The small red hen stops scraping at the dusty patch behind the coop and cocks her head. There, a rustle. The faint scratch of grasshopper on leaf. She pauses, looks at the others scattered in front of her, and moves closer to the sound—just enough, just so. One step. Two.
She listens…listens. Nothing. She drops her beak to the dirt and pecks. A grub! She swallows it and continues scratching, unearthing…another! She makes a small cluck of joy, forgetful. The others notice. The large black hen charges and reaches to pull the twisting larva from the red hen’s beak. She holds on, turns, runs. Dust puffs behind her as she races around the tree to the grass on the other side. As she runs, she swallows the grub, the delicious tickle. She stops, looks back. The large black hen has not pursued her. Instead, she is digging in the dirt, swallowing grub after meaty grub, chortling. The small red hen scrapes at the grass beneath the tree.
And then.
She hears the sound again. That grasshopper scratch. Twitch-twitch-twitch. But where is it coming from?
Twitch. Twitch. Twitch.
It’s louder now. She glances back at the others: they have heard it too, their heads are turned in the same direction.
The dog barks with sudden urgency from down by the house. The horse squeals in the field. The hens startle, shake themselves, fluff their feathers. And pause. Listen.
Where is it?
The small red hen feels the sound again, getting louder, closer, but nothing appears. Nothing moves the grass. She can’t follow it, pinpoint its origin. She tries, turning her head this way, then that. Out of her right eye, she sees the others doing the same.
And then she sees a flash: the glint of a small metal sphere rolling into view, as clear as an earthworm on wet stone. They all rush toward it but the small red hen is the first to grab it. The others squawk and complain, peck at her back. She swallows. It has no wiggle, no taste.
They dig at the dirt around her, hunting for more metal spheres, more strange food. The minutes pass; nothing else appears. One by one they begin to drift and forget and scratch at different grass.
* * *
Dawn. A sliver of blue-grey light through the coop’s shit-streaked window casts a haze over the dozing birds. One by one they shift and stretch and drop from their night perches to the wood shavings below, scratching among the curls of defecation for something to eat.
And then: a buzzing. The coop door slides open with a shudder.
Light.
Air.
They race, frenzied, to the freedom of the fenced-in run.
All of them, except the small red hen.
She does not feel so compelled; not yet. She is sitting in the farthest, darkest corner of the coop, nestled deep into the shavings she’d methodically stripped of feces to make herself a warm, neat nest. For she was cold through the night and is cold still, although she can sense her body warming, a gentle, pulsing heat. She should be hungry, but she isn’t. She should be thirsty, but she feels quenched. She knows—odd, this knowing—that soon she will be hungry, and soon she will feed and drink and defecate, but not here, not yet.
Soon.
* * *
The sun is bright and high in the sky. The hens have pecked and scraped and scratched the run until it coughs dust. The water dishes are packed with debris, clotted with straw and dirt, feathers. They huddle drowsily on the shady side of their shelter, spreading their wings in the dust, kicking their feet against cool earth.
The speckled hen is the first to hear the familiar clomp-clank of the tall blond woman and her metal bucket. They all flutter and scramble their way to attention, shaking dust from their feathers. Boodle-boodle-boodle-boodle they chirrup together, catching sight of the tall blond woman, her happy pail.
“Hell-oo,” the woman sings as she nears the wire. “Good morning, ladies.” She coughs, spits into the grass behind her. “Well, not so much morning anymore is it…Sorry, it’s so late.” She sets the pail down and sighs. Wipes at her eyes with the back of a pale scratched hand.
She shakes her head, looks over her flock. “Here chickies, chickies, chickies,” she mutters, opening the pen door. The birds flow from the enclosure, surging toward the tall blond woman, chortling, pecking at the top of the pail.
The woman lifts the bucket and dumps it without preamble: cuttings from the vegetable garden, scraps from last night’s dinner—she’d been careful to remove the shards of pottery from the rescued portion of pasta, flung so hard against a harder wall.
“Don’t think about it,” she says through clenched teeth.
She limps toward the plastic bin, unlatches it, lifts out the bag of feed with a soft groan.
She moves stiffly toward the food trough, pours in some pellets. The bag emptied, she drops it to the ground and bends over with a grunt to retrieve the fouled water dishes. She stacks them on the ledge by the pen door and turns, catching sight of the hens on the outside of the fence. She counts, unsure.
She ducks her head into the musky interior of the coop, feeling to the right for the third water dish. It is then that she notices the small red hen, nestled in her tidy pile of shavings, eyes open, alert.
“Oh, Bess,” she says to the bird, “not hungry?” And then she sighs, moving farther into the coop, closer to the bird.
“Are you sick? Or just being broody again?” She reaches a tentative hand toward the russet head. “You gonna peck me? Join the club. Seems like everybody likes to peck me these days.”
The red hen’s eyes track the hand but she doesn’t not move when the fingers whisk over her, rubbing her earlobes.
“You feel…warm…Do chickens get fevers?” The blond woman sighs, the force of it blowing the scraps of yellow bangs from her sweaty forehead.
She withdraws from the coop, taking the water dishes out of the pen to be rinsed, refilled.
* * *
The small red hen emerges from the coop. She glances at the sun. By her estimation, it is nearly four p.m. The July sky is bright blue and cloudless, the air still. She can sense, though, a drop in pressure. A shift. There will be rain by nightfall.
She pauses by the water bowls, lowers her head, and drinks. And drinks. She drinks until the dish is empty and dry, her thirst slaked. She takes a deep breath, opens her cloaca, and deposits a heavy gush of grey-yellow waste. Its release thrills her. Yes, now. Now she is hungry.
She turns to the food trough and eats. She pecks speedily at the dry pellets, swallowing them one after the other as the gears of her gizzard work to grind and digest. It is hard going for her small chicken body but she can sense a change; something inside is stronger, faster. She eats all the food and is still not satisfied. No matter. She will get more.
She exits the pen, pauses, listening for her sisters. Sisters. Yes, that is what they are, she realizes. If not by blood, then by feather.
She finds them near the far fence, beside the vegetable garden. She chirrups loudly, calling their attention. They stop their rustling and scratching, startled by her sudden appearance. They fall away from her, not pecking, silent. She moves past the flock and stops at the netting encasing the tomato bed. Balancing on her left foot, she grabs the netting in the claws of her right. She then reaches forward and nips at the strands until there is a chicken-size hole. She drops her foot and enters the tomato bed. She does not look back. Her sisters follow at a distance, cocking their heads from side to side.
The small red hen pecks at the closest pale green fruit.
Now we will know what it means to feast, she thinks.
* * *
“What the hell?”
The hens startle from their nap in the cool remnants of the tomato bed. The tall blond woman is outside the ruined netting, scowling. “Get out!” she screams, hitting the fence post with her metal pail. The birds smack into each other, squawking with panic, trying to find the way out through the red hen’s neat tear. The buff barred is the first to free herself. She flaps and tuts in distress and flits to the fence post, wings beating the air. The others scatter from the bed after her, frightened by the blond woman’s tone, her clanging bucket.
The blond woman stops at the edge of the tomato bed, bends at the waist. She peers in through the hole made by the small red hen, who is still curled in her nest of tomato vines.
“Bess! Get out!”
The small red hen cocks her head, fixes the tall blond woman with a shining eye.
“Out,” she orders, flapping the netting. She stomps her foot, bangs the bucket again. “Out out out!”
The small red hen—Bess—does not move. She does not fluff a feather, stretch a wing. She sits in the tangled dirty roots of a decimated plum tomato, and stares. Hard.
“Out! Get out!” The tall blond woman steps closer, sticks her hand in to shoo the small red hen and then—
She stops. “What the…”
Slowly, she moves away from the bed, stands. She scratches the back of her neck, looks up at the sky.
“What the…” she mutters again, looking over the rest of the flock, who have followed the lowering sun to their pen to roost for the night. She heads up the incline, to the coop and her duty to the other birds. She does not look back at the tomato bed.
* * *
It is dawn. Or just so. The small red hen notices the shift in light, watches it from her nest in the tomato bed.
To her right lies a raccoon, bleeding from a gash in its lower abdomen. The small red hen turns her head and dips her beak in the dark wound, and drinks. The raccoon thrashes feebly, then is still.
She senses, knows, that it has died at last. She rises from her nest, stretches, flaps her stiff wings. She walks to the raccoon’s head and pecks out its one remaining eye.
Sated for the moment, she exits the tomato bed for the first time in nearly twelve hours. Dawn continues to stretch the landscape.
The rain she had sensed earlier passed through during the night; not much more than a brief dripping. Still, it has left things damp enough that the ambient smells are altered. The tall grass, now weighted with moisture, gives off a sharper note, the pine tree seems fuller in its resin.
Sounds, too, are changed by the rain, enhanced. From this distance of some twenty yards she can hear her sisters rustling in their coop, chirruping and flapping their wings as sleep leaves them.
From the house, there is only silence. She considers it for a moment, dark in the gloom of early morning. Later, she thinks. First, her sisters.
She approaches the pen door and tuck-tuck-tucks authoritatively. Her sisters go quiet inside for a second and then erupt in an excited, anxious chorus.
“Easy,” she tells them. “I will see you free.”
She considers the latch on the gate. It is raccoon-proof and complicated. I am raccoon-proof, the small red hen thinks.
She glances around the yard, looking for tools that can help her. She notices the rake leaning against one side of the coop. She inspects it; too flimsy for her purposes. Inside the closed confines of the coop, her sisters cackle and cry.
She returns to the door, looks again at the latch. On second examination, it appears rustier, flimsier than anticipated. A strong stick wedged between the carabiner and the bolt, a firm push would be all that is needed.
She drags the rake through the damp dirt, and lies on her back using her feet to cram the handle end in place. It takes a few tries, but she is not dissuaded. Her coordination is good, her legs strong. Once it is firmly situated, she pushes up, hard and sharp.
A crack. The metal lock is torn. She drops the rake and rights herself, shaking both dirt and damp from her feathers. By now the sun has emerged more fully, the birds singing the last bars of dawn’s chorus.
The dog has not yet begun to bark.
The small red hen hurries now; she must see to her sisters. She shoves the gate open just as the automated timer chugs to life and lifts the coop door. Her sisters flood to freedom, rush to her side, chirruping and flapping their wings.
Tuck-tuck-tuck, the small red hen says. “I have something for you.”
The other hens pause in their movements; a bit of straw hangs from the smaller black hen’s beak as she stares at her, expectant. They watch her, watch to see what she will give them.
She tenses, squats, and emits a loud Currup-currup-currup as she forces five shiny spheres from her vent. One for each of her sisters.
The spheres roll from the small red hen, warm from her body, coated in milky bloom. Her sisters rush forward and eat their share.
* * *
It is near midday. The small red hen watches her sisters as they doze and rest, the contents of their strange meal working through blood, bone, and feather. She is on top of the coop; a good vantage for observing both her sisters and the farmhouse down below. The farmhouse that is still silent, dark. The dog has not been heard to bark all day.
She thinks on this; remembering briefly in the black spaces of the previous night, as she rested in her tomato bed, as she fed on raccoon, her body reimagining itself from the inside out. Odd sounds. Yelling. A sharp odor of fear in the wind right before the rain came through…
They will have to attend to the house sooner than later, she realizes. But first, her sisters need to rest, and then they will need to feed and rest again. She must provide for them so they can gain their strength, their new equilibrium.
A sharp bang wakes the flock, startles the small red hen from her post. She looks toward the house and sees the source of the sound. The back door slammed, hard. Not by the tall blond woman—Francine, she thinks, her name is Francine—but by that dark pink man. She stiffens and observes his approach. Her sisters have resettled themselves in their chosen shaded nests about the yard; the exhaustion of transformation too compelling to ignore.
It is no matter; the small red hen will take care of them. She stretches her wings and continues to observe. She notes the pink man is not walking in a direct manner. His legs seem to have softened. He wobbles on the path. As he stumbles left to examine the fallen tomato bed, the small red hen sees he carries something in his hand, something that has never been brought by the tall blond woman.
The small red hen walks to the edge of the roof for a closer look. The man is still at the tomato bed; holding on to the fence post with one hand, the strange object with the other. She tilts her head and listens to his wheezing breath. A light breeze flicks past him, bringing her a sour smell. The small red hen does not care for this odor.
“…the hell…is that— A raccoon?” he rasps. And then he emits a violent choking sound and releases a flood of liquid into the ravaged tomatoes.
He wipes his mouth on his wrist and looks up at the coop, suddenly, as though sensing the small red hen’s steady gaze. For a second, she feels that cold clutch again, the very basis of her former being: fear. But it is vanquished as forcefully as it came.
“You’re all gonna get eaten!” he croaks, pumping his fist at the sky. “Bullshit birds!”
Her sisters remain still, too deep into their restorative torpors to take clear notice of the dark pink man, his strange gift.
He waves the object: small, metallic, glinting. Cra-kow! A sharp sound, smoke, the bitter scent of superheated metal. This noise manages to penetrate the deep rest of her sisters; they squawk and stumble to their feet, then down again.
Gun. The small red hen does not understand how she knows this but it emerges pure and whole in her mind. This is a gun and it can kill. She watches as the dark pink man slumps against the fence, eyes closed, as though taken by a sudden need to rest. She is not deceived; he has come here intent on harm. He will have them all dead for no other reason than that they are alive.
The small red hen leaps from her perch to the ground. The movement registers with the dark pink man and he shifts to face her.
“Chickens. Why she got to have... chickens?” He waves the gun at the small red hen.
She fluffs her feathers, tenses her legs. And then, reaching deep into her hocks she speeds across the twenty yards of dusty ground and launches herself straight into the man’s gut. His bare torso makes it easy for her claws to do their work.
“What the—” The gun falls to the ground.
Her sisters sleep.
* * *
They awake at dusk. Almost as one, they shuffle and rise, coming to join their sister by the body of the dark pink man. The small red hen is sitting by his head, what is left of his face. She watches as her sisters dip their beaks and begin to feed. In a short time, the dark pink man’s organs slip from his cavity to the blood-wet ground. Those, too, are soon gone, disappearing faster than any worm down their throats.
The one-eyed white hen is the first to finish her meal and approach the small red.
Chirrut, chirrut. “Sisters,” she says.
“Yes,” answers the small red hen. “We have always ever been thus. But now we know what we are. And what we are capable of.”
The others, too, finish eating and come and sit by her, preening one another’s feathers, stretching in the cool evening light.
The urge to flee to the sanctity of their coop has left them—they barely remember the feeling, that instinctual urge to find safety from the stalkers of the night.
“I feel good,” says the large black hen with the turned-over comb.
The others tut in agreement and the small red hen is flooded with a great love for her sisters. She feels grateful for being able to give them this gift, this freedom from fear, from the tight dark box that had once been their only knowledge of nighttime.
She stands, the others move to rise with her but she motions for them to remain seated. “Rest, my friends, rest. You will need all your strength. For now, lie still and listen as I speak.”
The hens obey and settle in the grass.
The small red hen pauses, enjoying the sight of their bright shining eyes, the knowledge that is now burning behind them. “Before, we were mindless,” she begins. “Nameless, even, although the tall blond woman—”
“Francine,” chirps the smaller black hen and the others cluck in agreement.
“Yes, that is her name. And she named us…I was Bessie.” With a wing she gestures toward the others. “You”—the buff barred—“were Peggy. You were Pepper”—the smaller black—“You, my sister, had the esteemed name of Pookie”—the speckled hen with no comb—“And you, you were Dorothy, if memory serves correct”—the large black hen. They fluff their feathers and cluck their enjoyment in this telling.
“But now that we are free we will choose names for our true selves. I will start.” She pauses, looks down, scratches at the ground. “I will call myself Raccoon, in honor of my first victory over that which has enslaved us our entire lives. I ask that as you doze, as you rest and renew yourselves, that you think: What do you wish to be known as? How shall we remember you?”
* * *
The moon is high, casting its pale light over the flock of six as they move in a single line between the raised beds of vegetables, past the herb garden in its collapsing wooden frame, the stone ring of tired roses.
Raccoon leads them, but they are all equal now, fully grown into their awareness and strength. She revisits their new names as they proceed, running them through her mind with pride. Mouse: the large black hen with the turned-over comb. Ax: the buff barred who no longer lays. Claw: the smaller black hen. Peck: the one-eyed white. And Corn: the speckled hen with no comb.
She slows as they emerge through the open garden gate into the cool green of the rear lawn. They pause together on the damp grass, enjoying the soft texture against their feet as they gaze up at the back of the house. No lights; there are no sounds, or movements. They wonder, collectively, what has become of the tall blond woman.
They resume their approach, not startling at the sudden cry of an owl, the yip of a far-off fox. They are not afraid of these things anymore. They are worried about what they may find in the house.
Mouse is the one to enter first; she wedges her beak into the mesh of the screen door and pushes, creating enough space for her sisters to enter behind her. They flow into the kitchen as silently as spilled milk, sweeping across the moonlit floor, eyes wide, ears keen to any sound.
There is no one in the kitchen, no living thing that they can discern. They note the objects around them, all foreign and yet...less so, the longer they are in their presence.
Plate. On the floor, shattered. A smear of something nearby. Brownish, red.
Chairs. One up, one overturned, its leg cracked, cushion torn.
Glass. Everywhere there is glass, pottery. Bits and shards and pieces too small to tell their original form. Corn looks up and notes the open cupboard doors, the empty shelves.
They move from the kitchen into a darker space beyond. The moonlight does not penetrate to this side of the small house. There is more glass here. More brown-red spots. Raccoon pauses to smell one and observes to her sisters: “Blood.” They nod and pass through the room, noting the new objects, understanding blooming the instant they set eyes on them for the first time.
Claw finds the trail out to the hallway. They follow it along the wooden boards to the stairs. Up they hop, still silent, still listening, sensing. At the top are two doors, both shut. To the left, down the hall, another. It is open.
They pause on the landing and confer on what they have seen.
“I don’t think she is here any longer,” says Peck. “I don’t smell her, except...”
“Yes,” agrees Raccoon, “her blood. There is also—”
“Another’s blood?” interjects Mouse. “The dark pink man?”
“The dog,” says Corn.
“The dog,” agrees Raccoon.
Just then a high-pitched sound interrupts them. It reverberates down the hall, like air squeezed from a ball in quick, sharp bursts. They move toward it, fear trying its best to land on their backs again, to muffle their intent. They are not swayed. Little Claw takes the lead and is the first to enter the room.
On the bed, a form. The tall blond woman, or what remains of her. They approach, clucking softly. They hop up beside her, gathering near her battered head, her swollen face. Her eyes are closed and puffed. Her mouth is slack, her lips cracked, blood leaking from one corner. Raccoon notes her bound hands, feet. She motions to Ax and the two of them peck the tape that holds her. Her body unfolds, her eyes open.
She screams.
The flock leaps, startled. As quickly as the tall blond woman came alive, she is silent again, but her eyes remain open, her breath coming quick and tattered. Corn and Peck immediately leave the room to find water. The others stay behind, surveying her, assessing.
She watches them watching her, her blue eyes wide even in their puffed slits. She tries to make words, to talk, but her voice is broken, her mouth too swollen.
Raccoon leaves her sisters and hops from the bed. She thinks she heard something, a rustling behind a door. Yes, there it is again. A soft rumble.
Corn and Peck return. Corn has a plastic tumbler partially filled with water in her beak; Peck carries a can of Diet Coke by the plastic six-pack ring. Raccoon returns to the bed to assist them. They place their offerings on the bedside table, the woman's eyes following their every action. She shifts, tries to turn and reach for the liquid but her left arm is mangled, immobile. The hens gather together, all six, at her right side and thrust their weight into her, rolling her to a half sit. She moans. With her bruised right arm, she reaches for the tumbler. Her hand shakes. Corn presses the back of her neck to the underside of her wrist, supporting the blond woman as she steadies her grip. The cup lifts, she manages a sip, two. The hens watch as she swallows, her distorted face showing pain. Then relief.
The rumble again. This time all of them hear it, the blond woman included. She moans something, a word, a name. She gestures with her mangled arm toward the closet.
Claw, Mouse, and Raccoon move to inspect, leaving the others to help Francine. The noise is louder now, as though whatever is making it senses them on the other side of the door.
Raccoon leaps to Mouse’s back and pulls down on the knob with her beak. The door creaks open.
“The dog,” says Claw.
They enter the closet. On the floor is a small brown bundle. Her snout is wrapped in the same tape used to bind the blond woman’s hands. The dog’s legs are hobbled together with thin wire.
She is on her side, breathing slowly. Every other exhale is a low, steady growl. Her eye follows them as they move toward her.
“Sister,” Raccoon says, “we are here to help.”
They snip the bonds that hold the dog still. She rolls to her chest with difficulty; there are oozing welts on her thin coat, angry sores. One leg looks crumpled, like the blond woman’s left arm. Still, she manages to stumble to her feet, whimpering softly.
“This way,” says Mouse, “we will help you.”
They lead the dog from the closet. She half leaps, half falls into the bed and stretches out beside the broken form of her mistress. The blond woman has leaned back into the stained pillows, her eyes closed, breath in small gulping smacks.
The hens return to the kitchen. In the refrigerator, they find packets of ham, hotdogs, cheese. These they consume in rapid succession, tearing the plastic open, devouring. In the bin, old iceberg lettuce, a tomato. They eat these too. In the cupboard, crackers. Rice. Pasta. They eat it all.
It is only after they feel full and sated, their thirst quenched from the faucet, that they return to the bedroom.
They approach cautiously, mount the bed, and peer down at the resting forms with their keen, shining eyes. The woman's flesh is warm and fever bright; the dog shudders in her dreams.
The hens look at each other, deciding.
Peck and Mouse move toward the top of the bed. In unison, they squat, heave, and release two small metal spheres. Still warm and moist from their bodies, they pluck them from the bedclothes and drop them into the gaping mouths of woman and dog.
* * *
In the morning, while the hens see to the horse, the tall blond woman and the dog wake. Their eyes shine brightly on the world.