Two months after my boyfriend died, I saw a crow carrying his torso.

Jem died on prom-night.

Alone, and crumpled in the road, shattered into pieces.

While I was convinced he'd stood me up.

The person who hit him swiped the ring he was going to propose to me with.

“We’re burying what we could find.” I was told at his funeral.

That's what his Mom told me.

Instead of his body, she buried his tux and shoes.

We didn't have the luxury of having a body. There was no body.

Jem's mom hid her agony with wide smiles and swollen eyes.

"It's okay, we can... bury his clothes!"

She said that's what he would have wanted.

I know Jem, and he would have wanted to be cremated. Burned to ashes.

Jem hated the idea of being buried underground to rot away into nothing.

He once told me, if he were to ever die young, he wanted his ashes sprinkled in the sea. So he could go to Atlantis.

That's what loved about him. He was a fantasy freak.

His mother's words stuck with me, heavily, like a fucking weight on my chest. She did her best to comfort me at the funeral, but I couldn't stand the idea of burying an empty coffin.

"We're burying what we they can find, sweetheart, and some of his clothes."

They couldn't FIND anything.

Jem was dead and gone, and whatever pieces of him left were lost. Most of him was caught around the car wheel.

Apparently, the crime scene was grisly. Blood on the road, a cruel scarlet smear stretching right across the sidewalk.

Excuse me for my language, but the evil bastard who hit him didn't even care.

He swiped the ring Jem was going to propose to me with.

And left him dead on the side of the road like he didn't fucking matter.

Grief is weird. It hits you in waves, and emotions no longer feel like your own.

I laugh, and it doesn't feel right.

I cry, and it feels forced.

It's like being an alien among humans.

I thought I was okay, and then I was hearing his favorite song, smelling his cologne was still clinging to my clothes and my car seats, even my own skin.

Then I was breaking apart all over again, overwhelmed, fucking suffocated with him– until I couldn't breathe.

I wanted to stay with him– even if he was six feet under the ground, buried in dirt and surrounded by wilting flowers.

It wasn't fair that I was alive, and he wasn't.

Every day, I was numb, and I was sick of numb.

Every day had no sound. Every day was like living in a forwarding video tape, and I was the only one awake. Alive.

Two months after Jem’s death, sound bled back in the form of a loud squawk.

I was walking back from school a few days ago. I don't know what day it was.

I didn't care. Lifting my head, a crow swooped above me. I admit, I was mesmerized, smiling a little.

I think that was the first time I actually felt something.

But then I glimpsed what was caught between its talons.

Scarlet entrails twisted in burned strips of clothing I recognized.

What was never recovered. What his mother was still looking for.

Something snapped inside me, my legs giving way.

Jem’s tux. The one he died wearing.

Another crow flew past, its beak twitching, beady eyes focused.

This time, my boyfriend’s mutilated torso was clinging between tiny talons.

I thought I was going to throw up.

My first thought was they were hungry. But it didn't matter, because they accomplished what the police couldn't.

The crows found him.

Before I could stop myself, I threw myself into a run.

I know it sounds ridiculous, but I HAD to know what was left of him, and how much of him– and if I would be able to scoop up his lost pieces and take him home.

The crows touched down deep in the town forest. I thought it was a nest, or worse, maybe they were eating him.

But to my shock, there were bodies, all of them dead kids, and among them, my boyfriend, lying in pieces half fused together, his head attached to his torso.

The crows worked effortlessly, hopping across the ground, piecing Jem together like a puzzle.

I watched, baffled. These kids weren't recently dead. They died a while ago.

Serena drowned last fall. Rowan crashed his car two years ago.

It started to to hit me slowly, in waves of ice cold water, that the crows didn't find the other dead kids.

When one crow pecked at Rowan's torso, pulling out stringy intestines, his body jerking, just like Jem’s, I slammed my hand over my mouth.

The crows dug them up.

Which means these birds actively searched for them.

Wanted them specifically.

Serena’s face was half rotted away, maggots creeping from her nostrils.

The crows rolled her over, chirping to each other, like giving each other orders.

Rowan was more skeletal than human, and yet I watched, transfixed, as fleshy patches of feather-like skin spread across the pearly white of his skull, covering his half mutilated grimace.

When they were finished with the other two, their focus went to Jem.

He took a while. So long that my legs were aching from staying crouched, my clammy hand glued to my mouth.

When they were finished, the crows left in a flock, taking off into the sky.

They had buried Serena and Rowan in shallow graves covered in flowers and berries.

I think… I could be mistaken, but I think it was their own version of a funeral.

Jem, however, lay on his back.

Somehow, despite the grisly way he had been put back together, he was still beautiful.

I thought I was never going to see him again, and there he was, put together like a puzzle piece. I noticed he was missing an arm, and a quiet “chirp” startled me.

Next to me, a baby crow was dragging his mutilated arm.

And with perfect precision, reattached it, hopping across my boyfriend’s stomach.

It flew off when I got too close, struggling to hold myself together.

I dropped to my knees in front of him, tears choking my throat.

I could take all of him back to his mother.

I could bury him whole.

I scooped him up, but when he twitched in my arms, I dropped him.

“Jem?” I whispered, my trembling hands cradling his face.

His flickering eyes, lips parting in a silent cry.

He didn't move, his head slumping, but his chest was… twitching.

He was alive.

When I rolled him onto his back, something slimy filled my throat.

Something was writhing under his skin, raven black streaks running up and down his naked spine.

His body twisted and jerked, his head snapping back, congealed blood seeping from his mouth in black lumps.

I shuffled back when his spine broke through skin, splitting in two, bulging feathered appendages protruding from his back.

Wings.

He was beautiful, and yet when Jem turned to me, vacant eyes, beady, almost bird-like, I found myself stepping back.

The glamour over my eyes seemed to come apart, and I saw the reality of him, a human twisted and cruelly contorted into something inhuman.

His head twitched, dead eyes staring straight through me.

I think he was trying to speak, the way his lips parted slowly, but I don't think he could.

Behind him, a single crow watched him, its head inclined, almost like it was waiting for something.

I screamed at it, told it to shoo, but the bird just sat there staring at me.

It wasn't frightened or intimidated.

It's almost like it was playing it's own fucked up games with me, pushing me to rush at it or try and attack the thing.

Jem didn't react when I said his name.

I don't think he even knows his name.

Instead, he turned, spread his wings, and took off into the night.

After a moment of the crow watching me, again, like it wanted me to do something.

Its tiny eyes flicked to a pebble, and I felt it; a sudden, overwhelming urge to grab the rock, and throw it at its head.

But I didn't.

And, like it was disappointed, it too swooped into the air, giving me last one caw.

Days later, I was woken by ice cold air.

My window was open.

And on my pillow next to me, something was wet.

My forehead was sticky, strands of my hair glued to my cheeks.

There was a decapitated head neatly placed on my pillow. Its eyes were wide open, like they were still screaming.

Next to it, was my ring.

The following night, I woke to coins being dropped on my pillow.

Then maggots.

Human arms and legs.

I think he's giving me ‘gifts’ but I'm fucking terrified of him, and what he's turned into.

If I shut my window, he comes through the front door.

He won't stop.

I've told the authorities, but they're convinced it's some kind of animal????

I led the sheriff back to the forest where I found the bodies of the other kids, but they're gone.

I'm terrified the same thing that happened to Jem-- whatever creature he became - - is happening to them too.

I keep hearing noises at night, loud chirping and flapping wings.

Like they're outside my house hunting me down.

It sounds like they're teasing me, waiting for the right moment.

I can hear a mix of human laughter, laced with something wrong. Bird-like.

They're outside right now. Laughing. They won't stop laughing.

Giggling.

Chittering in their own language, and sometimes I swear the birds answer.

They swoop past my window, slamming their talon-like nails on the glass.

I tried locking and bordering it up, but they just tore it down.

Please help me. How do I get Jem to stop??? Is there a way to stop them??

Whatever my boyfriend has turned into is trying to fucking KILL me.