 My grandmother was a devout Christian. At the very least, that was the mask she wore. In reality, I believe she liked to tell people they were going to hell, berating them for any small mishap. I never saw her preach the good word or talk about God's works. I don't believe she ever touched a Bible in her life. That didn't stop her from attacking those who would dare to commit a deed that fell outside her narrow worldview. Jacob. She would snap. Don't touch the pie before it's done. It's a sin to interfere with someone's unfinished work. After smacking me away with her old wooden spoon, she would make me pay penance by doing chores while all the other children played outside. Her obsession with sin consumed every aspect of her life as a saint walking among mortals. It was her express duty to tell the world the horrors of hell. In gruesome detail, she would describe how exactly a person's face would be peeled off in the pit. Sometimes it was ear to ear. Other times, from chin to forehead, she could never keep the detail straight. Her children didn't care about these inconsistencies, however. They were more concerned with a five-year-old grandson who was just told how he was going to burn for knocking over her vase. There was one story she told the same every time. I think it was her favorite one. Oddly enough, it was the only one that never mentioned hell. The talk of sin stayed, though. She could never get away from that. The bird stares, she would say, will appear to you when they're most needed. God will show you all your mortal failings, and you will be saved. Your wickedness will be revealed to the world, and your soul will be purified. I never understood how learning of all your wickedness would suddenly save your soul, but grandma was convinced. Maybe that's why she felt the need to point out every transgression. Maybe she thought she was saving our souls. I don't know if she ever gave herself the same treatment. The story goes that at some point in your life, when your sins have become too much to bear, a door will appear before you. It will be old with chipped white paint and decorated with a light feather pattern around the edge. From inside, you will hear a call, a beautiful song beckoning you inside. Grandma never went into detail about this song, but she assured us it would be the most beautiful thing we would ever hear. It would be impossible to resist. Upon opening the door, you would see a long straight way down. The steps would be old and wooden, yet sturdy. She would describe the sound that first step would make, mime out a comical creak that would make all the younger kids laugh. I never did, though. It seemed foolish and childish. On either side of the staircase would be a wall that stopped at waist height, wall-papered with a dainty floral pattern. From where the wall stopped to the ceiling, extended chicken wire, behind which you could see hundreds of birds, behind the birds, another wall with the same floral print. She would go into great detail about the birds. Grandma would meticulously describe each species there in the walls. Macaws, ravens, eagles, her hands would strike up and down as she brought the birds to life before us. I never got tired of hearing about those birds, the way their feathers moved, the bobbing of their heads, how the grace of God allowed all their independent chirps and whistles to be joined together in one glorious song. God didn't seem so bad when viewed through the lens of those birds. Hell didn't seem so bad either. You would go down that staircase, basking in God's glory to the tune of every bird imaginable. They would flap and flitter by, their wings creating a mass of feathers and song. I always imagined that those birds created some sort of angel, a collective that throbbed and shifted and swarmed. That staircase must have been heaven in my mind, an endless journey downwards, surrounded by angels and music. At the time, I didn't know that a staircase to heaven was supposed to go in the opposite direction. At the bottom of those steps was a room. It was small, square, and contained only a table and two chairs. The empty chair is for you, in the other sits God. He would talk with you in that room. He would lay bare all your sins. This part of the story was the worst because grandma would go and point out all the little misdeeds of those listening. She would talk for God and we would squirm with guilt before her. You would thank God for saving your soul and then go back up the stairs. That's where the story ended. Grandma never said what you were supposed to do with the knowledge of your sins. She never answered me when I asked if God would let me stay there with the birds. The bird stares was everyone's favorite story. Not that there was much competition, considering all the others involved rotting in hell. So nobody could understand why Uncle Glenn would take the tail and twist it. Why he would take something so beautiful and turn it into something so horrifying. Grandma thought what Uncle Glenn did was a sin and was therefore banned from most family gatherings. Nobody complained about this. Uncle Glenn wasn't liked by anybody in the family. I only got to hear his version of the bird stares once. Uncle Glenn claimed to have encountered the door. He said he found it after a night on the town after he had one or two beers. Uncle Glenn said his girlfriend had broken up with him that night. Apparently she'd been seeing his best friend behind his back. She didn't want to drag on the affair and decided to stick with a friend, saying he was better in bed. Glenn didn't take the news too well and decided to make some bad decisions. He tried to fight the backstabbing asshole who stole his girl, but ended up stumbling home drunk and battered and bruised. That's when he came across it. The same old white door from grandma's story. He didn't hear any song behind it, though. There was only the door placed perfectly in the center of the alleyway, a single light illuminating it. It looks so out of place there. He said that white against the brick. That door was something you'd find in an old lady's house, not something that'd be in a dark alleyway in the corner of the city. Those feathers etched into it sure as hell didn't. They were too. He'd stopped there, lost and thought. I don't think he was able to describe how out of place it felt that door. I found later the word he'd been looking for was delicate. Those feathers were too delicate to have been in such a place. Some abandoned street at four in the morning. It deserved to be in a place where it could be loved, viewed, appreciated. Some place where its craftsmanship could be admired. Uncle Glenn wasn't disturbed by the lack of music. He was too concerned with how unnatural the door was. I don't know if his alcohol-addled brain had been thinking of the story at that point. Maybe he hadn't been thinking of anything at all. On an impulse, he'd opened the door. He described the stairway as pitch black. The electric glow from the pitiful light above the door barely went five steps down before being consumed by the inky darkness. It could not penetrate into its depths. Through that dying orange glow, he could tell the narrow steps were wooden, rotting and impossibly steep. There was no floral wallpaper, only splintering wooden walls. He could not see past the chicken wire. The dark concealed that area from wandering eyes to perfectly. He didn't know when he'd stepped inside that place or when he'd closed the door, only that now he was trapped in a suffocating darkness. The door locked behind him. I tried to open it, you see. It didn't work. The knob wouldn't turn at all. So I tried to bust that thing down, but it wouldn't even budge. He looked like he was going to cry when he said this. I didn't really believe any of this, though. Uncle Glenn was six foot four, with arms as large as my thighs. Given how mean he looked, a door could come off its hinges just by him glaring at it. Maybe he only looked mean, all bark and no bite. He'd included him losing a fight as a part of the story after all. A door wouldn't know that though. But maybe this one did. He was left with only one option. Descend. I didn't like the way he said that. The way the blood drained from his face and the hopelessness took its place. Descend. That part almost gave me nightmares alone. As he went into that deep, stumbling over the sheer steps, he began to notice something. It was subtle at first, but it soon was everywhere. It was a sort of flapping sound. She said it was birds, right? Well, yeah, that's what I thought too. But the sounds those things made. I've never heard a bird sound like that. Can birds even scream? I became very angry, as he said this. But you have to understand, I loved those birds my grandma described. I wanted to see them someday. My childhood fantasy never released its grip on the idea of those flying angels. For this disgusting man to brutally dismantle the dreams of my childhood to tear it apart bit by bit through the image of walls that wouldn't stop screaming. Well, I finally got grandma. It truly was a sin. It must have been hours, or even days he was trapped there, stuck with the company of that ever present darkness and those guttural sounds he called screams. They threw themselves at the chicken wire, he said. He could hear every time those birds smashed against it, their wings beating frantically against the metal cage. It created a strange, horrid symphony, the reverb of the wire mixed with the flapping and the screams. He can still hear it when the time of night is just right, and the darkness has taken its hold. He never met God. There were no chairs at the bottom of the staircase. There was only a table with a candle next to which sat a small, feathered body. The candle's companion was a long, dead finch, curled up and shriveled in the flickering light. He didn't take the candle or the finch. Instead, he opened the door on the other side of the room and came back out into the cold alleyway. At this point, his words were wracked with sobs. It was hard to decipher what he was trying to say. So that's where his story ended. He was shaking too much to continue any further. I thought he was a great actor. He told this tale with much more force than anything grandma ever did. We all said he could make a career out of it if he ever managed to pull himself together. He never did, though. It was a shame he drank himself to death. When I got the news about his death, it was distressing. I hadn't thought of the bird stairs or Uncle Glen in years. I had tried very hard to forget about him. His version of the story left a bad taste in my mouth and, unfortunately, ruined the original tale for me. My beautiful birds had been turned into a screaming hallway and a dead finch decaying in the dark. I didn't want to think about the bird stairs after that. It just made me sick. So I abandoned the tale, along with the rest of my childhood innocence. Uncle Glen's funeral was a simple affair. No one wanted to spend the time or money to give him the proper family send-off, so they just stuck him in a coffin and put it all in the dirt. The bird stairs he described would die with him. That's really all I cared about, that little bit of closure. I didn't want to think about white doors or stairs or birds, but I did dream of them. I thought that if I was there when they finally put him in the ground, it would all go away. He would take my nightmares with him to hell. I was only there for closure. So I ignored the birds. It was admittedly difficult, considering they were everywhere. They were ravens or crows, or whatever you call big black birds with piercing eyes. They sat on the tombstones and lingered in the trees, watching, waiting. Nobody else said anything about them. Maybe they wanted closure too. There was one bird, smaller than the rest. There was perched to the left of me on a gravestone, carrying the marking of a cross. I don't know whose tomb it was. I stood straight ahead, keeping my eyes fixed on the reverend, giving the final blessings. I don't think the little devil was looking the same way. Its eyes bore into my soul, picking out and dissecting every action I had taken. The weight of whatever sins I had committed was astonishing. I don't even know what those sins were, just that they were there and I could feel them. I wanted to run, to scream, to release the itching that was just beneath my skin by peeling it off just as grandma had described. I could do nothing but stand there in agony, the eyes of every winged thing laughing at me, tormenting me. When I saw the door the next week, well, it was no surprise. I almost laughed when it appeared. A white stain upon the earth in place of my front door. As a child, this moment would have been glorious. The angels would accept me, no longer would I have to worry about my bones becoming diseased in hell. In my teens, I would have been wary, the thought of Uncle Glenn's shaking hands, a recent memory. Now, I could only remember the funeral, the birds, the weight of every invisible transgression I had committed against God. The door emitted a low hum, a quiet tone that never varied. It sounded like something that would play at the end of a TV broadcast, but I don't know whether the static was real or if it was just my brain filling in the gaps. It had a strange musical quality to it. I don't know why I didn't get the song my grandma described or the empty silence of Uncle Glenn. It called to me with that moan. It promised repentance and sanctuary. I entered. For what else was I supposed to do? Leave back the way I came? Abandon my home to the divine being that now claimed it? Be stuck in the vision of those demonic birds that hated me. The stairway was not how Grandma or Uncle Glenn described. It was an odd mixture of both sheer rotten steps contained by floral wallpaper and clean chicken wire. It was not a pitch blackness, but rather a dim shadow that covered the area more of a dusk than a midnight. The light was like that sliver right before the sun sets fully. An eternal twilight captured in the narrow hall. The ceiling was tall, and I could not see where it ended. I could not remember if Grandma and Uncle Glenn ever mentioned the ceiling or if this detail was created specifically for my own personal purgatory. I am certain now that they never mentioned the ceiling. Although it was brighter than Uncle Glenn described, I could not see past the chicken wire to the wall that I knew lay further behind. It was washed in shadow, and the small movement I did make out made me turn away in surprise. Whatever was there did not want me to see it. What struck me most was the suffocating silence. The steps did not creak as I went down. No song or scream came from the sides. The shadow did not speak. This detail was disturbing to me. The stories of the bird stairs always seemed to have a fixation on the sound. Here, there was nothing. No sound, no sight, no music. The birds that haunted my memory did not choose to reveal themselves to me. It didn't feel like a descent. It was more like a slow walk that happened to go downwards. Maybe the lack of a ceiling played a role. The wire stretched up into infinity, so how could I possibly descend? The height gave me a feeling of vertigo, especially when compared to how narrow the staircase was. I could not extend my arms out on either side. In fact, if I were to stand with my shoulder on one side and try to fully extend my other arm, I would be unable to. The space seemed to have been created for the exact width of my shoulders, leaving mere inches on either side. The mixture of claustrophobia and height began to get to me, to the point where I was nauseous once I got to the bottom. The room was almost exactly as grandma described. The shadow was absent, revealing the cheery pattern on the walls. I could see the table, and the chairs, and God. So I sat down across from him. He wore an impeccably tailored and pressed suit with a matching dark tie. He had pale skin and dark hair. The most striking thing about his appearance, though, was the grin. God never stopped grinning. The smile stretched from ear to ear in a horrible imitation of humanity. His teeth were stained, a bright, blinding white. I didn't know God was supposed to look so wrong. He said nothing. I waited. I sat there staring at his grinning face, waiting for him to make the first move. He never budged. His smile never faltered. Are you going to tell me my sins? I finally asked. He didn't respond for a long time. His face started to remind me of those birds. I wondered when he would stop taunting me with that cold, glassy stare and start screaming. He spoke hours later. I have something to show you. My name was missing from the end of that statement. I don't think he even knew it. This observation distracted me from how wrong his voice sounded, how cold and grating it was to my ears. There was no expression to it, no trace that it was human. It was like some alien AI, a voice granted to something that was never supposed to speak. His mouth never moved from that strained grin. He got up from the table, like a puppet controlled by strings, and opened the door behind him. I followed him down a long hallway, staying back from his unnatural, shambling gate. The walk was short, yet felt so much longer due to the absence of sound. Time slows down when you can't hear the echo of your own footsteps. God led me into a circular room with textured brown walls and a raised platform in the center. He gestured at it with a jerking motion, and I approached it without an ounce of dread. On the small stone platform was an angel, a beautiful bird of paradise with feathers made of silver and gold. They spilled over the side in a cascade of sculpted metal. It was more dazzling than my grandma ever could have described. God whispered. Without hesitation, I uttered a quiet hello to the little bird before me. I knew I'd made a mistake as soon as it started shrieking. The sound is hard to describe. It was an otherworldly whale that caused my skin to crawl and my hair to stand on end. It was piercing, metallic, oscillating in tone rapidly. It moved up and down and never settled on one note. I couldn't tell if it was a song or a scream, only that it was hurting me, and I wanted it to end. I turned around to ask God to make it stop, only to find he disappeared and the hallway with him. I desperately ran to try and find a way out, to get away from the wailing echo that came from the center of the room. I clawed at the walls, crying as I peeled away the bits of rot that clung to it. When my fingers were bleeding and the wall unmoving and the sound constantly changing, I snapped. I stormed right up to that damned angel and I grabbed it and smashed it into the ground. I stomped and stomped and stomped on that little bird, not caring as it started to ooze a dark oil, not caring as its feathers were ripped from its body and its hollowed bones were crushed and its shrieking stopped. I stood there trembling at the destruction I'd wrought and then went back down the hallway. God said nothing to me as I went back up the stairs and out the white door back into the street before my house. I didn't turn back. I couldn't bear the thought of seeing that strained grin again. That was the first time I went into the bird stairs. The next time I saw the door was a week later in place of a restroom door and a gas station. I didn't want to go in that time, but that static hymn wouldn't leave my mind. It was impossible to ignore. I went in again, down the stairs, trailing my fingers over the chicken wire as I descended. I could feel them watching me now, those angels in the shadows, their beady eyes not once leaving my face. I sat down before God again, his grinning face still taunting me. Why am I back here? I almost screamed. What do you want from me? He said nothing. I screamed and yelled and hurled every insult I knew at him, yet he said nothing. So I waited and waited until he spoke. I have something to show you. He said, his mouth still unmoving, his tone still without expression. I followed him down the hallway once more, my breathing now taking up the silence. If God heard how uneven and choppy it was, he chose not to acknowledge it. The room was the same. The walls still kept their clinging brown rot. The platform still held a delicate metal bird, no evidence of my violent rampage to be found. The bird didn't even wait for me to say something this time. It started its holy whale almost immediately. I didn't want to kill it again, but I didn't know what else to do. I couldn't stay trapped there while it called out to me, begging me to end the misery God had put us in. I killed it again. I smashed its poor fragile body into the floor. Then I left, feeling the eyes of God and the angels as I went back up those stairs. I keep finding that door everywhere. It plays out the same every time I descend. I yell at God while he grins. He leads me to the little bird. I kill it over and over again. I tried to fight God one of those times. I threw myself over the table and slammed my fist into his face again and again and again. It didn't work. I was left with broken bloody knuckles and his grinning face never shifted, never damaged. I still had to kill that stupid bird. I tried ignoring that door once. I tried to resist its call and move on with my life. It found me, though. The next time I went down a staircase, I ended up there. Reality not even blinking as it changed. I think God laughed at me that time. He definitely did the next time. When the door I went through changed, just as I passed the threshold, I can hear the birds now as I walk down that hallway. I notice the slight flapping of their wings. It's getting louder with each trip. I wonder when they will start screaming. I wonder if that sound will be the same one that haunts me every waking moment. I wonder if I will still be able to hear it when I stand before God, when he finally decides to tell me all my sins, if I will feel it when he rips my heart out of my ribcage, when he takes my bones and flesh and turns it into something new. How much pain will I be in when he turns me into one of his angels? Will it hurt when he throws me in with the rest of the fleshy, featherless birds? Will my skin bear the scars when I throw myself against the chicken wire as I scream? Maybe I'll end up like Uncle Glenn, sad and broken for the rest of my days, babbling on to a family who just wishes I would die and leave them be. Will they remember me? They ignored the birds then, and they will ignore them now. What will happen when he takes me out of the cage and welds feathers of iron to my skin and places me in a decaying room full of rot and maggots and worms? When he brings some new hapless sinner in there, how soon will I start shrieking? Will they hear it as a song? What will it feel like as my brains are ground into the dirt, as my body is placed under the heel of penance? I wonder when God would get tired of it, when he decides some other bird should take my place. When God consumes me, shoves me down into His gluttonous mouth. Will I finally be saved? Will I be redeemed for every evil I've made, all those small sins I cannot name? Or will I finally go to hell? My grandmother then will laugh, another soul saved from endless torment. She will sit and hum with a nightingale in her window, God thanking her for her service.