There was a loud knock. It’s that kind of place. There’s always a noise, something falling to pieces, asking to be repaired.
I was working. Trying to write a novel. I’d been trying for years, decades, but now I’d finally got into the rhythm of it. I’d just passed 1000 words for the day.
I walked around and lit a cigarette. Nothing. Work from home sucks.
“Have you seen this? Come and take a look,” said my wife, Amelia.
Not now, I’m in the middle of a really juicy bit. If I leave now I’ll never be able to recapture the feeling.
“Fine, ok, fine,” I said and mooched over to the living room where she was pointing to the window.
“Do you see this?”
I couldn’t see anything, honestly.
“Can’t you see it?”
I strained my eyes, generally unable to see anything in life other than a laptop screen with a lack of words on it, to see what she was on about. It’s a…
“Pigeon. It’s the outline of a pigeon?”
“Poor thing,” she said.
“Look at the fucking thing!” For some reason I was angry. Was my window scratched? Dented. Broken?
We went to the garden. A cold winter afternoon with a sun like stage 3 cancer. God, shut up.
“The cat must’ve got it,” I said, seeing as there was no dead bird anywhere.
“What about feathers?”
“What about feathers?!” She had this stupid fucking annoying way of asking things.
I looked at the patio. Overgrown lawn. Wild bushes. No feathers.
That night, in bed, turned to the side, I kept thinking about suicide. Not mine, because as Emil Cioran expressed, it’s always too late, but the bird’s. I decided that I should write a scene with an unexpected suicide. A lady with hat and feather boa. She’s got it all, except death.
Bogdan Tiganov
aiurea press 