Noise on the Roof

Noise on the Roof

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This piece won The Duncairn Shadows and Light Flash Fiction Competition 2024, and the judges have asked me to publish it here which I’m more than happy to do. This is Noise on The Roof.

He is still nervous to go outside. Lexi is at the sliding door, on her hind legs with her forelegs pressed against the glass. This is how she signals that she wants to go out the back, usually to piss in the grass, or bark at foxes that run through the field bordering the garden. He has resolved to go out and meet his fate. The noise on the roof is still there, rustling away like rain as it has been for the last fifteen minutes or so. Outside the sun is pelting down – the sound of rain without its contents is peculiar.

He places his left hand around the handle of the sliding door and tenses his bicep to pull it open. It makes its loud puckering noise, followed by the sound of the sliding mechanism, followed by Lexi running into the garden barking, followed by him, running far enough into the garden so that nothing can jump on top of him from the roof.

As he turns he can already hear their panic. The noise of the door had spooked them, and now the garden is filled with what sounds like a score of books fluttering in a gale. He turns and looks up to see them taking flight, a cloud of black and chaos. Too many of them to count, he reckons there could be a thousand, but it’s more likely to be four or five hundred of them – crows, an entire colony had decided, for whatever reason, to all perch on his roof at the same time. He’s never seen anything like this.

They are a dark unity in the sky above the house now, fleeing from the presence of him and the dog. Blotting out the sun, an unnatural cloud. They climb into the air, squawking their dissatisfaction at him from above. There shadow is ever-moving on the grass, kaleidoscopic and uneven.

In the distance, on a hill, there are a small family of trees, and it is for these trees, he thinks, that they are now heading.

And as he stands and watches, the blood beating in his ears, his heart panicked, the adrenaline coursing, he has the sense that this is not a good sign. That so many crows descending upon the house when it is only himself and the dog inside doesn’t feel good. He thinks to search for its meaning on the internet but decides that this may be a bad idea, to know the totality of its meaning. So instead, he stands and watches the birds as they slowly disperse. Their colossal totality becomes a regular sight, just birds flying as individuals rather than as one.

And soon they are hidden among the distant trees, and Lexi is no longer interested or barking, and the sun has no shadow of birds to contend with, and he has to get back to work.

But the birds remain on his mind for the rest of the afternoon.