Bad Smudge! Bad Present!

20250521

Prompt from DailyPrompt.com

Finally home. Michelle let out a soft groan of relief as her bag thumped to the floor.
Dinner had been protein bars from the vending machine scarfed between frantic meetings. She really ought to eat something. Like, proper food something. She also ought to shower.
She managed blankly staring into the unhelpful fridge and splashing water on her face, and decided to call those wins.
Fine. Give up on today and… no, don’t even think about tomorrow right now. Pretend it didn’t exist. That falling asleep was all that was left.
But as her head hit the pillow she felt something underneath. Oh god, what…?
Her gingerly probing fingers came back grasping bloody feathers. She yanked the pillow off.
A crow. There was a goddamn dead crow under her pillow!
That fucking creature!
“Smudge! No! Bad!!”
Confused, sleepy burbling oozed from under the bed. “Mehee did not like present?”
“No, I didn’t!” Michelle dumped the crow on the floor, cringing at the splotches and smears on her bedding. That needed to be put in to soak right now oh god why why…
A tentacle wrapped around the offending ‘present’ and pulled it into the depths. “Sowwy. Smudge thought Mehee would be hungry.”
“I don’t eat bir-” Michelle trailed off as memories of all the chicken they’d shared surfaced. “…I don’t eat raw birds. Especially with, with feathers and guts and…”
She gave up trying to explain this and instead focused on getting the defiled sheet off. Hopefully the other bedding hadn’t landed on anything when she tossed it aside. Ooh, and the pillowcase needed… oh god it had seeped through.
Did she have a spare pillow?
Fucksake.
By the time she’d gotten the bedding in to soak and hunted for a spare pillow and eaten a carton of ice cream it was two in the morning. At which point fuck it, she might as well have a shower. Even after scrubbing her hands repeatedly she still felt unclean.
Sadly the shower didn’t leave her feeling sleepy. At least it hadn’t woken her up more either.
Michelle sighed and sent off a fairly coherent apology to her boss that she wouldn’t be in tomorrow, because after all the stress of working late her pet had left a DEAD BIRD in her bedding.
Speaking of which… Smudge was lurking under the sofa. Watching her closely. Radiating baffled apology.
“…I know you were trying to help.” Michelle closed the laptop and managed a smile. “Just… no presents which leave blood and stuff everywhere, alright? Especially not in… If… if you’d left it on the kitchen floor that wouldn’t have been so…”
“Ok. Sowwy.”
Michelle put down the empty ice cream tub and Smudge eagerly flowed into it. Slurping like a happy sponge.
Well, without a spare pillow a sofa cushion would have to do. She get comfy and - she’d inspect the rest of the bedding, get comfy, and put a show on or something.
And have Smudge cuddles. She really needed that purr.

Prompt was “You come home after a long day at the office, and collapse into bed. You feel something under your pillow. You pull out bloody feathers from some kind of black bird…”