Eztli and the Tlahuelpuchi

Eztli
by
Bobby Derie

On her mat of woven reeds, Eztli listened to the breathing of the night. In the corner, her mother and father snored next to one another; beside her the twins Tupac and Coyotl breathed loudly through their mouths, as boys are want to do; and by the coals grandmother sat nodding. Outside the insects made their music, and bats fluttered between trees, and the jaguar walked in silence. Yet Eztli was awake, listening and waiting as the insect-chorus died and the clouds covered the face of the moon, and the pitter-patter of the first raindrops struck the earth. Then Uncle Ichtaca came out from the next room.

No one save the family knew of Uncle Ichtaca, and father and mother had forbidden Eztli to speak of him to anyone. He stayed inside during the day when the others worked, stringing beads and sharpening tools. In the half-light of the night he seemed lean and wild, for all that grandmother tried sometimes to comb out his hair, and he wore Eztli's father's old clothes. Eztli did not move as he stalked passed the children, not even turning her head, but kept her eyes narrowed to slits to watch him as he stood at the door and sniffed the night. When he stepped out into the rain, Eztli counted to five, then got up and slipped on her sandals and followed him into the midnight rain.

Eztli could not see well in the darkness, but there were few enough houses nearby, and only two with small children. She ran down the road toward the nearest neighbor. By the time she got to the house, the pattering rain had given way to the fine almost-mist that brought the sweat to the skin and stood heavy in the lungs. Something fluttered overhead, and though she could not see it her eyes caught the trailing glow, like the afterimage behind your eyelids when you look at the heart of the fire. Shaking her eyes, she crept up to the window and looked in.

The babe was just off the teat, and even by the dim light Eztli could see the tiredness in the eyes of mother and father; this might have been their first solid night's sleep since the child was born. Uncle Ichtaca crept forward on his knees and eased the child away from the mother with long practice. It was naked, and stirred slightly in his arms, but he rocked it gently into deeper slumber, swaying his body to and fro, every time his head dipping closer and closer to the child. Eztli saw his lips latch on to the nipple on that tiny chest, the cheeks hollow and bellow.

It might almost have been a playful kiss, save for the bruise left behind, and the bloody tongue that Uncle Ichtaca ran over his lips before he lay the babe back down. Eztli remembered the same strange kisses, until she had grown too old, and how her brothers would wake crying at night. She watched him waddle back to the window, still on his knees - and as he neared it she saw clearly that he had no legs below the knee.

He made a kind of leap, and the fire-echo seemed to flash before Eztli's eyes again. There on the windowsill was a turkey, the tlahuelpuchi, blood dripping from the beak of its blue head, a hazy aura hanging about its body. Eztli had always thought the bird looked like a rainbow trapped in darkness, the strange-colored feathers a sight of endless fascination. Without a word, the glowing bird flapped its wings and disappeared into the night. As it left, the babe gave out a wail, and Eztli slinked off into the night as the parents roused themselves.

Uncle Ichtaca had not left in the direction of their house, so Eztli took her time returning. She found her uncle's legs by the door to the house, right next to a pair of her father's sandals. Eztli picked them up and took them with her into the house. Everyone still snored, even grandmother, who had finally laid down on her side. Eztli picked her way through the darkness of the house, and found the obsidian knife her mother used to scrape skins and meat. Then she went and sat by the door to wait.

Uncle Ichtaca would have a territory, she knew; a hunting-ground where the other tlahuelpuchi would not come. He rarely spoke to his niece or nephews, save sometimes in the evening after they had all shared a meal and were ready to sleep. Then he would tell them of the tlahuelpuchi in other places, and how they would meet at night to do their business and resolve their differences. He had spoken of the tlahuelpuchi as the priests might speak of Hunahpu and Xbalanque, and how they might deal with the aluxob and wayob, and even the terrible xtabay. Always, always the clever and powerful tlahuelpuchi got the best of the nagual and other monsters, a hero in the night.

Outside the rain had stopped, and Eztli heard the flapping of wings and caught the flicker of his glowing feathers. She rushed outside to find the great turkey agitated, pecking about her father's sandles, looking for his legs. Eztli caught his neck with her one hand, and brought the glassy black blade down with the other. The blade cut deep, stolen blood spurting hot and thick on her hand, and Eztli brought the blade down again and again until the pale blue head fell to the mud. It was not the first time she had killed a turkey.

Grandmother's wail woke the house.

The old woman came forward on hands and knees, cradling the body of the bird that had been her cursed son to her chest. Eztli's mother and father were next to come out, but their grief was expressed in angry words; the twins crowded around their knees to see what was going on.

Eztli wiped the obsidian blade off on her shirt, and looked out at the night with different eyes. She remembered the night Uncle Ichtaca had been drinking with her father, and the two had quarreled, as brothers sometimes do. It had gone so far that her father had drawn his knife and held it at her uncle's throat, but the tlahuelpuchi had just smiled: for if a family member killed a tlahuelpuchi, then the cursed passed on to them. Now Eztli smiled as her belly rumbled, for now it was time to find out for herself if her uncle's stories were true.

###

Rain on Klatooine

Rain on Klatooine
by
Bobby Derie

Precipitation was rare on Klatooine, and even then mostly up in the mountains. It was a rare system of fat, wet, hot clouds that rolled down and deposited its moisture on the arid plains and deserts. Eiven Task had left the window open to invite the humid breeze in, and for a little while the whole world smelled like wet dog.

Laying next to him on the bed was Xasha. Like him, she was near-human; only the hint of elongated canines and the extra nipples budding down beneath her breast suggested the alienage in her ancestry. Naked in the afternoon light, she idly traced the Sith runes tattooed on his chest, then slid her fingers over to probe the puckered scar that ran down the left side of his body. On one side, flesh. On the other, plastic and metal ribs, artificial organs, a cold cybernetic arm.

Xasha bent over and caught one of his nipples in her teeth, teased it. Eiven tensed under her ministrations, broken out of his musings. Her intuition was incredible, her aura of sexuality and lust palpable; she could have been a Jedi, if they'd found her, though he'd never told her he knew she had the gift. Feeling the shift in his mood, she released his nipple and snuggled close into the crook of his flesh-and-blood arm, her breasts pressing into his side.

She knew he was spent, and only playing for time.

"You never told me how you lost that arm."

"Playing with lightsabers," Task said. "I won't tell you all of it, but the end..."

*

The rain beat down so hard and heavy that you couldn't feel each drop, only the torrent of water pounding down on. The lightsabers steamed and crackled audibly in the downpour. Two of them circled him, older students, their weapons blue-white blurs burning in the rain. Their quarry was younger, at least a head shorter, and he didn't have a lightsaber - but he held his hands low and in front of him, legs spread shoulder-width apart as the others came on.

It looked like a dance, but it was closer to a chess match. Where they were was only part of it, the rest of the battle is where they would be, move and countermove, Force-guided intuition seeking the future, who could out-predict and out-move the others. With the pouring rain, none of the three could see or hear very well, but they could feel their positions relative to each other. Like in training at the academy, wielding burning blades without any heft or inertia, you simply had to know where it was at all times.

One of the bigger students got too close, and the shorter one made his move - a forward roll underneath a clumsy swing; the little one stood up in a smooth motion, something sharp glinting in the palm of his right hand. The scream of the taller student cut the air, and he collapsed, hands cupping the red stain spreading over his crotch.

The short one stood over his fallen foe for only a heartbeat before falling backwards, the blazing, steaming arc of the remaining student's lightsaber cutting through the rain only centimeters from the shorter student's face. Faster and faster the lightsaber zig-zagged in front of him, the student retreating constantly to keep out of the deadly range. If anyone was looking that dark night, the swings might have looked wild and erratic, but they cut off every route of escape, every opportunity to duck or dodge around to the side, the taller one boxing the shorter one in. It was a losing fight, and both knew it. In less than a minute, the shorter student's heel was touching the back wall of the alley.

Reflexively, the shorter student tossed the blade into his right hand. He turned to present his left side to his enemy, the smallest possible target, his bare left hand raised in front of him as though he held a lightsaber ready to parry. The small handblade was in his right hand, level with his belly, pointed at his opponent. The assumption of the posture was rote, automatic; if the taller student could see anything besides the burning blade of the lightsaber before him, he might have barked a laugh. As it was, he did not hesitate to bring the blade down in a heavy, straightforward two-handed stroke.

The shorter student leapt forwards, bringing his left hand as close to the base of the blade as he could reach. There was a moment - an agonizing fraction of a second - where the blue-white plasma seemed to halt against some unseen force as the palm of the small hand touched its corona. Then the falling stroke came through skin and blood and bone, deflected only a fraction from its deadly course - but the burning strike that should have fallen square on the shorter student's head came down instead on the shoulder, and then down through the side of his torso.

Momentum carried the smaller body to crash into the taller one as his severed, burning arm fell to the ground. The last thing the older boy felt was the tiny handblade digging into his chest, punching through muscle and scraping against bone as it punctured his lung.

Eiven Task stood over his fallen opponent. The lightsaber had seared the wound shut, and shock was already setting in, but he willed himself to stay conscious as the older boy started to drown on his own blood. To feel his presence in the Force flicker and fade.

There had been a legend, Eiven knew, of Jedi who on death became one with the living Force, not even leaving a body behind. Staggering away from the scene, lopsided and unused to the new balance without his arm, he left two corpses behind him.

*

"You won't tell me why?" Xasha said.

"Some other time." Task said.

With nothing left to say, she move to straddle him, drawing the sheet over them both like a tent, and hugged him close to her. On his flesh-and-blood side, he could feel the line of her nipples rub against him.

"Another time?" she breathed in his ear "I'll take that as a promise."

Outside on Klatooine, the rain had come on again.

###

Combat Lawyer: Smith vs. the United States

Combat Lawyer: Smith vs. the United States
by
Bobby Derie

“May it please the court, my client wishes case to be settled by wager of battle.”

Bram Bellden, serjeant-at-law, stood quite as judge and prosecutor reacted; answering their questions and countering their arguments with plain and level speech. Smith stood with his head on his chest, a scrawny figure besides his attorney.

Bellden was not concerned about his opposite number. The attorney general had fought a few judicial duels in his youth, but had since retired from the more strenuous judicial arts and given himself over to corpulence. Either he would have to find another in his office to take the field, or call on a sheriff or High Sheriff to represent the government in the case. The precedence in Federal cases was less clear, though. After the major legalities and terms of weapons and location had been smoothed out and the wager by battle agreed to, the Federal prosecutor stepped forward to address the court.

“Representing the United States government in this manner will be Shiro Takenata, United States Marshal.”

*

The Marshal of the Court, acting as bailiff, explained the rules one final time. Takanata had appeared in a short-waisted, sleeveless gi, and held the long slender ell of wood as he would a bokken. Bellden wore a padded vest, thigh-pads and armored cup, and leaned on his own ell like a cane, sizing up his opponent even as they both recited the traditional oath. Though a head taller than the Marshal and broader at the shoulders, the lawyer doubted there was two ounces of fat on the G-Man’s body, and the death’s-head tattoo on one bicep spoke of a history with the Marine Raiders unit.

The bailiff retreated, and the combatants settled into their first positions: Takanata, following the dictates of Kendo, held the length of wood low and in front of him, the leading edge raised toward Bellden’s chest. The serjeant-at-law himself presented only his right side to his opponent, his wooden rod raised above his head in a simple baritsu stance.

Takanata moved first, a simple forward strike and shout that roused birds ready to sing at the dawn. Bellden shuffled backwards and brought his rod down, aiming for a blow at the briefly unprotected neck…

**

“Serjeant-at-law?” Smith asked.

“An old order from England, revived in practice in America,” the attorney explained. “Serjeant, like esquire, was a title for gentlemen. The serjeants-at-law were higher-ranked than other attorneys, allowed to plead in any court, but also with additional responsibilities—for example, they had to represent anyone who asked, and could not refuse a case simply because the claimant could not pay. In modern usage, admittance is generally restricted to members of the bar with special practice in judicial combat.”

“Sounds dangerous.” Smith opined.

“It is.” The attorney said. Then he smiled, the scars on his face wrinkling.

*

Brendell’s final blow fell across the marshal’s arms, forcing the ex-marine’s numb hands to drop the weapon. Dark bruises striped Takanata’s bare arms and legs, and his gi hung in tatters in places where the tip of Brendall’s rod had ripped through the cloth. Brendell himself was hardly in any better shape; blood welled from the corner of Bellden’s left eye and from his broken nose, and he winced in the bright afternoon sunlight. Still, he held his weapon up, tapping the Marshall’s chin.

Judge and bailiff leaned forward. It would be a mistrial to intervene before the wager ended, and both combatants had been clear of the risks, but Bendell knew judges who had stopped the fight before to keep someone from being killed or crippled.

Takanata stared at Bendall with tired eyes, sucking wind, arms dangling loosely in front of him, wavering as if he could barely stand. Bendall felt he could poke him in the chest and knock him over, but this wasn’t a fight to see who was the first to bleed, or the first to fall. Stiffly, the serjeant-at-law took a swinger’s stance, ready to lay another blow. Takanata shivered and spat out something white, maybe a tooth, jaw working.

“Craven.” Croaked the marshal. Then louder and directed towards the judge. “Craven!”

Bendall lowered his ell and leaned heavily on it; the EMTs burst the cordon and Takanata collapsed ungracefully into their arms. The judge rose from his seat, and addressed the court to rule in favor of Smith.

###

Underage Shoggoths

Underage Shoggoths
by
Bobby Derie

"Rarely, a few individuals in the contemporary era have accused Lovecraft of being a pedophile, citing his close correspondence with several writers during their teenage years such as R. H. Barlow, August Derleth, and Frank Belknap Long, and in particular Lovecraft rooming with Barlow’s family when HPL visited Florida in the summers of 1934 and 1935. No letters, anecdotes, or memorials I have gone through so much as hint at such a sexual relationship or interest on the part of any of those individuals, not even Barlow’s occasionally explicit 'Autobiography,' published in O Fortunate Floridian H. P. Lovecraft’s Letters to R. H. Barlow parentheses 2007, Joshi & Schultz end parentheses...what the fuck is this, Jill?" Simone asked.

"My thesis." Jill took a pull at the brown stubbie in her hand, and stared at her flatmate seated on the couch. Pink lips matched the pink shadows on her eyes, matched the cloudy pink gin in her hand. On Simone's lap, something small and so inbred as to be almost shapeless panted in her lap, beady eyes only staring brainlessly out at the world thanks to the little pink bow that brought her bangs up in a tuft above her head. Jill took another sip. "Last six months of my life."

Jill was in a wifebeater and basketball pants; loose, flowing clothing that swished with every move. She liked the texture, the sound. No makeup tonight, or most nights; skin too pale by far, and lines in the mirror that started to remind her of her father's face. Simone's dress fell low on her tonight, and the hint of cleavage was tantalizing. Unconsciously, she swished as her legs rubbed together.

"So people think he was into little boys?" Simone asked.

"No. That's the point, people don't think that. And it wasn't like...not children. Long and Bloch and Barlow were all teenagers when HPL knew them. Some people, who should know better, but didn't do the research or insist on reading things into the situation just write these things." Jill felt a rant coming on and took a sip of beer to shut herself up.

"No girls. So he was gay?" Simone asked. Jill found herself starting at the pink lipstick edging the glass in her hand.

"No...well, probably not. I mean, there are no records of him claiming he was homosexual, or having sex with men, or anything like that. Not many stories of him having sex with anybody, really. He was married once, couple years, but it didn't work out. Some people think that means he was closeted, and..."

"So why does it matter?" Simone finished off the drink and laid it carefully at her feet, freeing up one hand to pet the royal mop-dog curled up in her lap. The purebred critter rolled around to expose its belly, empty eyes lost in orgasmic ecstasy, legs kicking as the fingers tickled her tiny dugs.

Jill sat up straighter. "What do you mean?"

Simone set the thesis pages aside, and then the four-footed fur monster as she stood up, who gave a brief wurf of protest before settling into the warm spot that Simone's ass had made in the couch. Jill watched her sashay over - real hip swaying, hypnotic side to side motion with just a touch of jiggle.

"Your thesis, silly. You've got these assholes calling this Lovecraft dude who you're obsessed with a short-eyes and a kiddy-diddler and maybe probably gay, what with the beard he married and everything. So what's the point? This was all like seventy years ago. How is this relevant today?" Simone had circled around behind Jill as she said this, and breathed today into her ear. Jill didn't move as Simone slid onto the chair behind her, hands slipping under the wifebeater, hugging Jill's belly. For a moment, Jill was as brainless as the furry little princess on the couch.

"It's...important. It's part of the study of his life, and his work. His stories are still read today, they're so influential in fiction, comics, movies. It's important that people see him as he was, get a real picture of him. When people make shit up it just, I don't know, distorts the signal. There's already so many misconceptions of him out there. That he was a creep, a monster, a shut-in ruled by fear and xenophobia, a momma's boy ruled by women, a Nazi, a racist...I'm not saying he was perfect..." Jill gasped as one of Simone's hands had wandered up to find a nipple, which hardened under her fingers. The nails were painted pink. "He had his flaws. He had a weird life. He was a product of his time and upbringing, and sometimes that's embarrassing today but at least it's true. You can look at his stories and his letters and the things he says about eugenics and black people and...well, it's there. It's not all pretty..."

"But you have to know, don't you." Simone whispered in her ear. "Let me ask you this: if there was a single shred of evidence - a single reference or contemporary anecdote that this Lovecraft guy was a pedo - would you put it in your thesis?"

"Yes," Jill said, as Simone's other hand moved south, tickling the hairs on her belly. The pants swished. "Absolutely."

"Then that's all right then."

###

After Lupercalia

After Lupercalia
by
Bobby Derie

There is a wood between the worlds, where the souls of deer step amid the shadows of trees long fallen, and ferns that grow no more are lush besides creeks long gone dry. It is a place for lost things, and I had come there seeking to lose myself for a while, following the game trails of creatures long lost extinct, and stepping over pale flowering trees crushed by swift glaciers.

Down a glen and up a hill, I came to an opening, ringed about with trees. On each tree was carved a sign or marker, and some stood close enough that roots and branches intertwined, and some stood apart and were subtly different in their aloofness. One great monster was marked by the cross and star, and it's roots stretched like tendrils to wind about those of others - one marked with a simple heart, another with a face that was little more than a clown's triangles and a jagged mouth, another with an egg and rabbit, and all the rest, from saplings to great towering redwoods.

Yet I did not like that great monster tree, and set out from it. Farther away the undergrowth died to reveal grey sandy soil, and the nightmoss bloomed on sick and dying trees marked with faded emblems. Some were obviously dead and fallen, or even petrified in place. One caught my attention, a great grey stump, amid whose roots there was a hole like the burrow of an animal. The cutting had removed the sign that the tree might once have born, but on the smooth table of the stump someone had carved a wolf and a whip.

I stared long at that burrow. It had a breath, as some caves do, a miasma of wet dog fur, and the strange arousing sweat that gathers at the top of the thighs. Visions of Alice flashed through my memory as I resolved to investigate, and wondered what land I might end up in.

It was a burrow, I found, barely big enough for an adult to crawl through. Yet soon the dirt and roots gave way to stone, and I could stand up. It was cool in the cave, but something breathed. I risked a match.

He sat on the throne, and regarded me as I took him in. My first impression was of a satyr, half man and beast, but on closer look I was wrong. The hoofed feet were deformed, but they were human toes, grown large as by some alternate path of evolution, and while clothed mostly in thick curly hair it was true hair, and not matted fur, and I could see the veins stand out on the skin beneath it. Around its waist was a belt made of strips of raw skin, furred on one side, though it did nothing to conceal his nudity. The bare uncircumcised penis was decidedly human. The face could have been cut from Roman marble, and it did not smile.

The match burned my fingers, and I shook out another from the box. Once again there was light.

The walls were painted, and unmoving he watched me as I studied them. A wolf-bitch, suckling two babes. Two men in togas, cutting a dog. A crowd, naked, running through crowded streets - the women being flailed and whipped and hit with sticks, but smiling. Everyone was smiling. The last scene I turned to, as the match burned out, were women with round bellies, whip-marks on their backs.

With the darkness came movement. It wasn't quite a growl that echoed through the cave. I felt the hand grasp my shirt, and pulled away instinctively. There was a rip, and it pulled harder, and I pulled to. It held me back and the seams parted, and I scrambled for the light of the burrow back into the wood between the worlds. It was a short flight, yet in the dark it seemed to last longer than it did.

I never saw the blow, but felt the whip strike me as I clambered out the tunnel. I stood there, bare-breasted in the chill, the pain of the stripe on my back already fading. Nothing followed me out into the half-light of the forest, but perhaps I was more aware of the roots of that tree that had been cut down, for now I could mark the silver bark of it, and saw it twine about some of the other trees, marked with hearts or ribboned-sticks. A strange blessing, I thought, as I retreated closer to worlds I knew.

###

Why did the Zombie Chicken Cross the Road?

Why did the Zombie Chicken Cross the Road?
by
Bobby Derie

Meadow Run was a family farm, with only a few chickens. Though they did not know it the prisoners in their chicken wire runs had it good compared to the industrial poultry farm a little ways over, where birds lived and died in lightless, filthy cages that encouraged them to be fat and sessile. Yet even at Meadow Run, every now and again one of the birds would eye the two-lane blacktop highway that ran just past the fence, and beyond that, the unknown freedom of the corn field and the bayou. A clever bird could, if there was a gap in the wire of the chicken coop, wiggle out to the yard. From there a good run-up and a flutter of wings could take one of the stronger birds right over the fence, if they tried.

Tire treads ran through corpse of one such game bird. One more piece of roadkill on the old blacktop.

Yet as the night came upon it, there was movement in the bayou. Fires lit and lines drawn in sand with flour; harsh liquor shared passed from hand to hand, and as the moon rose feet began to shuffle to the muffled drum. For those who were there with eyes to see it, the knife flashed bright in fire and moon light, and as the blood flowed into the earth dance and drum picked up their tempo. Near midnight the first chevalier found its rider, a scrawny girl of twelve whose kinky hair stuck out past her shoulders; and she mouthed obscenities like a soldier and held herself straight as an iron rod. One by one the others came on, and the circle was alive with screams and sighs and laughter...

...and on that blacktop highway, a single uncrushed eye fluttered open. There was no longer a throat to cluck, but a rattling hiss issued from the ruined neck, and the one intact leg scrambled for purchase, the one unbroken wing fluttered. It peeled itself from the dusty blacktop, a ruined mockery of poultry balanced on leg and wing. Then, slowly, tirelessly, it began to pull itself forward. Across the road, in their house, the hens nested and slumbered.

The mutilated bird shuffled up to the fence. It had never seen it from this side. Before, it had fluttered over the top, wings flapping madly, barely clearing the top. Now, with its shattered bones, it could never go over it that way. Nor did it have to.

Grasping a piece of wire with its beak, and planting its one good foot against the bottom most piece of wire, the bird heaved its broken body upwards. The chickenwire held its weight with barely a wobble. Then, holding on with only its beak, the cock lifted its leg and scrabbled for a higher purchase. Once its claws grasped the next bit of wire, the body heaved up another inch, it released the piece of wire in its beak, and reached up for the next one. In this way, with a slow and inevitable way, the broken form ascended the fence.

Once at the top, it simply flopped forward into the yard. Live chickens would have flapped or sputtered, but this one fell like a stone, and picked itself up after on crooked leg and crooked wing, crawling forward once again. The hole in the wire of the chicken coop was still there.

Inside, the hens slept roosting on wooden poles, heads sunk in to their plush feathers, lit only by the moonlight that came in the door. The broken bird's talons clacked on the ramp as it shuffled up. The fat brown hen nearest the door stirred in her sleep as its misshapen shadow fell across her - and then awoke with a scream as it attacked, the beak digging in at her neck, grasping on to her with its one good talon. The hen fell off its perch and rolled, flapping her wings and scratching at her attacker with her own feet. Yet the undying bird held on, biting deeper and deeper, blood welling up around its beak as it dug in.

The hen's alarm roused the hen house, and the birds raised a great cry and moved about, clustering themselves in the corner away from the struggle. In time, the hen's struggle ceased, and the bloody-beaked corpse-bird raised its head, gore falling from its mouth, the one good eye turning to the remaining chickens in the coop. In its fight with the hen, feathers had fallen from its hide, deep scratches gouged its belly and legs, and its beak was chipped where it had struck bone.

None of these injuries impeded it in the slightest as it shuffled toward the screaming hens.

Marilyn Meadow woke to the terrified cries of the chicken coop massacre. Her first thoughts turned to prowlers, foxes, maybe even a coyote. Still in her nightgown, she slipped on her boots and took the shotgun off the rack, checking to make sure it was loaded and the safety was off. The moon was full and the house was dark, so she left the flashlight behind, trusting in her night vision and holding the firearm in front of her as she trudged out toward the coop. By the time she got there, the screams had reached a higher pitch.

The human-sized door was held on by a simple wire latch, and as she opened it she noticed the break in the wire, down near the ground, and swore under her breath. That's where the critter had got in, she reckoned. She braced herself as she moved to open the coop door proper, expecting a bloody-mouth fox.

What she found was a slaughter. Half a dozen birds lay on the ground, throats torn out, guts spilled. Over it all was a black-feathered, one-eyed cock with a broken wing that should have been dead. The skin over its left eye had been scraped away 'til it showed the pale skull, and the left chest was little more than a broken bag of skin and feathers with tire treads on it, and it had lost more feathers than it still had. It was holding a piece of intestine in its chipped beak.

The shotgun barked, and the black bird exploded backwards. The sound of the gunshot in the enclosed space caused Marilyn to feel as if her own head had exploded, the screams of the chickens drowned out by the painful numbness and ringing in her ears. Then she saw the stricken bird attempting to rise, claw scrabbling against the floor, and pulled the trigger again. And again, and again until it clicked empty.

###

Three Premises Involving Chickens

Three Premises Involving Chickens
by
Bobby Derie (Questions posed by mark McLaughlin)

"Why did the were-chicken cross the road?"

The were-chicken wondered as his talons clicked on the paving stones. He could no longer remember a time when he had not crossed the road. There was only the endless procession perpendicular to the flow of traffic, weaving through skirted laborers bearing baskets of woven reeds laden with onions and clay, or bare-breasted women balancing pitchers of beard on their head. Several times he had come upon funeral processions, and though he might have stopped for them the priests would always call a halt, and the wailers' voices would die off into silence as he passed before them.

"Why did the zombie chicken cross the road?"

Tire treads ran through the bird's corpse. One more piece of roadkill on the old crossroads. Yet as the night came upon it, that single uncrushed eye fluttered open. There was no longer a throat to cluck, but a rattling hiss issued from the ruined neck, and the one intact leg scrambled for purchase, the one unbroken wing fluttered. It peeled itself from the dusty blacktop, a ruined mockery of poultry balanced on leg and wing, head flopping loosely to its left. Then, slowly, tirelessly, it began to pull itself forward. Across the road, in their house, the hens nested and slumbered.

"Why did the vampire chicken cross the road?"

El Chupador ruffled his black feathers as his spurs clicked on the pavement. He could hear the cries and smell the blood from here. Once, he too had been a slave in the games, a champion. Dirty farmers would bet their meager savings on him, and cheer as he was released, to flutter toward his opponent as a dark angel, a feathered fury! Yes, he had tasted blood in those days...and developed a taste for it. Then, anything had been better than the stewpot. Now, he cackled like a hen as he neared the circle of bettors, for the tables had turned and it was no longer he that was on the menu...

###