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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Luca_Til_Tschenisch on 2024-09-12 08:54:29+00:00.
I don’t know whether any of you will give a damn about what I say. Hell, most of you won’t believe me, and I can’t blame you. Truth be told, I would do the same. No, I won’t convince any of you about what happened to me, but at least I can share it.
Not just to get off my chest, but to warn someone out there. For the slime chance you ever see a white crow fly above you, landing on a tree branch or wire, observing the people below it, perhaps you will remember my words. Perhaps you will believe me in this one instance.
Don’t look at them. Don’t wave at them. Do nothing to attract their attention. Turn around and make sure you’re out of their sight. There is no fighting them. They will always find prey, but it doesn’t have to be you. Trust me.
I wish someone had told me the same.
…
At first, I found it beautiful. An albino in every species is a rare sight, but in a crow, it seemed to have something magical about it. I looked it up, and a lot of mythology interpreted them as divine messengers or omens of good luck. Back then, I couldn’t have agreed more. It just seemed to be… more. I don’t know how I could truly explain it.
I was on my way to school when it landed on a house nearby, watching the people hurrying past without noticing it. I stopped, pausing the music I was listening to. I was still a freshman at my high school, and time was running against me, but I couldn’t help myself. Who doesn’t love animals? Beautiful ones in particular.
Without thinking much about it, I got my phone out, zoomed in on the bird to get a better view of it, and took a photo. Right before I pressed the button, it twisted its head around, staring right at me as my phone’s camera went on.
Not gonna lie, it startled me. Not because it had any weird features or appeared more menacing than at first glance now that it looked at me. It was just that it noticed me. I had made no sound, and the crow was a decent distance away from me. By all means, I should have remained an unknown to the bird.
But now that it had laid eyes on me, it couldn’t stop staring at me. I moved a bit further up the street, changing directions, even jumping around; the crow’s head followed my every move. It seemed quite funny. Its eyes darted around to keep track of me. Not something you would expect from a wild animal. A cartoon, for sure, but not a random crow.
I giggled to myself and waved at the crow, before running towards my school. During the breaks between lessons, if I wasn’t busy talking to my friends, I looked up facts on crows. The white one had caught my interest, and I wanted to know more about them. Did you know that crows are extremely intelligent? They can hold grudges for quite a while, bond with people, and even hold some sort of funerals.
Fascinating animals, but I thought that the white crow would remain nothing but an interesting encounter. Something to be fondly remembered from time to time. So you can imagine my surprise when I encountered the very same crow sitting at my high school’s entrance, observing me as I left.
I wouldn’t have noticed it if one of my friends hadn’t pointed it out. A lot of other students from all grades watched the bird with great interest, but it had only eyes for me. I couldn’t believe my luck and took a few more photos before saying my goodbyes to my friends.
At my home, I didn’t share too much with my parents about the bird. Why would I? I was a fifteen-year-old dipshit, embarrassed by even a passing association with my parents and family at large. Nah, I went straight to my room and examined the photos I made of the bird.
There was something special about the crow, that I knew from the beginning, but not just its appearance. It seemed unusual. The photos confirmed my mild suspicion. It was a bird, all right, but it appeared a bit too smart. I know that sounds weird, but you have to trust me on this one.
By all accounts, it was a crow. Nothing you haven’t seen before. But it was its eyes. Again, the eyes of a crow, but they had a spark in them that shouldn’t have been there. Yeah, they were supposed to be intelligent but nothing on the level of perceiving things as we humans do. And to me, it seemed like this crow could.
This is something you have to experience yourself to truly understand. At this time, I had thought my encounter with the crow a bit odd but nothing out of the ordinary. As I was about to go to bed and close my window’s curtain, that changed.
This dumb crow was sitting on a tree branch right outside my window, watching me for lord knows how long. My guts told me immediately that something was off with this bird. There was intent behind it eyes. Something beyond the mental capabilities of a common animal. No, this was something different.
I closed my curtains, cursing under my breath. Perhaps this was all my imagination. Like a toddler, I thought if the problem was out of my sight it had vanished for good. That night, I didn’t get much sleep. And the little sleep I got, the crow haunted them, flying circles above them, waiting for its chance to feast upon me.
I woke up in a cold sweat, immediately feeling the effects of my nightmares. When I went to school that day, it started. At first, it wasn’t something to pay much of my mind to. But in the following weeks, it only worsened.
The way people looked at me changed. Their eyes narrowed, their heads half-turned, ready to exchange whispers. As soon as they could, they watched me, staring holes in the back of my head. When I noticed, they turned away, laughing between themselves. Confused, I constantly checked myself in the mirror. Did my hair look weird? Did I have something stuck between my teeth? Did I forget to zip up?
I couldn’t find anything, which made things only worse. Was something so obviously wrong with me that everyone around me noticed it except for myself? Did my obliviousness to my inaptness make the entire thing even more hilarious?
It didn’t stop with looks, though. Every conversation, as insignificant as it might have been, turned into this uncomfortable mess. My tone, my phrasing, how I pronounced words; it all was wrong and off to my surroundings. No matter who I interacted with, stranger or old friend, they all left with a worse opinion of me than when they entered.
The hostility towards me was tangible. With each new day, I lost more of my social standing, creeping closer and closer to becoming a true outcast. All the while I couldn’t tell what happened. The transition was so slow that I couldn’t point to a single thing that would explain the shift.
After hearing this, you might think that this sounds like normal social anxiety. Heck, you might have gone through something similar. Always believing the judging eyes of the people around you, stalking you like prey. For my age, something like that is not completely out of the ordinary.
But the fucking white crow was. Without missing a day, it followed me around, never losing me. Out of all the hostile glances that pursued me, it was the most persistent. It always tried to find a way to stare at me. When I walked to school it flew above me. When school lessons began, it landed on a branch and watched through the window. When I went to bed and closed the curtains, it remained there as if its vision could pierce through the fabric.
I tried to get rid of the damn birds more times than I could count. I threw stones at it. I used my broom to scare it off when it was standing in front of my window. Nothing worked. Hell, it made things worse. People saw me attacking the white crow, and their dislike of me intensified.
Once I thought of taking my dad’s gun, finding an isolated space in the woods, and putting a bullet in this thing. But at this point, it was already too late. All these weeks to months of constant social scrutiny affected my perception. If I’d taken the gun and done it, people would have found out. What would they think of me? How could I justify myself from shooting a white crow?
All the names that they must have been called me; they would have another reason to use them. No, they would be justified in making new ones. Names that sting even deeper. Would they use them on me in the open? Would they start to bully me? Would I sign my fate as an outcast by shooting the bird?
I have a question. Have you ever seen how bigger carnivores hunt prey that lives in bigger herds? Herds so big, that they have no chance of fighting them. They find a weaker individual and isolate it. Once cut away from the herd, there is nothing their prey can do but wait for its inevitable death.
I came to see the white crow as such a predator. I don’t know where it came from, whether they are an entire species, or why they focused on humans. Truth be told, I don’t wanna know. But what I know, the white crow has specialized in hunting humans.
Think about it. We are social creatures. Belonging to a group is one of our deepest drives. Only in communities are we safe from what stalks the dark. This desire is so crucial that it shapes our very perception of reality. How you are perceived is your reality. Without the group, you will die, so you have to do everything in your power to stay in it.
So, what if something could meddle with this perception? What if a predator could manipulate how you interpret your social surroundings? It would be very successful.
Everything I have described up until now could be explained by other means than something hunting me and fu...
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