The Pigeon

The Pigeon

Copyright2020 by Daniel S. Dechi

On a warm summer day in the city’s public park, an elderly man sits on a wooden bench throwing bits of dry bread to his cooing pigeon friends. A confused, scrawny pigeon hobbles to join the flock. All of the other pigeons appear disturbed by this sickly looking bird, and abruptly fly the scene. The man seems a bit surprised by the flock’s sudden departure, but turns a smile to the afflicted pigeon, and feeds his new friend from the palm of his hand. The man inadvertently coughs, slightly startling the pigeon, but the feeding continues.

The next day, the elderly man is back on the park bench, feeding his solitary sickly feathered friend. The other pigeons never returned. His coughing is now more pronounced and persistent, noticed by disturbed passers by.

The day after, the elderly man’s sickly feathered friend waits at the park bench, but the man is not there. Noticeably, throughout the city, many people are coughing. As days go by, more cities echo with coughs, and nearby towns, then country after country, ultimately the continents. Soon after, the entire world coughs. The coughing ends as abruptly as it started. Eerie silence envelops the world.

Somewhere at a city zoo, the last human on Earth limps onto a bench across from a monkey habitat, grimacing while holding her side in pain. She peers at her phone, and smiles at an old photograph of her family at the zoo. Her mother is wearing a little gold heart-shaped locket that now hangs around her neck. She caresses it lovingly, hoping warm memories would bring some comfort. A tear runs down her cheek, as she eventually succumbs to her illness.

Suspecting a disturbance, a tribe of chimps carefully climb precarious debris to exit their habitat pit. They gather around to inspect this last deceased human. One chimp grabs the phone from the deceased woman and begins playing with it, as the other curious chimps gaze in amazement. Many primate arms stretch for a touch, but the phone is raised above their reach. Noisy tribe anger ensues. Without warning, an all encompassing bright red glow swiftly sears across the zoo, silently obliterating everything in its path, including the chimps who appear frozen in time as they instantly vaporize. Quickly, the unstoppable red blaze devours the entire city, continuing to flash its destruction across the globe.

The Sun has suddenly expanded exponentially, becoming a bright red blazing giant. Consuming everything in its wake. Earth, Mars, Asteroid Belt, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, all gone without a sound. Mercury and Venus have earlier met their demise. Only a crescent fragment of Neptune remains representing what once was a complete planetary solar system.

Much further into the desolate reaches of space, a dark, lonely celestial object witnesses the tiny red glow of the former vibrant Sun fizzle for a moment, then turn into a faint nebulous cloud.

No longer tethered by the dead Sun’s gravitational force, the frozen rock slowly drifts into deeper space, away from its nest within the solar system. Ages pass, counted by no one, as this lost celestial body wanders into the vast unknown. On rare occasion, a passing comet briefly keeps it company. Further along the way, the lonely rock sweeps past a speeding NASA Voyager Space Probe. Its golden record seems to be stuck playing a squeaky voice: “Good boy, Pluto… Good boy, Pluto… Good boy, Pluto…”.

Time brings this last remnant of the former Solar System to a slow halt at the outermost region of another planetary group, whose gravity field slips it gently into an orbit around its new sun.