Greetings fellow Steemians! Here is my 38th 5 minute freewrite. The prompt is: "describe a bird".

(Full disclosure: This piece took me significantly longer than 5 minutes to write ;)

Freewriting is a daily practice for most poets and fiction writers, designed to loosen up and get things flowing, like stretching before exercise. Visual artists, especially those who draw or paint from life (figures, landscapes, still lives, etc) do something similar in "gesture drawings". After reading several of @poetrybyjeremy's freewrite posts, I got excited to try these again. Many thanks to @mariannewest for hosting this daily freewrite!
https://steemit.com/freewrite/@mariannewest/day-165-5-minute-freewrite-tuesday-prompt-yogurt

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https://pixabay.com/en/phoenix-flames-heron-bird-2733938/

The Pet

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"What did it look like?"

The officer looked up from the little pad she'd been scribbling on, skeptically surveying what was left of my apartment for the umpteenth time. I shrugged, berating myself yet again for telling the truth. I didn't believe my own story, why should anybody else?

"It was kind of an ugly little thing. Its feathers were pretty, though. But it wasn't my style... I mean I wouldn't have had it as a pet except it looked so sad in its little cage. There's a lot of exotic stuff in Chinatown, I didn't even stop to think it might be illegal to own one of these... whatever it was. I hadn't had it very long, maybe a month, or a little more. It was tiny when I got it. I didn't think it would grow so fast..."

The officer sighed, rubbed the side of her neck. Her eyes wandered from the smoking remains of the kitchen to the broken front window, and from there to the twisted fire escape. She came back to me with a stern look. "I just need you to tell me what it looked like. Nothing else. Ok?"

I nodded. "Well, like I said, it was kind of ugly and scruffy when I got it. Its feathers were like, a dark red. But then within a few weeks it had these huge wings, I mean bigger than a parrot. And multicolored feathers, they were mostly red, but there was this rainbow sheen on them. It made them look like... I don't know. It was like this beautiful disco parrot bird. It was breathtaking."

"Ok", said the officer, nodding, "Ok. And then tell me again how this happened" (here she glanced around at the wreckage in which we stood).

"Ok," I began, wanting more than anything not to have to tell this story again, but knowing there was no way out of it... "So the weather is getting a little bit colder now, you know, and I decided to bake something in the oven, which I don't really use much in the summer, gets the place too hot. So I had these potatoes all washed and ready to bake, and this chicken, and I set them in the oven, and then I left the room to take a shower. And when I was in the shower, I thought I heard something, but then I thought it was probably just sounds from the neighborhood, so I ignored it. But when I got out of the shower, I heard this loud bang, and I noticed that Mitzi was missing. So I threw on some clothes and went looking around the apartment for her, but I couldn't find her anywhere. Then in the middle of looking I decided to check the chicken, and when I opened the oven, Mitzi was in there, sitting there in the oven, right next to the chicken" I heard my voice rising in pitch, verging on hysteria... I knew I should just stop talking, but what could I do? The officer wanted the whole story. Again. I prayed I wasn't going to end up being committed, though I didn't see how that eventuality could possibly be avoided at this point.

"Mmmnnhmmm," The officer replied, "and then what happened?"

"Well, just what I've already told you... Mitzi exploded in a huge ball of fire that spewed out of the oven, burning my eyebrows off and singeing my bangs to..." I looked up as best I could at my own forehead "well, what you see here, and then she flew all around the room, roaring like a thousand lions, and catching everything she touched on fire, and then she barelled right through that front window, melting the bars on the fire escape, which collapsed slightly under its own weight, as you can see."

The officer raised her eyebrows "And what did you do then?"

"Well, luckily there was a working fire extinguisher", I began...

"So basically, you were trying to keep a pet phoenix."

"A... wh-wh-what?" I stammered.

"A phoenix. Right? Magical bird, bursts into flame when it's ready to die, burns until there's nothing left but ashes, then rises from them... Come on. Don't tell me you've never heard of phoenixes. There's a city named after them in Arizona for fuck's sake."

I nodded, speechless.

"So the question is", the officer continued, "where are the ashes?"

I thought the question was more like would my landlord sue me, and how was I going to replace all of my stuff since I didn't have renter's insurance, and was I going to go to jail, or to a mental institution? Ok, that's more than one question, but you know what I mean. Ashes were the last thing on my mind.

People do weird things when they're in shock. Or maybe it was my overdeveloped fear of authority figures. Whatever the reason, I found myself turning to the hall closet to retrieve my (miraculously) intact suede coat and crocheted pink scarf. "I guess we'd better go look for them?", I offered, wriggling into the coat and trying bravely to brush the ashes of what had once been bangs from my forehead.

"Yeah", the officer agreed, "I think we'd better."

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