OWL KISS

PROLOGUE

Every night I went to watch over my town from the tall tower. My owl eyes were able to see everything in the darkness.

Because of this, criminal activity had grown less in my town. The evil people were afraid of me.

They were all afraid of the BLACK OWL.

That was my name, the one in people's mouths in my town. I was a mystery to them.

Nobody knew my true identity.

People only knew there was a young man in black clothes, black mask, black gloves and black shirt with a picture of a black owl. The name BLACK OWL originated from my costumes.

I walked along the top of the tall tower and gazed down. It was a new moon night. The whole town was quiet.

I was wearing my dark clothes and black mask on my face.

The black owl printed on my dark shirt looked like it really wanted to fly from my chest.

I had become the key to the security of humanity.

Day of the municipal district in the town…

Municipal holiday.

Many people had gathered in the town square. They were around an open, raised platform.

This day was pleasant.

Proudly, the mayor of the town went up on stage alongside some town councilors. He was in a suit and tie.

Some people applauded as he moved onto the platform and others hissed at him. The mayor was loved by some people but hated by most of them. Many saw him as a corrupt politician who deserved to rot in prison with other thugs who paid for their crimes.

The mayor began making his speech to the crowd. He spoke glancing every now and then at the papers he had with him. His mouth nearly swallowed his microphone as he recited all that was written on the paper.

His nervousness was noticeable through his impulsive gestures with his hands.

Maybe all his lies made him act like this.

A few moments later, the mayor stopped speaking and looked up. A dark figure passed over his head and landed at his feet beside him.

All the people were surprised by the appearance of the Black Owl standing next to the town mayor.

The mayor looked scared.

My yellow eyes behind my black mask really alarmed him. He looked down at my black shirt and saw the image of a black owl with its open wings, trying to fly to the world.

"BLACK OWL!" Exclaimed the mayor, quite frightened as he stood before me.

I smiled ironically at him. This was my way to greet him.

Irony against falseness.

"Hello, Mr. Mayor."

"What are you doing here?"

I stared at him calmly.

"I came to greet you with the OWL KISS," I answered and pretended to gently touch my dark lips to his face.

All the people were stunned with the scene. When I turned my head from his, he felt his left wrist imprisoned by a handcuff. One part of the handcuff was on his wrist and the other was attached to the microphone.

The people gasped, astonished by my audacity. I was handcuffing the mayor without any official authority.

That was a huge disrespect.

"This man deserves to rot in jail!" I shouted to the people.

They were silent, listening to me carefully.

"Here is all the evidence of his theft!"

I pulled a roll of paper and threw it toward the crowd of people.

After that I jumped up and disappeared in the sky.

The next day, the newspapers were abuzz in my town. As fresh as French bread coming from the oven.

TOWN MAYOR IS ARRESTED FOR CORRUPTION.

The topic of conversation at my school would not have been another except for the arrest of the mayor and especially the appearance of the mysterious BLACK OWL on the municipal holiday. Teachers had to control their students in order that they would stop gossiping and pay attention in class.

But talking about the BLACK OWL was more interesting than any subject or any other fresh gossip.

That is what the students of my school thought.  

Except me.

I sat down at the table in the school cafeteria and pulled my tray of food closer to me.

"Hi."

Zora greeted me, laid her tray on the table and sat on other side of the table, opposite me. Besides Hugo Chavana, Zora was the only person who would ever approach me at school.

It was obvious that she loved my company. I didn't ever really treat her with courtesy, even though she deserved it indeed.

"Hi," I answered seriously and without looking right at her face. Sometimes her approach without my permission made me slightly annoyed.

I did not know why but sometimes Zora had this power to make me timid and want to shy away.

She looked around and realized that all the students at their tables were still talking about the BLACK OWL.

"All the students do not speak of anything except the mysterious 'BLACK OWL'."

She stared at me and uttered, "I confess I am impressed with this mysterious hero. He is fantastic!" She smiled then. "Although I have never seen him in my life, but the things he does and everything that people say about him ..."

She sighed and continued. "He is fascinating!"

I continued eating with my head down, just listening to her as I savoured my light food.

"Why don't you say anything about the BLACK OWL?"

I raised my head and looked at her face. Her lips were glowing after the oil from her food had touched her lips.

"What should I say?"

My brow furrowed and then I looked down at my plate again. My hunger was dramatically cut.

"I do not know." She shrugged her shoulders. "Say something on behalf of it or against it. I have not heard your opinion yet on this hero in our town."

I rested my elbows on the table and looked down `at my plate.

"Honestly I do not know ... what to say ..."

She raised her eyebrows and squeezed her eyes at my embarrassed face. I was a little stunned at being forced to speak on this topic.

We sat for a few moments in silence. She lifted her face looking quite excited and then said, "I work for a small newspaper in our town. I write an article for an editorial section every week." She smiled. "My dream is to be a journalist."

"This is where I write my articles for the newspaper,"

Zora said and I looked down at her desk. There were dozens of papers, a notebook and some old books. More to the side, there was a digital camera and a water bottle.

She wrote her articles for the newspaper in an abandoned terrace. It was an old property that belonged to her grandparents. It had been abandoned for years.

I walked around her desk, sliding my fingers on the edge of her table, as I lightly touched its surface. Then I could feel that some papers were soft, others harsher.

As I did so, Zora watched my every move in rapt attention. She had a cheerful smile on her lips, looking pleased with my presence in her humble workplace.

"Cool," I said after a while, looking up at her face.

She smiled gratefully at me but remained silent.

Her fingers slid down her black vest buttons and she removed it from her body, thus remaining only in her white blouse, plaid skirt and brown boots. Her hair became even more curly, as it was loose and voluminous.

"It's hot here," she muttered and threw her vest on the back of her old chair.

"What do you usually write about?" I asked her, leafing through a book with a red cover. I had no interest in her book, really but it was a way for me to avoid facing her all the time.

She looked around and replied smiling, "I write about anything that stirs my curiosity. There are no topics off limits for me ..."

"Women generally tend to write about fashion." I looked at her clothes and realized that fashion was not her strong suit. This was evident.

As corny as her grandmother, I'd say.

"It's true." She smiled sweetly. "But talking about fashion is not where my talents lie."

I nodded with a slight smile, agreeing with her words .

She looked up at my face and stared at my sunglasses. Then she lowered her head, seeming to have become a little shy.

"Huhmum," I muttered. "I like this place."

She walked to her desk and grabbed a piece of white paper.

"Come and see something I took a picture of in the sky a few days ago."

I walked to her side and looked down at the photograph in her hand. There was a dark figure flying in the night sky.

"What... is... this?" I questioned looking at the strange figure. I started to get nervous. That figure was me. It was taken on the day I discovered that I could really fly like the owls.

Then she replied, also looking at the picture in her hand. "I do not know ... but it looks like someone flying in the sky."

She stared at me. "Don’t you think?"

I squeezed my eyes under my sunglasses and I raised my eyebrows.

"No, it's not a person flying." I smiled nervously. "It seems like it could just be a shadow."

"Shadow?" She stared at me defiantly. "You are really blind, Otto! This is something flying in the sky ... But I do not know exactly what."

She put the picture back on her table.

Beside the photograph was a bottle of water without its cap. The water was warm. Zora had obviously forgotten to drink it during the past days.

Purposely I bumped my left hand against the clear bottle and it fell onto the photograph. The water poured from the bottle and wet the photo on the table.

Zora looked at the little accident and her eyes became alarmed. "My picture!" She exclaimed.

Zora tried to hold it with the tips of her fingers. The transparent liquid started to flow out and drip onto the floor, thereby forming a ring on the floor.

"Sorry." I gazed at her. "I destroyed your photo."

"I do not know why, but I like this picture," she confessed. "Now it is completely ruined."

We continued looking at the blot in the picture.

"Sorry, Zora. I did not mean to destroy it."

"It’s all right," She said to me in a melancholic voice.

I heard a noise coming from above. Automatically I looked up at the dark ceiling. Something was hanging by its tail from the ceiling and it swung in my direction. I pulled my glasses off my face.

I started looking down at the ground. I had great difficulty seeing anything around me.

"Oh, I forgot to tell you that usually monkeys come here."

"My glasses!" I exclaimed loudly.

She ran to me and grabbed my arm. The monkey went back to the roof and stood on a wooden beam, holding my glasses.

"Give back my friend's glasses!" Zora ordered and stamped one of her feet on the ground.

She stood looking up at the monkey near the ceiling. But the mischievous animal pretended not to hear her order.

With great difficulty, I placed my hands on the terrace wall, trying to hide my face against it. Zora came to my side, trying to look into my face.

I tried to divert my gaze from hers like a constant escape. Zora always insisted on wanting to look into my eyes since the first time we met at school.

"Why don't you let anyone see your eyes?" Zora questioned trying to see my face again.

"Because they are horrible," I answered meekly.

Zora bent her head under my right arm, threading her own body between the wall and my body.

I threw my body back, avoiding letting her get so close to me.  

But it was too late.

She stood before me, holding my shoulders gently.

Her fingers were sliding gently up the region of my face, reaching the height of my eyes.

"They are not so horrible," she said, looking into them. They were gray, with dark circles around them and they also were a little swollen.

Her fingers slid along the edges of my face, as she continued talking. "They are different."

I stared at her. Her eyes were as black as the night through which the owls felt free to travel.  

The touch of her fingers on my skin caused me a strange shiver.

A shivering which I had never felt in my life. I wasn’t  sure if this was because of the delicacy of her fingers on my skin, or if Zora had a special hold on me.

It was possible that she had the power to move me even though I didn’t want it.  

"I always wanted to look into your eyes," she confessed to me. We stared at each other in deep silence.

"But never had the opportunity to do this."

I looked around in constant despair. I needed to get away from there.

At that moment, looking into Zora's eyes was something that bothered me. A lot.

It seemed that she was stealing something precious from me. After all, she was looking into my eyes without my glasses on them. It was something I wished no-one would ever do.

"My glasses! I need them!" I said.

Zora wriggled free from my body. 

Another noise occurred. We looked down. The monkey had released my sunglasses and they had fallen to the ground. Luckily for me they had not shattered.

She walked to my glasses and rescued them from the dusty floor. Zora brought them back to me.

"Here are your glasses!"

I grabbed them and quickly put them over my eyes. I looked in direction of the stairs.  

"I need to go now!" I said bluntly.

She took a step forward, saying, "I’ll follow you down the stairs."

"It is not necessary." I hurriedly walked in front.

She stopped walking and watched me as I walked on with my back to her.

The image of my gray, swollen eyes made her mind tick over indeed. She could not think of anything else except my abnormal eyes.

"I have an aversion to syringes!" I murmured, pressing my lips while a terrible pain in my right arm bothered me. The syringe needle always had this power to annoy me since the time I was ten years old.

The owl blood contained within the syringe was absorbed into my blood vessels again.

I knew exactly how this process began and finished. After all, these scenes were repeated two times every month and twenty-four times every year.

"Ready!"

My uncle's voice mitigated my pain. This martyrdom was over at that point.

Then he removed the syringe needle from my skin and put it on his table.

I got up from the chair and held my arm for a moment, keeping it at the height of my chest.

"This will never end?" I asked him seriously.

He looked at me and answered me truthfully.

"We can stop doing this now. But you need to make  sure that you are able to learn your disciplines at school without a drop of blood from an owl."

My brow furrowed at his words. I preferred to keep silent at that time.

My uncle's reasoning had been like an aphrodisiac for my silence.

Another night, I was standing at the top of the tower, watching my town. Everyone was asleep.

I was in my clothes, those of the Black Owl. My shirt had a picture of an owl. My black pants, black boots, black gloves and black mask were on, the mask covering part of my face.

A white owl flew high in the sky and came toward me. Soon after, she landed on my left arm.

I smiled slightly at her, thanking her for the company at nighttime.

Zora took two steps forward, walking through the tower wall. She raised her arms and gazed down. She saw the ground was far away from her own body. Up ahead there were some houses and small buildings.

From the top, she could see the town lights.

Zora looked delighted with the view before her. But she had a contradictory reaction to her joy.

All of a sudden her body was thrown forward. She had intended to throw herself from the tall tower.

But a black figure appeared in front of her.

It grabbed her around the waist and threw her to the ground. She fell on her back on the hard floor of the tower and muttered something as she hit the ground. Her frightened eyes looked up into my yellow eyes under my black mask.

At that moment I was lying on her.

My hands were resting on the ground, trying to keep my body from the waist up, away from physical contact with Zora’s body.

She exclaimed softly, "Black Owl!"

I remained silent just staring seriously at her face. I wanted to be sure that she had not recognized me. She did not know that the 'Black Owl' was her classmate.

Zora extended her arm to the right and her fingers pulled on a nylon rope which was on the floor. At that moment I became scared. I saw a flash coming from one direction.

I realized it was the white lights of the flash of a camera. Zora had placed it there on top of a tripod.

Zora had prepared everything for that night.

Even her fall from the tower had been done in order to hopefully bring out the Black Owl.

She had done it all to meet 'Black Owl' and be able to take a picture of him.

"What... is... this?" I questioned, putting my arm toward my face, trying to avoid being captured by the lens of her camera.

I got up hastily and looked at Zora, still lying on the floor. Her loose hair was flowing around her head.

She was silent. Zora was very impressed with what was before her.  She was impressed with the Black Owl.

"Never do that again, girl!" I exclaimed seriously, looking at her. Then I ran headlong towards the wall of the tower, threw myself from the top and disappeared into the darkness around the tower.

Zora got up hurriedly and ran towards the wall where I had jumped down. She looked down but could not see me anymore.

However, she seemed pleased to have finally met the famous Black Owl and having stayed face to face with him. And above all, he had saved her just as she had planned in her astute mind.