Eating One’s Own by Sareeta Domingo

Published in Issue 4 | Illustration by Raahat Kaduji

It wasn’t a complaint, but dawn came earlier every day. It broke open her eyelids and meant sleep was impossible to return to. Inevitably darkness would return eventually, but for now she tried to enjoy it all. The cat, leaping with a cheerful prrrp onto the bed at the onset of that 5am sun. The heat swathing her legs despite only a sheet covering her. The steady snore of the man beside her. She thought of it all as a warm embrace. Lately, most days felt ordinary. Fast and aimless—in spite of everything. Was it odd that she had to force her mind to remember it all? The hospital, the surgery, the doctors and what they had told her with concern in their eyes. Cancer. Having to tell her family and friends. The strange lack of surprise she felt within herself. Perhaps it was simply too large to accommodate in her mind at once.

Then today. Today she reached for the roller blind in the smaller bedroom behind their own, and lifted it to yet more glaring, warm rays. A small flat roof lay below the window. And there, bathed in morning sun, a scene was unfolding that sent a sharp jolt of horror over every inch of her skin. A large bird, smooth white and grey, stared back at her with a chilling nonchalance. The bleached yellow of its beak was stained red with blood. Beside it, an example of a familiar avian nuisance of the London skies now lay twisted and lifeless. The pigeon was half-consumed, its two feet curled in simultaneous defeat, its wings half spread, half slumped.

She stared, repulsed but mesmerised, as the seagull half-heartedly pecked at its prey. Bird eating bird. Consuming its own kind for a morning meal. I have never seen anything like this, she thought. Pulling away and rushing down the stairs of their maisonette, she clutched her cheeks as she relayed the scene to her partner, and was met with a shrug. You eat meat, don’t you? he said, with the hubris of the avowedly vegetarian. Then gleefully he went to take a photograph. She was left with the image still searing her retinas, no memento needed.

But…

Hours later, she returned to sneak a peek at the roof. Ordinarily one to shun signs, to ignore symbols, to reject assigning arbitrary ‘meaning’ to events, now she suddenly stopped. Metaphor assailed her as she recalled all over again the upcoming event she’d refused to write in her diary or calendar for the following day. The particular trip to the hospital, the first of many. This bird-on-bird devouring meant something. She was gripped with certainty as she stared at the discarded, bloodied carcass. A smile spread wide on her face, almost breaching its confines. She laughed at her own sadism, but this is what it would be, wouldn’t it? She was about to eat her own rampant cells, with the aid of chemotherapy drugs and faith and medical audacity. She would destroy her own internal vermin and she, too, planned to blink in nonchalance as she did so. Yes. It all meant something, at last.

The sun still shone brightly, and she sat and stared out at the roof, and the sky beyond it. Then the first day of her own ‘devouring’ occurred, and then another day followed, and another. The first bites of her journey had begun, and the pigeon’s body continued to rest on its flat, bitumen grave, drying in the summer’s heat. Its soft feathers danced around it, a strange reminder of hope.