Duck, Duck, Neighbor

Juliana Taboada

I know for a fact that when you finish reading this you will think it’s all a fictional story, but let me tell ya, I saw it with my own eyes. It all sounds impossible, and if somebody came up to me and narrated a story like this I’d certainly not believe them. Once the police arrive to question me they’ll probably not believe me either. However, each and every one of the proofs of its truthfulness were in front of me back in that day.

I’ll begin now. I live in an estate far away from the city, and my only neighbor is an old man, with a bald head and a gray, well-maintained beard. He’s a little thick in proportions and always wears plaid shirts. Not once in my life have I seen this man with a basic, striped, or dotted shirt. I would’ve loved to give him a straw hat to combine with his characteristic outfit…I guess that will become just a dream from now on.

Both of us had our daily tasks, each on their own property. Tasks which we carried out diligently in their fixed time. I’m a hundred percent certain of that ’cause I always bumped into him at the same time every day: 3:40 PM, time in which he focused on gardening.

Nonetheless that day, the last day I saw him, was different.

Let me explain. I had just fed my chickens and I was walking towards my wooden fence to talk to him as usual. However, the scene that was occurring right in front of me left me in such a massive shock that no matter how much I wanted to, I was unable to move a single muscle. I could feel myself close to blacking out, but the state I was in made it impossible to occur. There was my neighbor. 3:41 P.M. But he wasn’t gardening as usual, no. He was surrounded by geese that squawked nonstop, as if communicating. He looked as if he were about to become insane, and desperately was asking these animals for mercy. His efforts became useless at the exact same moment when a goose, slightly bigger than the rest, came waddling from the kitchen door with an apple in its beak. I’ve no clue how he managed to put that apple in my neighbor’s mouth, but he did, somehow. Now that the noise of his screams was drowned by the fruit, another group of geese, grabbing with their beaks the ends of a rope, tied his hands and legs.

I don’t know what kind of geese were these, or how they even learned these types of stuff because believe me when I say those knots weren’t simple knots. They resembled the knots that are taught in the Marines. Once my neighbor was fully bound, they tackled him until he was lying on the floor. Then, all of them slowly went under him until they were able to lift him. Next, they kidnapped my neighbor to God knows where. Since when are geese this smart? Where did they take him? Why did they do it? Honestly, I’ve got absolutely zero clue. 

In the beginning, I ascribed this scene to a dream, but I confirmed its reality when I visited his backyard. There you could clearly see the footprints of birds, even a feather or two. 

It was all real. A flock of geese kidnapped my only neighbor.

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Juliana Taboada is a small writer and poet born in Barranquilla, Colombia. Led by a desperate need to create their own world after reading almost nonstop, they started writing after turning eight years old. To this day, two of their short stories have been published, and more will follow.