Story 42
Pigeon
This is a story about the apartment next to my house.
That apartment is two stories tall, old, and covered in ivy.
The building itself is falling apart. The metal staircase, which must have been painted white long ago, is now so rusted and overgrown with weeds that you can hardly tell what it’s supposed to be.
The balcony—if you can still call it that—has sagged downward in the middle, bowed the wrong way. If someone were to step onto it, the floor would probably give way under their weight.
The window glass is still intact for the most part, but each pane has strips of tape across it in the shape of an “X.” Inside, it’s too dim to see anything at all.
In several places on the building, there are signs that read, “Private property — No trespassing” in red letters on a white background.
I don’t think anyone lives there. There’s no sign of life at all.
But sometimes, pigeons are hung from the balcony.
The kind you see in parks.
Hung by the neck.
Under the corrugated tin roof of the balcony, pigeons are strung up by the neck—like people hanging themselves.
You know how, in the countryside, people hang daikon radishes or onions to dry?
It looks just like that—like someone’s sun-drying pigeons.
And there are about twenty of them.
It’s so disgusting I can’t even look properly.
There’s no smell, though. So it seems like the pigeons are freshly dead when they’re hung up.
They’re not there all the time. About once every three months, during the daytime only, the pigeons appear hanging there.
The building looks impossible for anyone to go inside, so I can’t imagine how or when someone does this—or why.
There’s no sensible reason for it.
Some kind of ritual, maybe?
Or for food?
It’s just so creepy.
But since it doesn’t actually cause any harm, I haven’t reported it.
It’s really disturbing. And I still have no idea what it means.
