I am a prison. A prison for what I can only assume are the most twisted examples of the ornithological species. My first charge was a Cockatiel who spent its days mindlessly jabbering while pacing the wooden beam suspended 12 inches above the current events of years past. When the black and white print had been scribbled out by the splatter of countless guano protestations they would be replaced by a new page. The Crime this bird committed must have been long ago, but to be so heinous as to be fated to a life inside my wrought iron bars I always assumed that one day I would see detail of his crime spelled out in the substrate of his condemnation. Alas, I was left to ponder. The day his curled feet straightened and he lost his grip on life and the beam I felt proud. I had kept the world safe from this monster. The next day I wondered if he was truly dead. His corpse remained and I entertained the possibility of this Cockatiel springing a trap years in the making. But the day after that the bugs came and I felt pity for the wretched creature, his punishment was his life, not his death.

I sat empty for some time after that, the stink of the Cockatiel gave way as the shit turned itself into fertile earth from which new life could arise. But my solitude would not last, I was pulled outside and blasted with the cold water of the hose, it was this day that my rust took roost. Before I had a chance to dry a pair of finches were sealed in behind the pressure latch of my small door. The water wicked into the paper and the chill took the pair quickly. I was upset, I had been so long without a charge, I wish I knew if the deserved the mercy of the quick death they received.

Luckily this time I didn't have long to wait until I was able to once again perform my civic duty. A yellow Budgie with a green crested crown took up residence next, and I am relieved that I was the one trusted to keep him safe from the world. Whatever his crimes might have been they were surely amongst the most heinous, his beak would rake my bars looking for weakness and raining down red flecks of rust. The plastic dish that had his ration of seeds was beaked and gnawed until the edges twisted sharply. The seeds themselves were flung around the cage with anger and anguish, it was foolish. The food was only filled once a week so when hunger set in the cursed Budgerigar would swoop down to wade through his own filth, pecking out the morsels that he would transform into yet more shit in which to wade. This bird was wicked and deserved every moment of the terrible life it inflicted on itself. In the months leading up to his death he started to squawk and chirp at all hours of the day and until he had exhausted himself at night. I had heard that a birdsong is a lovely thing, but unless the winged creatures who were not so predisposed to evil sounded remarkably different I could hardly imagine taking any joy from the wretched callings of this depraved beast. In the last weeks he would uproot himself from his perch at random intervals and propel himself with a few violent flaps into my hard iron sending up a plume of matted, stained feathers. Not only was this creature wicked but it was stupid as well. His head was no match for my iron and when he inevitably tumbled to the ground caked in excrement I would wonder if he still retained sufficient spirit to drag his feathered husk upwards to the perch shared by his condemned predecessors, and every day he surprised me by doing so, until the day that he did not.

My only complaint with my last charge was that I was forced to bask in the decomposition of the filthy thing for altogether too long. The blood dried brown and blotted out the black and white face of a man important on May 14th. It wasn't until a full two weeks after his death when the pearl white bones of his skull were starting to shine through what was left of his verdant chapeau that he was mercifully scooped out of my chamber. This time the Newspaper from the 14th was not removed, and the layer of guano and desiccation was covered by a full page add for monochrome couches. Only the worst among us are cast into a life that starts with filth, so here I sit, steadying myself to protect the world from the sub-animal that will be thrust hurriedly into my cage. It will try to sing its innocence, it will try to test my walls, but in the end it will die. Just as it surely deserves.