The Fowl Heart, Chapter 4: Fight and Flight

 The pain was excruciating. Xander’s ears immediately started bleeding from the sound reverberating across the walls. It sounded like the loudest screeching child in the world was having the champion of all tantrums in their home – and the home was losing the battle. Glass was shattering and exploding everywhere, windows, glass jars and cups, the television set, the door to the oven, showering all the Summerbys with jagged shards, cutting their exposed skin. The screams seemed to be unstoppable, and brought each family member immediately to their knees while they plugged their ears in vain.

Xander felt a wave of relief as he thought the sound stopped, only to realize in horror he could not hear his own shouting. He was calling out to his mother and brother to check on them, ask them what happened, because it was obviously magic he was unaware of, but could not hear his own voice. He was deaf! He shook the glass off his bleeding hands and felt the vibrations in his own throat as he shouted. He was certain sound was coming out, but could not gauge it. He decided he would check on his family members directly, only to find his vision was blurred and he was dizzy.

Shapes were moving in front of him in the places where Gavin and his mother were. They were alive! Although he noticed they were able to stand faster than him, he could tell they were confused and also clutching their ears. Xander screamed and pointed to get their attention to something else, a large blur in dark robes that rushed through their open front doorway holding a wand, looking a lot like the plumber he saw earlier that day. Gavin ran toward the intruder and grappled for the wand. 

There was a flash of light, and Gavin flew backwards smashing a bookshelf to pieces, books falling onto his unmoving body in a heap. Xander wondered why Gavin did not draw his wand when there was time to do so – after all, that was the point of that Defense Against the Dark Arts class, wasn’t it? Why would Gavin think some Death Eater attacking their home would resort to hand to hand combat? 

Xander stood, checking his pockets for any kind of weapon, knife, pepper spray, anything to help his family when his vision cleared enough to see his mother point her wand at him.

In the next moment, Xander’s feet were kicked out behind him from an unseen force and felt a jerking tug as he slid backwards on their old wooden floor all the way back to his room. His door shut of its own accord, and Xander saw the door seem to suction itself shut. As he got to his own feet and felt the door handle, he realized his mother had locked it magically to protect him.

Flashes of light and dust were coming out from underneath the door. Although he could not hear anything, he felt booms of vibrations through the floor like a rave was taking place under his room. He looked around the room for something to help his mom. As he turned to check his closet, he noticed a bag on his bed and remembered his mother’s bag full of confiscated items was still in his room. He felt hopeful as he looked quickly inside the bag for the amulet his mother mentioned earlier, but didn’t get far into his search before something else caught him by surprise.

When his fingers brushed on something that looked like rolled up rags, he felt the familiar jerking tug from earlier but this time it was the shoulder bag pulling him up off the floor, across the room, and out the shattered window of the seventh floor into the snowy sky.

Xander was swinging on the shoulder strap while the bag floated above him like an oddly-misshapen balloon. While the bag could seem to easily lift and hold his weight, the strap did not. It snapped unexpectedly while Xander was hanging midair between their apartment building and the next one, and the bag sprang higher into the sky like a slingshot being released. As he fell toward the muddy snow of the alley, his hands and arms flailed for any kind of handhold to slow or stop his descent, but found none. His last thought was “oh, ow”, before everything went dark.