Blackbird singing in the dead of night ... take these broken wings and learn to fly ... all your life ... you were only waiting for this moment to arise ...

When the blackbird sleeps where does he go? Where would you go? If a dream it is you seek and an escape to which you search how far would you go when that dream, the distant search awakens something that is more than a little dark?

When control is gained it is also taken. In dreams, in the minds eye, sometimes connections can be made and sometimes these connections can become very dangerous. There is a unknown power in the world. What it is or how it works, well that indeed is the unknown.

Olivia Holmes, at just sixteen years of age she is about to come to an end of one phase of her life. A new dark phase will arrive where it could be up for debate if it is her who rules this phase of if it is the phase that rules her.

Shy, quiet, an outsider, Olivia so often was the target of victimisation. School was not a place of safety, it was never a place of growth and learning, surviving there was a test of endurance, for school had been a place she feared more than any other. The bullying comes from all directions. Guys, girls, it doesn't matter. When they see Olivia coming they go out of their own way to deliver misery onto her. Revenge is a dish best served cold and it will be a speciality which will belong to Olivia.

On one Friday in particular and upon arriving home from school Olivia spends a half hour sobbing softly alone in her bedroom. A former best friend, a neighbour is responsible for this bout of tears. Having got herself close to the 'in' crowd this former friend is tasked with humiliating her former friend.

At first Olivia's former friend Tia is slow to get the insults going and as soon as they do get going it would appear that Tia is in fact a professional at dishing out verbal abuse.

'You think we are friends?' Tia begins to spew, 'we were never friends to begin with. You are nothing but a tramp; in fact you are not even close to being good enough to be a tramp. You are worthless, you are nothing and you are no longer worthy of my pity. I no longer even wanna look at you.'

When this abuse was coming at her Oliva could only stand in a silent shock, she was in a complete and utter loss for how to react. Her insides sunk as if she had collapsed in a heap on the ground, a body without a skeletal frame to keep her upright. It played on repeat in her mind as she wept alone in her room. Her weeping would be brought to a sudden end when the sudden sound of a thud startled her.

Initially Oliva did not know what this thud was though it soon became clear that a blackbird, a single crow had crashed onto the outside of her bedroom window. This event became all the more obvious with the sight of the crow struggling on the ledge outside her window. A moment passes before Oliva reaches one hand out her window. Carefully she brings the crow inside. It is alive.

The crow looks at her as she looks at it, as if both person and creature are looking into one another's souls. She nurtures it, feeds it before releasing it two days later out that very same window. There will be no more sobbing.

On the Monday morning Olivia returns to school a changed person. She most definitely is not quite what she had been the previous Friday. Her timing is flawless for Tia and two other girls had arrived to the student entrance only seconds before Olivia had and when they see her they begin to laugh and point. Olivia is indeed changed and she will not silently stand still on this occasion. Her innards will not collapse to the ground in any way.

She smiles a smile of her own, her very own being almost growing large and strong in front of everyone else in the immediate vicinity. There is a certain uneasiness arising and Tia feels it almost straight away and that foreboding uneasiness provokes a change in her own demeanour.

The bright morning sky darkens quickly and a single crow approaches making its way straight for Tia and right off the mark it goes on the attack scratching at clawing at Tia's face.

'Bit young for crow's eyes aren't we?' Oliva calls out in jest.

Indeed Tia's eye area has begun to bleed as the crow continues to attack and bleed she does profusely. She waves, moves and squirms but nothing she does has any effect on hindering this attack. Her friends, her new friends, 'the in crowd' all scarper.

'Time for you to eat crow' Olivia shouts, now pointing at her former friend.

The crow does begin to force itself into Tia's mouth, suffocating the girl until she passes out. A teenage girl's body will be brought to the city morgue before the day is out and no one who so happened to be close by when the incident occurred could quite believe what it was they witnessed. What was it they had seen? Surely not an attack perpetrated by Olivia? Surely not for that would be impossible right?

Then again after the incident concluded Olivia stretched herself out and a number of crows swarmed themselves around her as she laughs ominously.

The city asylum soon becomes home to Olivia though every once in a while she does manage to go missing. I wonder though for as she rests within those asylum walls where does the blackbird sleep? For I am sure when the time comes that crow will once again come when it is called for.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night ... take these broken wings and learn to fly ... all your life ... you were only waiting for this moment to arise ...