The Murder of Crows

By Isaac Thorne

In a near future of zero tolerance, Big Brother is not entirely born of the government. He is also your local news, your social media friends and followers, your neighbors. Everything you say and do is monitored–and judged. Almost overnight, the fabric of society has dissolved into a culture of carrions: a murder of crows.

It was only a matter of time before someone found a way to capitalize on it.

Meet Internet, television, and radio sensation Nick Saint, a man who has built a media empire off the public shaming of both celebrities and average joes. Lately Nick has noticed a disturbing trend emerging from the culture he’s spent so many hard hours at work perpetuating. The crows are no longer interested in the food he’s providing, and scavenging for the dirty deeds of others is getting more difficult now that all the world has learned to watch their Ps and Qs.

Can Nick continue to find fresh corpses for his starving flocks to feed on? Or will they finally turn on him instead?

THE MURDER OF CROWS is a short tale of dark comic anxiety from the mind of Isaac Thorne, a nice man who simply wants to provide you with a few fun frights. A satire of modern media and popular culture, in which people are products and their imperfect humanity is entertainment, THE MURDER OF CROWS attempts to follow the trend to what could be its ultimate end.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Isaac Thorne
• Release date: Feb 28, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311314581

Isaac Thorne

Isaac Thorne is a nice man who has, over the course of his life, developed a modest ability to spin a good yarn. Really. He promises. He also avoids public men’s restrooms at all costs.

Book preview

Crows Title Graphic

THE MURDER OF CROWS

a short tale of dark comic anxiety

ISAAC THORNE

ePub Edition

ISBN: 978-1-938271-20-5

Copyright © 2015 by Isaac Thorne.

Cover design and interior illustration copyright © 2015 by Paula Rozelle Hanback.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in print, electronically, or otherwise without express written permission from the copyright holder. You may reproduce brief quotations in articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. The characters, events, locations, platforms, and dialogue are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Published by Lost Hollow Books in the United States of America.

www.isaacthorne.com

www.losthollowbooks.com

Cover design: Paula Rozelle Hanback

Title page illustration: Paula Rozelle Hanback

www.paulahanback.com

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright

The Murder of Crows

About the Author

Also By Isaac Thorne

T

he back of his right hand fit perfectly over the circle of bright light that beamed down from the sky, but it was not quite enough to clear his field of vision. The rays of sunshine that refracted through the safety glass of his windshield—not to mention the glare from the hood—slid through his fingers like grains of sand scooped from a temperate beach. The light crept into every crevice of the Lexus, unstoppable, creating a brilliant wall of blankness against the windshield that shut out every color.

Except for white.

And maybe a little bit of black.

Along the periphery of the blankness, he thought he could discern the silhouette of a disembodied hand reaching out to him from somewhere within the light, stretching from the ether like so many long-dead relatives along the walls of that tunnel that those freaks on the History Channel always report they’ve seen while in the throes of a near-death experience. However, this shape neither welcomed him onward nor motioned him away, as said relatives do in said experiences. This shape appeared to be frantically flagging him down.

Then the voluminous branches of a southern yellow pine obscured the over-bright seven o’clock sun, dispersing the glare off the hood of his Lexus and breaking the spell. Before him, in sudden crystal focus, stood a row of startled children, frozen in the crosswalk, their eyes wide. His own eyes, heretofore squinted against the blinding sun, thrust wide open in a perfect reflection of their own. His elbows locked, embedding the unforgiving hardness of the steering wheel in his palms and submerging his shoulders into the back padding of the driver’s seat. His teeth clamped down on his tongue.

He thought he tasted blood.

From somewhere outside, he heard the shrill reverberation of a police whistle.

Stop.

Need. To. STOP.

The big toe of his right foot snagged the