Edited by Neil Anderson, Saturday, 17 Mar 2012, 10:10
Someone had left the toilet window open. A pigeon had got in. Along with something else, a something else that had ripped the shit out of the pigeon.
Now all that was left was an eviscerated carcass centred in a wild-scattering of gray feathers. A sad little collation of bones and gristle lying on a stone floor at the top of a cold-cold tower. A wee thing gone and un-mourned.
I hunched down onto my hunkers and looked at the wee thing, there was a gelid wind blowing through the window, the one that had been left open. I zipped up my fleece.
It was just a pigeon but I felt a desperate sadness. We were all going to end up here: dead; dead somewhere that we thought might be a home.
I heard a noise. There were a couple of pigeons sitting on the window ledge. The male doing his mating strut. You have to admire their optimism, or their stupidity, or whatever.
It's not in us animals to be sensible about our finality.
novel #31
Someone had left the toilet window open. A pigeon had got in. Along with something else, a something else that had ripped the shit out of the pigeon.
Now all that was left was an eviscerated carcass centred in a wild-scattering of gray feathers. A sad little collation of bones and gristle lying on a stone floor at the top of a cold-cold tower. A wee thing gone and un-mourned.
I hunched down onto my hunkers and looked at the wee thing, there was a gelid wind blowing through the window, the one that had been left open. I zipped up my fleece.
It was just a pigeon but I felt a desperate sadness. We were all going to end up here: dead; dead somewhere that we thought might be a home.
I heard a noise. There were a couple of pigeons sitting on the window ledge. The male doing his mating strut. You have to admire their optimism, or their stupidity, or whatever.
It's not in us animals to be sensible about our finality.
I left the window open.