fiction by gerri mahn

Pigeons and Doves

I

Perhaps the most surprising revelation was that death was boring. Graham thought he understood the concept of the near-death experience. As a corrections officer, he watched hours of daytime talk show television. Stationed on the floor in the rec rooms, it was unavoidable. The televisions were locked into their metal-frame cages—just like the men sitting listlessly below them, slumped in cold metal chairs that were bolted to the floor. Decades passed and Graham had been inundated with episodes of Geraldo and Maury. He heard the stories, tearfully drawn out by the hosts: The young mother who slipped on her newly polished linoleum floor and cracked her head. The child who fell out of his tree house. The grandfather who underwent surgery. All of them claiming they had died and caught a glimpse of the other side. Up until the point of his own death, Graham thought the stories were lies—not unlike the tediously long and overly intricate tales spun by the inmates themselves. Sometimes for money, sometimes for leniency, sometimes for a favor. Always for something. The people on the shows were no different; would they have been there if they weren’t liars?

Now, Graham knew the truth. There was no bright light. No angelic host. No visit from loved ones who had passed before him. There was no sense of peace or universal connectivity—another puerile concept he was sure had been born out of social media. God forbid you disconnect for a single solitary second. 

It turned out that of all the people on those talk shows, the ones telling the truth were the old guys going under the knife after cardiac arrest. His body had stopped as if it were a car seizing, but his mind (soul?) kept on going without a blink. His conscious slid slowly up and out, a passive echo of birth, while the doctor declared him dead. He could still hear and see and he watched the nurse unhook him from some tube-laden hospital machine. Unlike those chatty heart attack victims, whom he remembered as being both incredibly old and overweight, Graham had been the picture of health. He could have modeled for an AARP wellness app. He had jogged and biked and kept up with his fraternal order. Even as a kid, he had never smoked, taken drugs, or drunk to excess. His father had died thirty years earlier, but Graham remembered it like it was yesterday. Cut down by a stroke after years of processed food and enough Pepsi to make a mountain out of the empty soda cans. Graham had decided to go vegan after that. His only bad habit had been women, but condoms had seen him through a lifetime of prostitutes without a single incident. Hell, he had survived a global pandemic only to be taken out by an overly enthusiastic Uber Eats driver while riding his bike. 

Once he got past the panic, it was really quite galling. 

Galling and tedious. Even more so than retirement. Graham had always been patient—it came with working in the prison and spending huge swaths of his life standing in a tower with nothing to do but watch small men scramble pointlessly around a concrete yard. When he had started the job, Graham held a lot of lofty ideas about trying to reform and educate and bring change to the incarcerated. His time interacting with the cons quickly scrubbed out that foolishness and as the years passed, he watched rookies come in with the same big ideals. Not all of them survived. The ones who did quickly learned when to use the carrot and when to use the stick. The more stick, the better. 

Retirement had snuck up on him. At first, it had been anything but boring. He felt free, nearly overwhelmed with the abundance of time and possibility. He and Michelle went on cruises and tropical vacations. He sent Michael to a fancy, over-priced private school. The kid had never shown an iota of gratitude and when he had finally gotten himself kicked out of the institution and sent back home, everything changed.

Once Michelle had moved out, the tedium set in. Graham found himself on Reddit, falling down rabbit holes. Fewer and fewer people called or stopped by, and he spent more and more time online. Ironic considering how often he had yelled at Michael about video games. Graham wasn’t sure what was more traumatic: dying or losing the luxury of distraction. Ever since that day, he hadn’t been able to do anything except hover beside his inert body and think. For hours. First in the morgue, then at the funeral home. He watched as what remained of his physical self was poked and prodded, pried apart, and sewn back together.

He laid about with nothing to do but contemplate his own mortality, which he found he no longer had the stomach for. Graham missed his phone. He wanted to read an article and longed for a book. Once in the funeral home proper, he was able to listen to music and even watch the television—if the attendant left it on. It was depressing, having no one to talk to. Could dead people get depressed? He missed the brotherhood he had found with his fellow guards. He wished he could see the old dogs again, fall into their familiar routines. He remembered hazing the new pups. He even missed the cons, some of whom he had spent his entire career with. 

He tried not to think about what came next. What would happen when he was buried? Or cremated? Would he have to watch himself burn? He hoped not. 

On the day of his service, Saint Christopher’s Cathedral was packed. Every pew was full. The casket, a black lacquer affair, stood half open and Graham’s body laid neatly inside looking shrunken and slightly withered in his Brooks Brothers suit and gold tie. The matching silk pocket square had belonged to his father. The mortuary makeup, while necessarily matte, was unable to match his skin tone. Skin that radiated health in the poster board photograph mounted on a tripod amid a spray of white lilies and gladiolus. 

A good showing, Graham thought. He ignored the priest as he intoned his way through the sermon. The new guy. Graham had hoped to get Father Paul who had lead the local congregation for the last decade and done his mother’s service. But he had retired, moved on to wherever the Catholic Church sent old priests, and the new kid needed to cut his teeth on a large service. Graham had attended St. Christopher’s since childhood. He and his siblings were third generation congregants. They had held their parents’ services here. The family deserved better. He deserved better. 

In the front pew, Timothy was crying soundlessly into another one of their father’s handkerchiefs as his second wife, twenty years his junior, rubbed his back. Graham couldn’t remember her name. Timmy had a soft heart—he was the baby after all. Graham wished he had taken his brother up on his offer and moved to Reno after he had retired. It was true, he loved the mountains, but for some reason he had never got the process started. He had never found the time. Then, Mom had gotten sick. Then, the whole thing with Michelle had blown up. If he had gone, would things be different now? Would he be hiking around Lake Tahoe with Timothy instead of watching him cry?

Beside Timothy sat his sisters, red-eyed and silent. The last decade had been rough for them both. First their husbands had passed, one after the other. Then, Mom and her cancer. Resignation showed on their faces and Graham realized they were exhausted. How had he not noticed before? 

Across the aisle from his family, separated by a few feet that might as well have been a league, sat Michelle and her son, Michael. Michelle’s face was set in stone, her mouth a grim line. She looked stunning. A true natural beauty even into her fifties, despite those hard edges. Michael, now a teenager, smirked openly. Graham felt the creeping edge of anger and focused his attention on the rest of the congregation. Few were crying. Even fewer, in fact, were paying attention. They stared avidly into their laps, preoccupied with their phones. Graham wondered why they bothered to show up. The lack of respect was grating. It wasn’t fair.

It wasn’t fair at all.

Graham watched the service, uncomfortable at the thought of continuity, trying not to panic. Timothy stood up when the priest beckoned and gave a good speech at the lectern—nearly as good as the one for their mother’s funeral. Then, Captain Gallea said a few words in Graham’s honor. No one else spoke. Not the guys from his chapter. Not his neighbors or his sisters or Michelle. Captain Gallea had retired a few years ago. Really, they weren’t that old; wasn’t sixty the new forty? Graham had beaten the odds, made some good investments, and retired early. How had he ended up alone in his house before seventy? And now what? Would he just stay like this forever? What if their cemetery was eventually paved over for commercial development? How far could he stretch this thing that seemed to keep him anchored to his body? Maybe it would stretch farther if he kept working at it, like yoga. He was struck with the memory of Michelle dragging him to her hot yoga class. 

“It’s a cult,” he had protested. “No sane person does calisthenics in a room hotter than the Mohave. Not by their own free will. I feel like John Travolta in Perfect. This place is like a Kama Sutra audition for the instructor. I bet he’s been with half the women in here. Jesus, you didn’t sleep with him, did you?” 

Michelle had rolled her eyes. They divorced six years later. He wondered if he had been able to stick with the yoga, the aching discomfort, the rolling sweat, and the heart palpitations, would he have been able to stay in the marriage? In any relationship?

The service ended. People began to stand, slowly unfolding from the pews. They turned to one another and spoke in low, murmuring tones. Graham heard them eulogizing him through anecdotes. They started coming up to speak with Michelle. Mostly men, Graham thought sourly. He could feel the jealous tightening of muscles around a face that had become corporeal. His anger had become a phantom limb. The wooden legs of a crowded pew scraped the floor as the congregants rose. Michael moved closer to his mother. 

An impromptu procession formed, a line of mourners stopping to hug his widow before moving along across the aisle to shake hands with his siblings. Michelle followed suite, gripping Michael’s arm as she quickly steered him past the coffin to exchange stiff hugs with his sisters before getting a much more affectionate embrace from Tim. Neither she nor Michael had stopped at the casket to pay their last respects.

The attendants ushered people through the vestibule and out the front door. The funeral director closed the casket and wheeled Graham’s earthly remains out the back and down a ramp to a small prayer garden. There was a pond with a burbling fountain and park benches were set around a beautifully manicured lawn dotted with lilac bushes and backed by a flowering dogwood tree. The priest cleared his throat and led them in a prayer of words Graham no longer understood. 

The priest made the sign of the cross. Suddenly, a flock of white doves flew into the air from behind the dogwood. The mourners gave a collective gasp and looked up. For a moment, Graham saw them all, the faces of the people he had loved. He felt his corporeal heart constrict; it was as if a string wrapped tightly around his chest and without warning, he was yanked up and away. The doves swept him up in the rush and beat of their wings. 

II

They circled the garden once, twice, then flew up over the church, past the bell tower and its steeple. Huge white clouds punctuated the sky above him. Trees and houses stretched to the horizon. Graham felt himself lifted up to the heavens.

And then turned back down to earth. They swooped down to the service driveway alongside the church where a white panel truck with narrow mesh windows was parked. The blue and yellow logo of a stylized dove flying against the sun stenciled on the side read “Avian Events, LLC.” The birds flew into a little door at the back of the truck. 

It took a moment for Graham’s eyes to adjust to being inside, then another to realize he had eyes. He went rigid as a tired-looking woman in white coveralls and a logoed cap picked him up and flipped him over. His angry shout came out as an undignified squawk and he realized, dear God I am inside this bird.

The woman pulled his leg out, squinted at the band clamped there, and jotted something on a clipboard with her free hand. Finished, she threw him gently into the truck and turned her attention to the rest of the birds crowded into a little holding pen beside the door. The inside of the truck was open space lined with plywood, studded with perches, and segmented by stiff chicken wire. Graham flapped wildly, struggling to make it midway up the wall where he clung to a wooden dowel. He squawked again.

The indignities just kept piling up.

The doves made a collective cooing noise that seemed to indicate agreement. There were scores of them. Some perched while others flapped around the floor, pecking at scattered seeds. The truck door slammed shut. Shafts of light streamed through the screened windows but did nothing to alleviate the sense of choking claustrophobia. The air felt heavy and smelled like hot bird shit. The truck rumbled and lurched to life. Graham thought he heard the faint sound of Michelle’s laughter as they pulled away.

“If it makes you feel any better,” said a cream-colored dove perched next to him, “I’m pretty sure this is only temporary.”

Graham nearly fell off his perch. The tiny heart inside his chest thrummed painfully and for one absurd moment, he wondered if birds could get tachycardia. 

“Congratulations, you’ve shuffled off the mortal coil and into poultry,” said the cream-colored dove. Nearly half the birds in the truck turned to look at Graham. He shuddered, feathers ruffling across his neck.

“Must be the new arrival.”

“Give him a minute. He’s getting his sea legs.”

“Jesus, can you pick a different metaphor? We’re fucking pigeons, not seagulls.”

“The sign says doves.”

“Whatever. I grew up in Philly. I know a fancy pigeon when I see one.”

Graham gaped. He remembered the daytime talk shows and their near-death experiences, their reincarnation stories, their pet psychics. Had it all been true?

“How many times do I have to tell you people? We’re being punished,” a grey-speckled bird screamed indignantly from across the truck.

“Whatever. If that was true, then why isn’t everyone a bird?”

“Half the birds in this truck are still just birds.” 

“My soul left my body after Pastor Craig finished the Lord’s Prayer,” a mottled pigeon shouted. “Clearly, we are waiting for the judgment of Christ.” 

The cream-colored dove sighed. “I miss my phone.”

“Are all of you, us, dead people?” Graham asked. He still had no idea what was happening, but once you watched yourself getting embalmed, becoming a pigeon didn’t seem so outrageous. 

“The ones talking were people. They won’t shut up about it,” the cream-colored dove said and rolled her head around on her neck. Graham got the impression she was trying to roll her eyes. “Those guys pecking around on the floor still seem to be birds.”

Graham wished he was back inside St. Christopher’s. He couldn’t decide if this was an improvement over being disembodied. “So we keep going?”

“Buddy, I have no idea. None of us has been here for very long, and we aren’t strictly used for religious stuff either. Those guys in the front did an opening ceremony for a Toyota dealership this morning. The one who keeps screaming about the second coming was part of a magic show.”

“Why are they yelling?” 

“I guess that’s what they did when they were alive,” she laughed. “Before becoming a flying rat, I was mom. Then a grandma. I liked to read and to knit. You know I read that knitting is a lot like meditating, so maybe I made it to enlightenment through all those scarves and pussy hats.”

“I tried to meditate,” Graham said. Michelle was the one who liked to meditate. She would sit with Michael for five minutes after dinner. The boy’s incessant wiggling never phased her. It had always made Graham want to tie him down, to sit on him, anything to get him to stop moving. To be quiet. To go away.

“I’m starting to think spirituality wasn’t the problem,” she said as she eyed the birds around them. “You know, I keeled right over in the garden from a bum ticker. When I was nine, I saw my grandfather have a heart attack. I remember being terrified as it was happening. Later, someone took a picture of us together in his hospital room; I was standing by his bed with my hair in pig tails. He seemed so old when it happened, but he was only in his fifties. He lived another twenty years. That picture was sitting on my mantle when I died. I wonder if my son will keep it. He never met his great-grandfather, which was a shame because the man practically raised me. It was the Parkinson’s that finally did him in. He kind of wasted away. Being around him made me so uncomfortable I stopped visiting. I shouldn’t have done that. I wonder if I’ll see him again; if I’ll get to apologize.” 

She turned to stare up at the sliver of blue sky visible through the mesh windows. The din around them ebbed and flowed, so much meaningless noise. The cream-colored dove looked at Graham, blinked, and shook herself. She cooed and burbled, flying down to join the rest of the birds pecking feed off the ground.

Gerri Mahn is a US Army veteran with a degree in English Lit. Her work has appeared in Den of Geek, Maya Literary Magazine and she contributed a chapter to The Ages of X-Men by McFarland Books.