I grabbed the bottom. We rushed the bloodfeasting mammoth seagulls to startle them like pigeons in Central Park. Fuck these guys.
She threw the ladder up the side and scampered up like a wall lizard. She was about to toss the ladder back when her eye caught me struggling. BOOM! A bird hit me, plunging its beak through my shirt. I tore the shirt free and stuck the mop into its eye. It squawked a violent squawk.
“C’mon,” she yelled. She poked out her stake just enough to keep the bloodsucking asswipes at bay. I climbed up. At that moment my fear of heights was cured.
On the roof, I pulled the ladder up behind me. Maybe we could use it to bash some gulls.
From the low roof, we could see the seagull infestation. Normal sized gulls circled ahead. People sized gulls crowded the streets. A sea of crimson.
“Any ideas, smart guy?” the worker asked. I noticed her name tag for the first time: Tonya.
“Hey, Tonya,” I said.
“Hey,” she said. “What’s your name?”
“My name don’t matter,” I said.
“So, any ideas?” she asked, this time with hope in her voice.
I looked out at the legions of anthropomorphic vampire seagulls. Other seagulls flew overhead.
“We’ll fuck ‘em up, Tonya. We’ll fuck ‘em all up.”
She smiled.
Want another gripping story by Bryan Stubbles? Read “Sundel Bolong + Suster Ngesot” in Horrific Scribes March 2026.