Short Story: Jackdaw

 by Rowan Reddy

Jackdaws limp on gossamer wings above your head as you stand before the broken fence. Weeds twine through the chicken wire, rattling slightly in the wind. One of the jackdaws settles on it and picks morosely at the vines, cawing softly to itself. The wooden posts holding it taut have long since succumbed to rot. There is an old sign lying in the sickly grass, warning you of something now obscured by a greenish bloom of lichen. You ignore the notice and push aside the swordgrass. It scratches you but draws no blood. The sky is heavy and sweats drops of rain onto the concrete, which is broken by thin trails of moss. Creatures that you hope are rats flicker around the edges - never quite seen, but occasionally leaves will shudder and you will see something darting away into the undergrowth. The metacarpal monoliths of the power station loom above you, vanishing into the mist. There is only one path in here. Other than the moss, you are the sole living thing on it. Either side is a border of wasteland pockmarked by craters of water that reflect the bright murk of the clouds. The horizon and its pylons are just visible in the distance. You walk quickly, trying to drown out the quiet whining in your ears with the sound of footsteps, but you can still feel it buzzing in your teeth. The air smells of petrichor and ozone. 

There is a second gate before the tower which hangs open on hinges eaten away by rust. You try to open it as quietly as possible. The silence doesn’t want to be disturbed. 

Water glistens on the tarmac. No plants here, except from some thready webbing of chartreuse slime mould. Pausing for a moment, you look up at the power plant, at the buildings arcing away from you into the mist. You skitter through the abandoned site, making your way towards the last surviving cooling tower. The rest have been smothered by grotesque, grey trees which drag the framework towards the earth. The struts of the cooling tower creak softly as you duck under them. 

Vast emptiness confronts you. Your irregular breathing echoes strangely against the rust-stained concrete, distorting and then soaking into the ground. You are standing on a concrete platform, furred with bleached mycelia, above a gaping pit. The bottom is barely visible in the half-light, crisscrossed with catwalks and ropes of ivy. Looking up, the walls of the cooling tower reach high above to engulf the sky. Treading carefully, not too close to either side of the thin walkway, you stoop back under the metal framework and almost fall into an expanse of sluggish green water. You teeter back and balance on the edge of the boardwalk. The surface of the lake is scummy with duckweed and rainbow slicks of oil. Huge, grey fish hang in the water like zeppelins, occasionally breaking the surface. You peer down into the shadowed water. Before turning back to the power station, you watch your own many-legged reflection fragment on the water as an eel swims through it. 

A lone jackdaw perches on the struts of the cooling tower. It croaks down at you, and as it flies off, you see it has a broken wing.