Jack

John’s life changed the day there was a knock on his kitchen window.

John was a spiteful, bitter man. He felt the world owed him something, and yet his job - his livelihood - had been cruelly snatched away from him. Angry that he had been denied the opportunities open to others, John hated the world, and the world hated him, as he hated himself. While others were blessed with success, he was cursed with misfortune. His dear mother, an angel, the one beacon of light and hope in his dark childhood, was dead, and his father - his father, who knows where the hell he was anyway! He hadn’t seen him since he was eight or nine. He had no brothers or sisters, no friends past or present; no family. Just John.

John had lost his job: his one connection with the outside world. His sole reason to exist. He was a reasonably hard worker, but the company had come under financial pressures, and had to let someone go. Of course it would be him. 

John had been without work for five months now. It wasn’t just the money he needed. It was a sense of purpose, a reason for being, for living. In recent months his health had declined— he frequently found himself breathless and now had a heavy cough, but most of the time John felt like nothing mattered - yet he still worried about his own mortality, lurking like a spectre in the darkest corners of his mind. 

He was on benefits now. It wasn’t enough to get by; John had appealed to the benefits office time and time again, tentatively asking for just a bit more in his monthly allowance - he was struggling to pay the rent on top of his food and other essentials. Every request was simply ignored - his anguished cries for help were no doubt seen as mere nagging from another greedy layabout.

John sighed and groaned as he heaved himself out of his easy chair. He scratched his bald head and shuffled into the kitchen to prepare what passed as his evening meal.

And there was a knock at the window.

There Jack stood, alone, tentatively tapping the glass as if testing the temperature of water. His frail body looked stark against John’s now unkempt back garden.

John ignored Jack. He was angry at having failed to complete today’s crossword - he wondered why he even wasted time with such idiotic pursuits. Jack’s tapping became louder. John irritation grew steadily, and he soon found himself unable to ignore the knocking that began to grate like a nagging alarm clock. On turning to the window to frighten the little devil away, John felt a rushing wave of pity that smouldered the flames of his anger.

Jack was visually quite unlike his brethren - visibly underweight, immature and sickly looking, and instead of a smart grey-black cap he had a pink, naked, crusty head. Immediately John felt sympathy for the pathetic creature. He looked young, hungry and lost, and though a thoroughly miserable sight he had eyes that glistened like the sun on a tropical sea.

John opened the window. Jack stood pitifully, shrieked out loud, then delicately hopped inside. John immediately realised that the poor soul was starving. Perhaps he was an orphan. He certainly looked it- he was very much alone and ravenously hungry. John found some scraps of meat and laid them in front of jack.

Jack cautiously and almost comically eyed the room around him, before tucking in. John laughed at the sight before realising his life was changing before his eyes: he knew his mission. He was going to live his life for another.

Jack had a one-way ticket to the grave - he was terminally ill. John knew of course; minutes after Jack stepped into John’s life it was apparent that hunger was not the only problem for poor little Jack. After the ill-looking soul was examined by a surgeon it was apparent that death’s pocket-watch had been ticking away for some time. Nevertheless, with love and care, John was determined to nurture Jack like he was his own child, ensuring that his last days on Earth would be filled with happiness while the end waited like the inevitable darkness at the end of the brightest day. With every moment of joy he was to experience with Jack, John knew he would feel a tinge of sadness, as if the joy was not to last forever…

Although Jack didn’t have long, John was determined to make every second count. As night fell, John prepared Jack a bed out of cardboard and blankets, and watched in anticipation as Jack stepped in with trepidation. He began to settle down into the warm cloth as John watched lovingly. As Jack peacefully closed his brilliant eyes, John felt a powerful fatherly instinct and the warming caress of love.

In the following weeks, John found his own worries blowing away like fallen leaves in a breeze. Jack’s wellbeing was all that mattered now - he was simply giving John reason to live. John began to focus less on Jack’s ultimate fate, instead devoting his energy to caring for Jack and enjoying their precious time on Earth together. 

In the beginning, however, it wasn’t easy. Jack’s incessant cries would wake John nightly, like a baby would wake its mother as he demanded to be fed. John would never cease to marvel as Jack would carefully and dextrously take mealworms from John’s frail hands after singing for his supper, simultaneously ejecting waste onto the kitchen floor. Any annoyance John felt was ephemeral, for like a prospector toiling under the baking desert sun, the rewards greatly outweighed the tribulations. 

Gradually, Jack and John began to know each other as friends. Jack’s weary yet determined skeletal frame began to follow John around the house, and soon John could not be without him for more than a few minutes lest he be admonished by desperate squawks. 

In the months since John had taken Jack under his wing, John had come to love Jack as if he were his own son. Jack would greet John every morning with what seemed to be a smile. John would be sure Jack chuckled at his jokes, or would share in a conversation or debate. Jack would nod along to John’s stray observations, and chip in with his own ideas from time to time. Jack would go for walks with John, play games and dance with joy. 

One bitter morning after breakfast, as Jack carefully cleaned his beak on his blankets after a particularly messy incident with cat food, John let out a hearty laugh at the amusing sight. The laugh became a cough. Sooner than John could realise, what was a minor tickle in his throat suddenly became a desperate gasp for air as his muscles violently contracted again and again. Jack squawked in alarm and hopped up on to John’s shoulder in a vain attempt to soothe his spluttering. John snatched a handkerchief and held it up to his quivering lips, and immediately its pure whiteness was spoiled with ugly spots of crimson. After some tumultuous minutes, John caught his breath at last and inhaled deeply, letting the musty smell of his sitting room pass his starved nostrils. He welcomed the dank air like he would a desert oasis, and the freshness of the air brought with it a freshness of thought. It was time to care about his health, if not only for Jack’s sake, but his own. 

***

John knew he was dying. Like Jack, he realised, he had been oblivious to his own fate. The doctor had spoken clearly yet curtly. Two weeks to live. Had John received this diagnosis before Jack, and certainly just after losing his job, he would have been consumed with hatred and envy for the beautiful, happy people living their perfect lives in their perfect little homes with their perfect little families. But Jack had changed all that. Jack had taught John how to be happy, and how to love again. 

In the last weeks of John’s life, Jack barely left his side. Everything John did, he did with Jack. John felt that Jack shared in his joy and sympathised with him in his time of need as his constant companion.

One cloudless night, John and Jack gazed at the crescent moon hanging in the night’s inky tapestry for what John somehow knew was the last time. He was struck by the profound beauty of the starry sky, a sight he had blissfully ignored his entire life. He felt no regret, only a warm glow as he basked in its splendour. His eyes drifted slowly towards a stunningly bright star - furrowing his brow, he realised it was really two stars, almost touching - a binary star. John felt a tear creep down his face. He crawled across his bedroom and struggled into his bed, pulling the covers over his aching body. Suddenly he felt a feathered form at his shoulder - Jack! Jack, visibly drained, and with his last ounces of strength, nestled next to him, and together they closed their eyes. 

Morning broke. The stars had faded into day, the sky now a golden sheet dappled with delicate pink clouds. From a nearby tree, a pair of Jackdaws took flight into the beautiful dawn sky, and without a glance behind them disappeared into the sunrise.