Kleptomaniacrow

Written by: He Le (24-A2)

Designed by: Xavier Lee (24-02)

Night had fallen, once again. 

Midnight unfurled and spread across the sky like a pair of ink-feathered wings, enveloping the London metropolis in a sinister darkness. Billows of thundering clouds snuffed out the remaining stars.

In the quiet, a single corvid strode across a windowsill. The cityscape lay innocently before it, all for the taking. Beady eyes traced the winding path between open windows. 

The wind beckoned. Ready for the hunt, the crow flitted from the ledge and took flight.

All things shimmered under the shadows of that soundless night. 

“—uill. Quill.” 

Quill curled tigher into his blanket. He swatted at the hand tapping at his face, annoyed. 

“Don’t you sass me, Quill. You've made our apartment filthy, so clean up the mess before Mrs Landlord evicts us.”

“...”

“I will report you to Mrs Landlord as an unauthorised pet, Quill.” 

He begrudgingly opened his eyes, just in time to be met with the flash of a phone camera. He flinched and glared at her. His roommate rolled her eyes. “Sorry, not sorry. Look at yourself.” 

Surrounding his body was a horde of trinkets, necklaces and beads. Some sort of red-green tinsel, probably torn off someone’s Christmas decorations, was heedlessly scattered across the bed. Quill inwardly cringed and protested, but it came out as a squawk. He tapped his mouth, finding only a beak. ‘Oh,’ he thought. 

His roommate—bless her heart—sighed. “Change back. And explain yourself.” 

Quill shook the trinkets off his wings and burrowed under a blanket. Then he released his crow form in a swirl of ink-black feathers. 

Very much human this time, Quill stood up. “Okay,” he started. “Meryl, I know what you’re going to say—” 

“You don’t need to say anything, Quill,” Meryl said, saccharine. She jerked her head at the scattered memorabilia. “What’s this, then?” 

“All junk I found on the street, really! It probably would’ve been a shame if I didn’t take them!” Quill protested, while Meryl rummaged through the pile. 

“Really?” Meryl held up a silver necklace adorned with emeralds accusingly. “This is our neighbour Jasmine’s. It belonged to her grandma! It is not some junk found on the street.” 

He winced. “Maybe.” He had a vague recollection of slipping next-door. 

Meryl examined a tarnished diamond ring, before holding it up with an even flatter expression. “This is an engagement ring. ‘Lovers Forever’ is engraved inside it.”

“Well… maybe they’re already divorced!” Quill protested. “They say half of all marriages end in—”

Meryl held up a gun. “This is a gun.” 

“What.” 

A Beretta M9A3 Full-Size Semi-Automatic 9mm Pistol hung between Meryl’s two fingers. She held it as far away from herself as possible, dangling it by the back strap. “Ah,” Quill said weakly. He had no defence for this. Nor did he have any recollection of this. “So it would seem.” 

“...How charming.” She leveled him with a judgemental look, slowly setting the firearm on the bedside table. 

Horrific realisation dawned upon Quill. “Have I committed a crime?” 

Stunned silence. Meryl gestured erratically at the literal bed of stolen goods. Quill coughed. “Well… Besides that.” He paced the room. “Meryl, I don’t have a gun license! I’ll get arrested for bearing arms!” 

“If you ask me, you don’t have a license for thievery either,” she scoffed. She stared at Quill as if he dumb. “Just get rid of it like all of your other stolen paraphernalia. Sell it.” 

‘That’s a… good idea,’ he thought. ‘Hey, is Meryl warming up to my illicit activities?’

“Oh, don’t you wrap me up in this,” she snapped. Oops—he had said that out loud. “When I’m on the witness stand, I’ll be the first to boot your sorry ass into prison; I even have the photographs for evidence.” She held up the photo she had taken, of a crow surrounded by all sorts of miscellaneous items. 

“I’d just fly out,” Quil felt obligated to say.

“Get dressed and hotfoot it to your shop.” A bundle of clothes and an IKEA bag were chucked at him. Meryl pocketed the emerald necklace and left, intending to return it to Jasmine. Probably. 

Quill surveyed the room. A mess of stolen goods and feathers. He shoved everything into the IKEA bag. 

Being a shapeshifter in the 21st century was hard. Being a corvid shapeshifter with an innate propensity to steal every shiny little thing was harder. Every new moon, Quill unwittingly contorted into a crow with apparent kleptomania. A Kleptomaniacrow, if you will. 

It wasn’t that bad, though. Quill lugged the IKEA bag down the street. At least he could elk out a living with his… skillset. 

He stopped at a small pawn shop, innocently tucked between the crevasses of the inner city. Pulling out a ring full of dangling keys—(most of them fake; it gladdened his stupid avian brain too much watching them clang like windchimes.)—he spent three minutes locating the correct key and strolled into ‘Feathered Finds’. 

He found the light switch. A warm glow illuminated the dark and dusty store, filled to the brim with antique cabinets stocked with miscellaneous trinkets. Shelves of silver hairpins, coins polished to so-so perfection, ‘lost’ jewellery and little bottles stuffed with torn-up tinsel lined the shop like artefacts for the occasional customer to discover. A hoarder’s dream! He hoisted the IKEA bag onto the shop counter and started organising the latest haul. 

He stopped at the Beretta M9A3 Full-Size Semi-Automatic 9mm Pistol. Quill pushed it to the side. He’d… deal with that later.

The entrance bell jingled. Preoccupied with polishing the ‘Lovers Forever’ ring, Quill didn’t look up. “Welcome to Feathered Finds. Looking for anything in particular?” 

“Just popping in, lad. Carry on,” said the jovial customer. Quill spared a glance at the man in blue and hummed in acknowledgement. His fingers were getting sore from polishing the ring.

‘Wait, a man in blue—?’

His thoughts caught up to his senses and skidded to a halt. He not-so-subtly looked upwards.

A policeman. Shiny handcuffs swinging from his belt. He was in Quill’s shop full of stolen items and admiring a collection of ‘antique spoons’. ‘Oh no,’ he thought. 

Quill’s eyes wandered towards the Beretta M9A3 Full-Size Semi-Automatic 9mm Pistol sitting innocuously on the shop counter. ‘OH,NO,’ he thought in full capitalization. He went to hide it, and— 

“Mate, you even have a Beretta M9A3 Full-Size Semi-Automatic 9mm Pistol?” The policeman asked, bemused. Hand still wrapped around the gun, Quill freezes. 

“Aah—uh, yes, it is indeed a Beretta M9A3 Full-Size Semi-Automatic 9mm Pistol!” Quill forced out in a fit of panic. In his floundering effort to improvise, he blurted: “Um, want to look at it?” 

‘Stupid, STUPID, IDIOT, QUILL. YOU ARE AN—’

“Sure, I love a good Beretta M9A3 Full-Size Semi-Automatic 9mm Pistol!” The policeman took the Beretta M9A3 Full-Size Semi-Automatic 9mm Pistol, examining it. “Boy, this is a real Beretta M9A3 Full-Size Semi-Automatic 9mm Pistol. Bet the selling license was real hard to get, right?” 

“...Selling license?” 

“To sell this Beretta M9A3 Full-Size Semi-Automatic 9mm Pistol, of course,” the policeman said matter-of-factly. Quill laughed. Selling license. Of course. 

The policeman tilted the Beretta M9A3 Full-Size Semi-Automatic 9mm Pistol, hand loosely wrapped around the trigger. “You know, I—”

BANG!

The Beretta M9A3 Full-Size Semi-Automatic 9mm Pistol went off, lodging a bullet into both the wall and through Quill’s heart. The shop was sent into stunned silence, with only the smoking of the gun left in the shot’s wake. 

“...This… is a live firearm,” the policeman said slowly. 

“Uh,” Quill said faintly. His mental state flattened out like the feathers of a freshly splashed avian, left ceaselessly thrashing for mercy. ‘Crap.’

The policeman regarded the hole in the wall, the Beretta M9A3 Full-Size Semi-Automatic 9mm Pistol, then turned back to Quill. “Sir,” he said, all geniality disposed of. “Can I see your selling license?” 

“Hi,” Meryl said breathlessly, leaning against the police station’s counter. “I’m here for Quill—the guy arrested for possessing… firearms and whatever other stuff he, uh, did.” The officer nodded and directed her to the holding area. 

Quill was slumped in the holding cell, under careful watch of the CCTV. ‘I’ll just fly out’, he says,’ she thought mockingly. ‘That absolute buffoon.’

He lit up upon seeing Meryl. ‘Get me out of here’, he mouthed. To which Meryl returned a withering glare that promised no sympathy. 

The officer returned, skimming a file. “Miss, your friend was arrested for unlicensed possession of firearms, unlicensed selling of firearms, and attempted bribery.” 

Meryl’s first thought: ‘Oh, thank goodness they didn’t notice the stealing.’

Meryl’s second thought: ‘WHY am I friends with this idiotic man???’

“Hypothetically, how much is the bail?” She asked. Perhaps she could extort the money out of Quill after. 

“£2,400,000,” said the officer. 

One could hear a pin drop. “...Pardon? Isn’t that unrealistic?” 

“It could be an inflated tension device inserted to drive the narrative forward,” he shrugged.  

“...I see.” Meryl cleared her throat. “Well, thankfully… this is all just a big misunderstanding!” 

The officer raised an eyebrow. “Is it?”

“Uh…” She fidgeted with her phone. Wait. Her phone! In an epiphany, she spoke: “I have an answer for ALL of this. So, there’s this crow—”

THUD THUD THUD. Quill banged at the glass agitatedly, shooting Meryl the most bewildered and horrified look he could manage.

“...Ignore him. He’s not well in the head,” Meryl said after a moment. 

She pulled up the photo she had taken: A slumbering crow surrounded by trinkets. “We have a very irresponsible, idiotic crow that grabs junk off the street and brings it back to the apartment. Today, it brought back a gun.” 

The officer was in disbelief. “What?” 

“Yeah.” She passed the phone to the officer for further inspection. 

“...Is that the gun?”

“Huh?” Meryl swiped her phone back and looked. Tucked under Quill’s sleeping figure, was the telltale glint of a Beretta M9A3 Full-Size Semi-Automatic 9mm Pistol. She grinned. What a lucky crow her roommate was. 

“Seems so,” she said, hiding her palpable relief. “Quill was actually going to return the gun to the police. Maybe your coworker… misinterpreted him?” She gave the officer the friendliest smile she had ever given, batting her eyelashes. 

“Huh.” The officer hummed. “I’ll check with the arresting officer. Be right back.” 

He left the room. Meryl flipped her head towards Quill. “You are a MORON,” she hissed. 

“I’m sorry!!” Was Quill’s muffled response. “But um, do you seriously think they’ll actually buy it—“

“Alright.” The officer reentered the room, keys in hand. “The arresting officer accepted your account,” He smiled apologetically. “Beretta M9A3 Full-Size Semi-Automatic 9mm Pistol’s safe in storage. Hope we weren’t a bother.” 

The two were escorted out of the premises and into the parking lot. 

“They BOUGHT it?!” Quill spluttered. 

They boarded a bus. The ride home was silent. Well, not really. London’s public transportation was anything but. 

“Next time this happens, I’ll actually leave you in the police station,” Meryl broke the not-silence. 

Quill groaned. “Yeah, that’s fair. Thanks, Meryl.” 

A panicked gasp from across the cabin. “Where’s my phone?” A young woman yelped. Quill felt mild sympathy. He looked down at his sling bag, and found a pastel iPhone adorned with rabbits. 

He picked it up. This wasn’t his. 

“What does it look like?” Asked a kind gentleman. The young woman gave a description: “It’s an iPhone 11, with pink bunnies, and a beaded strap—” 

“Oh, poor girl,” Meryl murmured. She turned, then went stock-still upon seeing what Quill’s was holding. He dangled the phone by the strap, entirely engrossed in the silver bells sewn into the—

“...Quill,” she started, indignation mounting with every moment, startling Quill out of his trance. “The audacity—” 

“I didn’t notice I—! Nevermind,” Quill squeaked, then hurriedly slid the phone down the bus corridor. It landed at the girl’s feet, and relief ensued. 

Meryl was unimpressed. 

“I really didn’t notice I did it,” Quill protested weakly. 

“Learn to sheath your talons, Kleptomaniacrow,” she chastised. 

He laughed. She laughed. They both knew he wouldn’t.