Insomnia

Her constant crying didn’t let me sleep. I texted her father. He sees my messages, but as usual, he doesn’t respond. Probably too occupied with his new girlfriend. I went to the lady of the family services and told her about my problem. She said this was normal. Asked me if I could bring her to my parents to get some hours of sleep. My parents lived hours away. I had no car, and if I had one, my money wouldn’t be enough for half a tank of fuel. The lady asked about her father. Busy, he has no time nor nerve for her. I left her office even more helpless than before.

As if that wasn’t enough, pigeons had built a nest on my balcony. I tried to get rid of them with water and reflectors and lit candles, but nothing helped. I read about it on the internet: If pigeons nest once in a specific place, they will always come back. I called the landlord to ask if he could put a net on the balcony. Yes, of course; could be done in two months. Thanks for nothing. 

Mama and papa pigeon are cooing constantly. They have finished their nest now, although I had destroyed it at least three times. The nest looks shabby as those grey flying rats do. I hate those things. They keep shitting on the balcony floor, I keep cleaning. I am fighting a lost war. They have chosen me and my balcony. 

The days go by, I still get no sleep. Baby keeps crying every night. Her teeth are growing, pushing against the gums. The hurting pressure must be unbearable, so she does the only thing she can to communicate and show her pain. Crying, whining, for hours and hours. And when I doze off after she gets quiet, the rest lasts for a few minutes, then all begins anew. I texted him for help, again. He still doesn’t respond. He doesn’t care.

The pigeons have laid an egg in the nest. Small and white as snow, placed carelessly in the hastily built roost. I threw it off the balcony and heard the moist impact of shells and slime and flesh on the hard concrete floor. After some days, there was another egg. I threw it off again. When mama and papa pigeon landed on the railing of my balcony, they looked at their nest with their apathetic eyes, ignorant to what happened, or maybe knowing, but moving on, their behaviour dictated by their will to procreate and prevail. And they did prevail. I must have missed the last egg they had laid. 

One morning, faint squeaking through the window of my bedroom. The baby was silent for a moment, so I could hear the pigeon chick. I stepped out on the balcony and saw it, lying in the nest in the corner next to the wall, naked, ugly, pushing its head with the blind blue eyes into the air, falling back down again onto the branches and rubble they had built their nest with. I left it there. Thought about throwing it off the balcony like the I did with the eggs, but I couldn’t. This thing was gruesome, but alive, moving.

The nights were getting shorter and shorter. I did get some sleep from time to time. But it was not enough, and in the short spans I did fall asleep, squeaking of naked pigeon chicks and the whining of the baby intruded into my dreams. I dreamt of burning car wrecks and cutting through snow-white flesh and of chants in the backyard of our building. Nightmares. I woke up more tired every time.

Mama and papa pigeon took good care of their chick. They did better than I do. I heard the flapping of their wings whenever they landed to feed it. I peeked through the bedroom window, holding the baby in my arms. The thing grew bigger and bigger. Feathers and grey hair covered the skin more and more, the head still wobbling uncontrollably as if it couldn’t support the far too big beak. The parents opened their mouths and the chick fed, over and over again. Flying away, landing, flying away again, flapping of wings, whining, squealing.

I wrote one more message to my ex. I needed him badly. I needed to sleep undisturbed for a few hours. Message sent, read, no answer. He was busy, he was always too busy.

The nights were getting worse. Baby’s teeth hadn’t broken through the gums yet, so she screamed constantly. The pigeon chick on my balcony grew like Molech, fed constantly by its parents, offering endless streams of salvaged food at this altar of ugliness that kept on bloating in the corner outside my bedroom window. Deprived of sleep, I found myself often standing in places in my apartment and couldn’t even remember how I got there. Once in the kitchen, then in the bathroom, lying in the bathtub. The constant sound of whining, squealing, wings flapping. The world became blurred. I couldn’t care anymore. I sometimes found my hands pressed against my ears, standing next to the bed in the middle of the night, looking at the baby in my bed. I was alone, and the dizziness and tiredness would never go away, just become worse. 

I had to get rid of it. The pigeons were leaving filth all over my balcony. It smelled. I feared diseases. The chick grew bigger and bigger. It was ugly to look at, loud, the sounds it made drove me crazy. I needed to kill it. But I couldn’t just throw it down. I looked through our storage room and found a big tub made of iron. I dragged it onto the balcony and put it over the nest and the chick. Sealed it away. Mama and papa pigeon landed and just looked at the iron hull in the place where the nest had been. They watched for a while, cooing, calling their chick, fluttering up and down the railing until they finally flew away. They didn’t come back after that.

The muted sounds of the chick were still hearable under the iron hull. I thought that it would die soon, suffocate. It didn’t. Its whining went on for two more days and nights. The squeaking became weaker and weaker, but its sound pierced through my ears and through my skull, even more as it became softer and weepier. 

No, I couldn’t endure this any longer. 

On the third night I stepped out on the balcony. It was dark. I looked around one last time to see if anyone was standing on the other terrasses in the buildings next to ours, and as I saw nobody, I lifted the iron tub. A horrible stench filled my nose. In the darkness, I could barely see the outlines of the chick. It still moved, it still squealed. I grabbed its bloated, almost featherless body and threw it over the railing. It was much heavier than I had imagined.

The sound of the impact like a piece of flesh landing on hard concrete. Barely audible, and yet it filled my ears. I ran to the toilet and threw up. After cleaning my hands and my mouth, I went into my bedroom, lay in bed and closed my eyes. The squealing was gone. Baby was silent as well. She laid behind the blanket and slept. Silence, finally. The teeth must had broken through the gums, so she managed to fall asleep, relieved from the pain. I dozed off soon after. I hadn’t slept like that in a long time. No more waking up after some minutes, no bad dreams, no disturbing sounds. Just pure silence and me, deprived of sleep, finally giving up. 

Yells in the late morning. They woke me up. A woman screaming, her cries and shouts coming from the backyard. I stepped onto the balcony to see what was going on. The iron hull under my bedroom window had been slightly moved. I thought I heard the squealing of a chick from the corner of the balcony. Down there, in the backyard, the woman that woke me up, standing, pointing, constantly screaming, and next to her, the baby. Lying there, on the hard concrete in a bed of red, pale and silent.