they surround me, feathers flapping in my ears, beaks pecking at my shoulders, talons clinging to my clothes. I scream until tears come from my eyes, my arms flailing. My hands hit solid bodies but do nothing; there are too many. I am alone. They nip at my fingertips and press against my body, wings sliding across the back of my neck, feet tearing at my hair.
I twist and wrench and fall to the ground, covering my head with my arms. They scream against me. I feel a wiggling in the grass, a crow forcing its way under my arm. I open my eyes and it pecks at my face, its beak hitting me in the nose. Blood drips onto the grass and I sob, hitting it with my palm, but another crow wedges under my other arm and its claws stick to the front of my shirt.
I am screaming; I am sobbing.
“Help!” I wail. “Help!”
And the crows flap harder, a roar in my ears. My body burns, and they are everywhere, and I can’t think, I can’t breathe. I gasp for air and my mouth fills with feathers, feathers down my throat, in my lungs, replacing my blood with dead weight.
“Help,” I sob and scream, insensible, illogical. I am dying; I am dying; I am dying.
My skin sears and I am bleeding, and the squawking is so loud my ears are ringing, but I am not dying, and I remember that it isn’t real, but it feels real, it feels so real. Be brave. Four’s voice screams in my memory. I cry out to him, inhaling feathers and exhaling “Help!” But there will be no help; I am alone.
You stay in the hallucination until you can calm down, his voice continues, and I cough, and my face is wet with tears, and another crow has wriggled under my arms, and I feel the edge of its sharp beak against my mouth. Its beak wedges past my lips and scrapes my teeth. The crow pushes its head into my mouth and I bite hard, tasting something foul. I spit and clench my teeth to form a barrier, but now a fourth crow is pushing at my feet, and a fifth crow is pecking at my ribs.
Calm down. I can’t, I can’t. My head throbs.
Breathe. I keep my mouth closed and suck air into my nose. It has been hours since I was alone in the field; it has been days. I push air out of my nose. My heart pounds hard in my chest. I have to slow it down. I breathe again, my face wet with tears.
I sob again, and force myself forward, stretching out on the grass, which prickles against my skin. I extend my arms and breathe. Crows push and prod at my sides, worming their way beneath me, and I let them. I let the flapping of wings and the squawking and the pecking and the prodding continue, relaxing one muscle at a time, resigning myself to becoming a pecked carcass.
The pain overwhelms me.
I open my eyes, and I am sitting in the metal chair.
I scream and hit my arms and head and legs to get the birds off me, but they are gone, though I can still feel the feathers brushing the back of my neck and the talons in my shoulder and my burning skin. I moan and pull my knees to my chest, burying my face in them.
A hand touches my shoulder, and I fling a fist out, hitting something solid but soft. “Don’t touch me!” I sob.
“It’s over,” Four says. The hand shifts awkwardly over my hair, and I remember my father stroking my hair when he kissed me goodnight, my mother touching my hair when she trimmed it with the scissors. I run my palms along my arms, still brushing off feathers, though I know there aren’t any.
“Tris.”
I rock back and forth in the metal chair.
“Tris, I’m going to take you back to the dorms, okay?”
“No!” I snap. I lift my head and glare at him, though I can’t see him through the blur of tears. “They can’t see me…not like this…”
“Oh, calm down,” he says. He rolls his eyes. “I’ll take you out the back door.”
“I don’t need you to…” I shake my head. My body is trembling and I feel so weak I’m not sure I can stand, but I have to try. I can’t be the only one who needs to be walked back to the dorms. Even