WHERE THE NIGHT BIRDS SING
Noise and Quiet walked into a bar early one night. It was just like any old bar at the back of your mind. You know, the kind you find at the end of a long street. Number 207 sits above the door beside the bell nobody bothers to ring; it's a bar, for fuck's sake; whoever rings a bell at a bar?
Noise and Quiet walked in, they'd been together for years and knew that everyone in the bar would think they belonged to a secret league of willows or they were CIA agents. Noise and Quiet could have cared less. Quiet has a small dragon tattoo on his left ear. Noise had the strangest magical ability to make people think they could see through her. It was all an illusion. Noise understood fantasies; Quite appreciated stealth.
They were a little sad as they approached the bar because of the moose head above the cash register looked out of place. The bartender had one eye and said his name was Billy Gone. "What the f**k name is Billy Gone?" Noise wondered. But Billy Gone was there, and he was taking drink orders and telling bad jokes in a voice that sounded like an out-of-tune bagpipe. Noise and Quiet, we're okay with bad jokes. God knows they'd seen enough of the world to know that even a bad joke was worth listening to.
Noise and Chance sipped their drinks in the din of the bang-around bar full of Friday night paychecks and pilgrims on the way to see God or Ethel at the Waffle House later in the night when the mist came off the river down near the bend where the night birds sing.
