Squab

It was peacetime in the Balkans: shelves half stocked with potatoes, tomatoes, soft cheese. Then gluts: watermelons, green oranges, Vietnamese vodka. Heavy meat cleavers from the future former Soviet Union. If something appeared in the shops, you bought it.
+++There was no meat. He clove watermelons and flicked the seeds out of the window onto the police station far below. He experimented. He smashed open a tin of pilchards in tomato sauce and, washing the red from his shirt, he heard cooing. Next day he heard it again. He took a Red Army trenching tool from a previous glut, levered off the plywood panel behind the cistern and found a squab that had fallen down a ventilation shaft from the roof. It was weak and frightened. He kept it in a box in the bathroom and offered it scraps. At night he was haunted by cooing.
+++Every day, he cradled it down eleven flights and tried to teach it to fly. It wouldn’t. He cradled it up eleven flights. It wouldn’t eat pilchards or white bread adulterated with rice flour. It got weaker and kept cooing. He held it gently on the tiled floor and severed its head.
+++In another country, he sleeps with the window closed so he won’t hear the wood pigeons roosting on the ivy-covered wall. He wakes with a headache. It’s peacetime.
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Sarah Wright lives in Yorkshire. She writes short stories, translates Russian prose and poetry, and is the managing editor of an archaeological journal. She can be reached at: meleagris27@gmail.com