Nobody wakes up in the morning expecting to find a flock of harpies perched on their roof – at least nobody in Dunwoody. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, though, it’s that life doesn’t give a shit for your expectations.

“Carlos!” “Carlos!” “Carlos!”

I practically gave a shit myself, right there on the balcony, that first morning. I spilled coffee all over my bathrobe, that’s for sure, probably right about when I slammed the glass door back shut. Realistically, I would have freaked out to find anybody perched up on the complex roof calling my name at 6:30 in the morning, so don’t go thinking I have something against harpies. In fact, once I’d caught my breath and cleaned up the coffee, I went back out on the balcony and sat in one of the plastic chairs and sipped what was left in my mug. It’s annoying at first, a half-dozen voices calling your name over and over and over and over again for twenty minutes, but harpies have pretty voices, and they kind of sing your name, when you listen for it. “Carlos!” “Carlos!” “Carlos!”

Besides, they aren’t exacatly terrible to look at. They have pretty faces – sulky and arrogant, maybe, but still beautiful – and the feathers that cover their arms (well, their wings) and their legs are these iridescent patterns in blues and greens and fuchsias and purples, like they thought peacocks were a little on the drab side. That, and they’re basically naked women from the thighs up. I’m sorry, but that doesn’t get old.

I was stretching it out, spending twenty minutes outside like that, but eventually I told myself that I was going to be late for work, so I had to go back inside and get dressed and get in my car, harpies or not. Work was work – nobody else had anything to say about harpies or manticores or encounters with the Kraken. I got home late and forgot all about the morning’s excitement, but the next morning it was harpies on the roof again (“Carlos!” “Carlos!” “Carlos!”), and the morning after that (“Carlos!” “Carlos!” “Carlos!”), and then it just kind of became a thing, and I guess I did expect to see harpies on the roof after that – even in Dunwoody. Our neighbors told me that a news crew came one of the days I was at work and took a lot of video, but they didn’t think they were going to be able to air it because of the nudity.

Harpies on your roof aren’t all fun and games, just so you know. They shit and the piss up there, and their talons just tear up asphalt shingles like crazy – we were always having to watch out for falling pieces of rooftile when we went out to our cars. They ate all of the small animals in the neighborhood. The squirrels were gone in the first couple of days, but pretty soon mockingbirds and ravens and raccoons and armadillos had all disappeared too. I know the apartment manager didn’t like them up there, but I guess neither animal control nor the police would accept that it was their problem, and the critter catcher just came one Saturday and stood in the parking lot for an hour before he got back in his truck and drove off. Still, the days that I’d come from work and they’d be out on a flight looking for food instead of perched on the roof and singing my name, “Carlos!” “Carlos!” “Carlos!”, I was always a little disappointed.

It was the second Friday after the harpies came. I’d only gotten home from work a few minutes earlier, and I was sorting through the cupboards for a snack when I realized both of my roommates were staring at me from the kitchen door.

“They got Jester,” Eric said. He was glowering, and he’s not usually the glowering type.

“The harpies?” I knew that’s who he meant, but I didn’t have anything more clever to say until after he nodded. “Dude, that sucks.” Well, it sucked for him. He’d had Jester for 16 years or something, but all the cat meant to me was a long-haired furball that didn’t like to be touched and did like to cough up soggy hairballs on the couch. It wasn’t a good time to mention the new lack of hairballs though. “Did he go outside or something?”

“No!” Eric’s jaw clenched. “Just to the screen door. I heard it slam, and he was gone.”

“Man, that really sucks. Sorry.” I glanced at Pat, who was also glowering, and then back at Eric. “Why are you guys looking at me like that, though? Like it’s my fault or something?”

“Because it is your fault! They’re here for you.”

“Whaaat? That’s insane, man. Why would you even say that?” I let the cupboard door slam shut. Better to let him think I was getting mad, too, because behind that glowering it looked like there was some fuming waiting in the wings.

Pat looked at me like I was an idiot. “They’re always calling your name, Carlos. And they stay above our apartment.”

“My name? I thought they did that to everyone.”

“No.” Eric bit off the word. “Just you.”

“Shit. No kidding.” It was a lot to take in. I mean, harpies are one thing, but harpies with a personal interest in you are something else. “What do they want?”

“Besides eating Jester? You’d have to ask them.”

I wanted to unwind a little from the drive home, but you can’t really unwind when your roommates are shooting infrared heat beams at you out of their eyes, so I went out onto the balcony. “Hey!” The rooftop was empty, but I had to make the appearance of trying.

With a flurry of loud wingflaps they appeared above the ridge of the roof, a dazzle of colors against the washed out sky. “Carlos!” “Carlos!” “Carlos!” They seemed excited to see me, which was a nice change from my roommates.

“Hey,” I said again, but I cut them off before they could begin another chorus of Carloses. “What do you want, harpies?”

They flapped their wings eagerly. “To eat you!” “To eat you.” “Yum.” Yum!” “Is that okay?” “Hmm, yes, is that okay?”

“Eat me?” I answered. “No, that is not okay.”

“Oh, c’mon, please?” “We asked nicely, didn’t we?” “We did, very nicely.” They settled at the edge of the roof, only a few yards away and right above me. Suddenly the balcony felt really exposed.

From the other side of the screen (which, incidentally, I had heard just lock shut), Eric glared. “Yeah, Carlos. They asked nicely. Just let them eat you, so they’ll go away.”

They puffed up their chests and nodded. “We will!” “We’ll go away.” “Right away, as soon as we’re done.” “If you let us eat you, Carlos.” “Carlos!” “Carlos!” “Yum!”

This was not a great turn of events, so I forced the lock on the screen door (in our shitty complex, that meant just pulling the door open a little harder), and marched down to speak to the apartment manager. She didn’t want to make time for me, but I told her she had to get of the harpies.

“Oh, now I have to?” She rolled her eyes at me. That’s what she always did whenever I spoke to her. “What do you think I’ve been trying to do for the last few weeks?”

“If you don’t, they’re going to eat me!”

“I doubt it, Ramirez. I don’t think you’re their type.”

“No, I’m serious, Miz Landers! They totally said that all they want is to eat me, and then they’ll go away. Me!”

“Reaaaally.” Whoops. She was looking calculating, not compassionate. “I’d let you break your lease for that.”

So I tried sneaking out in the middle of the night and driving up to Ellijay for the weekend – you know, just to get someplace where I could get my head straight and figure it out – but somehow they followed me, and I really didn’t feel comfortable being alone in a hotel room with those six harpies flapping around the window. “Carlos!” “Carlos!” “Carlos!”

I drove right back home Saturday morning. Even angry roommates were better. Or so I thought. Sunday morning I woke up with all six of the harpies in my bedroom – woke up to them preening and grooming and licking their lips at the sight of me sleeping in my underwear with the sheet kicked off. “They were making a racket,” was the only excuse I got from Eric after I banged on his door, and then he slammed his bedroom door in my face.

Being invited in had made the harpies bolder, it seemed. They didn’t give me the few feet of space they had on the balcony, even – now they crowded up against me like we were on the dancefloor in some nightclub. In their defense, the hallway outside Eric’s room was pretty tight. At least they were kind enough to whisper this early in the morning. “carlos.” “carlos.” “carlos.” “pleeease?” The last one snapped her teeth together and patted her sunken belly, in case I’d forgotten what she meant. I almost had. All of those feathers and the naked flesh rubbing up against me… Well, my underwear was getting crowded and I’d started imagining meeting harpies under different circumstances.

“Look,” I said, but they were already looking, and they didn’t want to give me any extra space when I tried to step out of the hallway into the living room. They fanned their wings around me, flapping to fence me in and bat at me. Maybe they weren’t batting at me, really – their wings were like fifteen feet long each, and our living room wasn’t huge. Six of them were a pretty big crowd. They could have just been stretching. “Look, I don’t want you to eat me.”

They just shrugged and glanced at each other and giggled anxiously, like, “Life’s a bitch, …and?” The purple one whispered, “carlos?”

That was new. I meant to say, “What?”, but somehow I didn’t. I must have said “Yes?” because all of a sudden they were a flurry of wings again, of laughing and “Carlos!” “Carlos!” “Carlos!” and “Yes!” “He said ‘Yes’!” And then three or four of them had me gripped in their talons just like that, like there was nothing to it and all of my fighting and wrestling to shake them off was a minor annoyance. They flew with me out through the screen door – through the door – and plopped me down up on what was left of the shingle roof. There was a bit more wrestling and then my underwear was tugged off, over my legs, and flung off to godknowswhere. “Carlos!”

Twelve colorful wings beat the air right above me, fighting for room with each other, overlapping and blocking out the orange morning clouds. Talons pinned me to the asphalt tiles, or, actually, the tarpaper and plywood that had been exposed. They hunched over me, craning to reach me with their mouths while they held me with their feet, which is not a configuration their still-human torsos encouraged. When I yelled for help I got a knee hard against my cheek for the trouble. Pinning my head like that somehow took all of the fight out of me. And it wasn’t even from the view up the inside her feathered thigh, because how could I think about that at a time like this? Well, it wasn’t entirely from the view.

As they rearranged themselves to settle on me – like vultures, I thought, with their wings held unfurled above them – I began to feel tongues and lips – licking, kissing – and occasionally a nibble on my belly, but not the dreaded bites, the tearing teeth. “Mmmm…” “Yup.” “Carlos.” “Yum.” “Thigh! Thigh!” (That preceded a rearrangement of feathers and breasts and faces, followed by an eager nip inside my thigh. I thought about struggling again, but it hadn’t really helped before and… well, this part wasn’t so bad. I mean, it made sense to save my strength for later when it got bad, right? The licking didn’t stop, but their voices changed – they became hesitant. “Hmmm.” “I don’t know.” “Yum, but…”

And then the licking did stop. (Except the one at my thigh – she was in her own world.) I couldn’t make out individual faces – they were just one big shadow mass above me, but I could hear the different voices conferring. “Should we?” “Tastes funny.” “Tastes good” “Yup, good, but not right.” “Yup.” “Should be sure, though.” “Yup, should be sure.”

Then – well – it really, really hurt. Like stabbed-by-a-knife hurt, or third-degree-burn hurt. That is to say it didn’t hurt immediately, not when the teeth sunk into my chest and took out about two inches square, including my right nipple, but it hurt right after the skin finished tearing and the air hit it, and it hurt when tongues flicked in like maggots to lap at the welling blood. It was the appropriate time for a manly scream of agony, but I think I mostly shrieked and whimpered. You’d have to ask everyone in the complex that I woke up.

“Nope.” “Nope.” “Not right.” “He doesn’t taste right.” “Wrong Carlos.” “Sorry, wrong Carlos.” “Wait, can we eat him anyway?” “He said yes.” “He did say yes.” Any attempt on my part to clarify my ‘yes’ was cut off by the knee smashing into my cheek, and by my now-more-appropriate agonized groans. “Taste him again?” “Yes, again.” “He’s still a Carlos.” “Still a man.” Tongues lapped at the blood again; in their moments of absence, it had washed over my ribs. “We could eat him, and then find the right Carlos.” “Nope – wasted time.” “Waste of time.” “Too much time lost already.”

Their wings beat at the air and the grip of their talons loosened. “Sorry, Carlos!” “Sorry!” “Carlos!” I watched them go until they were just blue and green and purple specks in the morning sky before I began thinking about how to get off the roof.

The bitch of it was, even after I healed, complete with an ugly med-student scar where a nipple had been, and even after convincing the apartment manager that I wasn’t responsible for the damages (well, my lawyer convinced her) I still had to move out. How could I stay with roommates like that?