The Pigeon

Short Fiction by J M Jackson

She wasn’t normally out driving on a Sunday morning. Today was an exception. Her week had been long, tiring. Her eldest daughter was in hospital undergoing radiotherapy for alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma.

She had been travelling in daily to be with her ten-year-old. Combine this with her status as a single parent and having a two-year-old to look after, she reluctantly admitted to herself that she had become distinctly frayed. In fact, she was not far away from unravelling completely. She tried not to dwell on this.

She eased off the accelerator and began courting the brake pedal while a behemothic lorry hurtled towards her on the other side of the road. She was not worried for herself. She was too tired to worry about herself.

It was the little girl that worried her. The little girl playing on the pavement by the side of the road on her own, the little girl far too young to be left unattended, the little girl blissfully unaware of the colossal damage that a hurtling lorry would exert upon on a fragile human frame.

The woman could not come to terms with the horrific potentiality before her. Was she about to see something that would obliterate her sanity? Or had that already happened? She was tired, her thoughts blurred.