"Say that again," I demanded.
"You heard me. I said I was going to light up the firecrackers in the chicken's asshole."
In three steps I had Oscar by the shirt and spittle sprayed his face as I yelled, "Like hell you will, you sick fuck! You leave that chicken alone or I swear I will tell, you hear me?" Before Oscar could answer, another voice spoke.
"Hey, chicken fucker, what are you trying to do to my daddy's chicken?"
Gawd Almighty, it was Pete's queer son.
"Well, I'll be a son of a bitch. I thought you were my friend," Oscar said to me.
"You know damn good and well I haven't told anyone, especially that queer." When I realized I spoke just a little too loud, I let go of Oscar's shirt and we both looked at Petey.
"What did you say, you little faggot?" Oscar said. "What did you call me?"
"Hey, calm down," Petey said. "I call everyone a chicken fucker. I didn't know you really did one." Petey laughed, a rip-roaring belly laugh that could have assembled a crowd if the firecracker lighting hadn't already started.
Oscar grabbed Petey's shirt with his left hand and hit him in the face with his right. Then, he shoved him into the dirt.
"Stop it!" Petey said. I didn't actually hear him say it because of the firecracker pops and whistles coming from the front yard, but his mouth formed the words pretty damn good. He started inching backwards on his ass and the palms of his hands but Oscar was following his every move. "I didn't mean nothing by it, Oscar. Hey, to each his own, huh? I don't like to be judged and I'm not judging you, okay?" he shouted.
Petey had inched his way right into the toolshed when Oscar looked over his shoulder at me and said, "You get out of here. You've opened your big mouth too many times already. Remember what I told you last summer, you got that?" he said. He winked at me but his eyes had the bulge and both fists clenched tight.
I ran back to my car and left Oscar and Petey in that shed. I don't know what I was more afraid of, what Oscar would do to me, or what he would do to Petey. I was so afraid of what the Fourth of July picnic was playing host to that my stomach began to churn and I wasn't certain if I needed to sit on the toilet or stand over it. I drove straight home and almost made it to the bathroom. Almost.
The next few days were filled with the usual town gossip of how someone beat Pete's son into a brain-dead coma and even if he lived he would never wake up. Rumor has it that Petey probably screamed over and again but no one heard him over the sound of the fireworks that filled the night air. They said Petey had the blades of a pair of hedging shears shoved up his ass. They think whoever did it hated queers, but I knew better. I knew those shears were meant to disguise damage done by the predator himself. I knew what Oscar could do when he was laughed at or made fun of.
Petey died a couple of weeks later, having never opened his eyes or uttered a word. I called Oscar a few days after the funeral and made it very clear that I wanted nothing to do with him and to stay away from me. He said losing my friendship was no big loss and neither was the death of the town faggot. I hung up the phone fully intending never to see Oscar again.
Had it not been for the accident, I wouldn't have.
It was a very cold Thanksgiving night when Oscar's truck slid out of control and off the icy road. It overturned and rested against a few trees, shaking snow off the limbs and covering the truck with a wet, white blanket.
Oscar wasn't found until the next day and by then he'd been dead for a couple of hours. The town gossipers had a field day with the latest news. It seems Oscar had a note in his pocket, confessing to the rape and murder of Petey Ferguson. A man couldn't go into any store or gas station without being approached with, "Did you hear?" The blue-haired church ladies got together more often than usual just to tell the story again and again. Each time they told it, the fish got a little bigger, if you know what I mean.
The latest gossip is that Oscar was found dead in his truck, his pants around his ankles and his prick in a dead chicken's ass. Yeah, the rumors are that Oscar was screwing the chicken and that's how he lost control of his truck. Personally, I don't think that's what happened. Oh, I believe they found him with a chicken on his dick, but I don't think Oscar put it there. And if you ask me why I feel that way, I won't tell you. There are just some things a man keeps to himself, and this is one of them.
ELIZABETH PEAKE
Born in the heat of the Arizona desert, Elizabeth Peake is keenly aware of what hell is. In 1993, she decided to move her family to Minnesota, where hell goes by a different name.
She has written numerous short stories and they have appeared or will appear in various webzines and print magazines, including www.horrorfind.com, www.artofhorror.com, The Fear Within anthology, Femmes de la Brume anthology and microSHOCKS anthology.
She credits Brian Keene for giving her the huevos to pursue her love of writing, despite the odds.
If you enjoyed reading "Chicken" please let her know via email at [email protected] If you didn't enjoy it, email her anyway.
She currently resides in Louisville Kentucky with her husband and three kids. Her web presence is www.elizabethpeake.com, and she is currently working on THE DARKEST HOUR, a full-length novel based on her short story, The Holler.
Ash Wednesday, or "The Day of Ashes" (Dies Cinerum), is the first day of Lent, a Christian period of abstinence and fasting. These forty days do not count Sundays, thus The Day of Ashes always falls on a Wednesday.
The holiday has its origins in the sixth century at some point during the papacy of Gregory the Great, and the concept is noted in the oldest texts of the Gregorian Sacramentary. Ashes were used as a sign of humility, sorrow/repentance, and mortality in the Old Testament. The ashes are applied to the forehead in the shape of a cross in imitation of the spiritual seal placed on a Christian during baptismal rites (when a newborn Christian is freed from slavery to sin).
While the English monk Aelfric wrote of the association between the ritual use of ashes and the onset of Lent in 1000 AD, it was not officially adopted by the church at large until 1091 AD. In the very early days of the Christian Church the use of ashes and period of penance had been reserved only for the most grievous sinners. The 1091 change of policy was meant to unite church members and promote sympathy. Formerly the penitent was forced to spend forty days away from other people; this is the origin of our usage of quarantine, a Latin word meaning "forty".
Traditionally, the palm fronds from the previous Palm Sunday are burned to make the ashes. In some countries this ritual can lead to havoc and massive destruction in the form of wildfires. On Ash Wednesday 1983 the Australian state of Victoria was besieged by brush fires due to the many people attempting to create ashes without observing proper safety measures. The heat unleashed by the disaster was enough to burn a person standing three hundred feet away within five seconds.
-John Edward Lawson
By HORNS
A rush of chilly air knocked the Mason jar off the windowsill, and the daddy longlegs began to crawl across the rug.
Bjoern Kurz sighed with frustration. Turning lazily from the window, he collected the jar and using the detached lid scooped the insect back inside. Soon his guest would arrive. Soon he would be purged. He meditated on this.
Outside the street below screamed with bustling traffic.
Bjoern rolled the glass jar in one of his marred hands. A hand damaged by fire. A hand covered with patches of ugly, raised, pinkish scar tissue. Much of the nerves deadened by the self-inflicted wounds.
The small creature's eight long legs skittered and slipped on the glass, unavailing in its attempt to find a new surface.
"Soon, my little friend, your journey shall end," he said, holding the jar close to his hard lined face - an emotionless look sired by many years of terror and madness.
He walked back to the open window, stepped between flapping curtains and leaned to look outside. He briefly watched heavily clothed pedestrians walking hurriedly by on the sidewalks of Manhattan. Joggers. Bike riders. Vehicles dangerously maneuvering, stopping suddenly and whizzing along. The ambiance strikingly different than from his own Wolfenbuettel, Germany, but with the same familiar phantoms of loneliness and desolation clinging to the hearts and minds, to the very souls even, of the people.
Closing his eyes, he pressed the jar against his wrinkled forehead. Self-deprecating thoughts of failure beleaguered him. He visualized dead bodies. Charred remains, blackened, scorched corpses. A burning crucifix. A hanging Christ melting, bubbling, yielding frothy blood.
Wincing, grunting, the leatherlike flesh covering his face twitching peculiarly, he pressed the jar harder.
The daddy longlegs put out feelers on the screw-on lid.
Suddenly, and as if swept over by an inner peacefulness, he began to slowly smile. Then he chuckled blackly and lowered the jar.
Happy laughter and talking softly drifted through the window from down below.
Bjoern tapped the lid a few times-enough to knock the bug to the bottom-then unscrewed it. He set the jar on the windowsill, the lid beside it, and reached into his moth-eaten khaki slacks where he kept a pack of matches in the pocket.
"Fire purifies," he solemnly said with a Mephistophelian wisdom manifesting in his sable-eyed stare.
With damaged, discolored fingers he removed a match. He watched the eight-legged creature climb toward the open end of the jar as he struck the match.
The smell of the burning match head, the trivial action of scraping it on the striking strip, igniting the chemical, every little detail seemed to proceed in slow motion in his mind. A surge of inner strength, of power, of energy, shot through him. The flame always his source of stimulation-his only source.
He stuck the burning match into the jar, purposely hitting the insect.
The match and daddy longlegs fell to the bottom.
He watched it move, saw the flame cause it to spasm.
Injured, it began to climb weakly up the jar.
"Phpht," he sounded and pushed the jar outside.
A little more than forty feet down, the Mason jar struck the concrete.
Bjoern heard it shatter then someone scream. Maybe more than one person. He didn't look, didn't care. He closed the window, fighting it down a splintered frame. Now, he would drink vodka and wait.
Rapping at the door pulled Bjoern out of his thoughts. He set his empty glass down on the small, careworn, black-covered Holy Bible lying atop the bare round kitchen table.
Through the peephole, he saw the young priest he'd invited.
And though it seldom happened to him, he felt nervous-more so from excitement.
"Mr. Kurz," the youthful, raven-haired cleric greeted him, smiling.
Bjoern was slow to reply. Standing there with the door open, his hand clutching the doorknob, he examined the man. His dour look creeping over mostly black garments up to a white clerical collar and to the man's questioning stare.
"Please," Bjoern finally said stepping back, motioning for his guest to come in.
The priest removed his black gloves as he entered.
"Please. Make yourself comfortable," Bjoern stated. "Thank you for coming . . . ?"
"Father Paul Dunne," the priest helped, taking off his long coat.
"Father Dunne," Bjoern echoed, offering up a broken grin.
The priest laid his coat over the back of a tatty armchair-stuffing his gloves into one of the pockets first-and was seated.
Bjoern closed the door and locked it.
"You've just moved in?" Father Dunne asked, casting a look about the apartment.
Turning from the door, Bjoern faced the priest and answered, "I like to live . . . " Rolling his eyes in thought, he concluded with a nod, "Simple."
All the rooms were sparsely furnished. What little there was mainly came with the rental. Bjoern was anything but a homebody. Like fire's natural temperament to spread out, to sustain itself, to remain uncontrolled, he regularly needed to travel, and in doing so unbend his tormented mind.
Dunne fingered the inside of his shirt pocket and took out a small, yellow slip. For a moment he silently read pencil scribble.
Sticking the paper back in his pocket, he inquired, "You've been here in America a very short time?"
Bjoern nodded. "Almost five months."
"Do you find it to be a pleasant experience?"
"Germany is much different."
"Your English is very good."
"Thank you."
Bjoern crossed over to the window. He parted the curtains and gazed outside, staring past the skyline and into the dark vortex of his own mind.
"Did you have a place of worship?" Father Dunne asked.
"Yes," Bjoern answered, talking over his shoulder. "Roman Catholic," he added.
"Great," the priest said, sitting forward.
Turning his back to the window with a straight face, Bjoern asked, "Can I get you a drink?"
The priest sat back, clasped his hands together and breathed heavily. "Yes. That would be nice. Thank you."
Bjoern nodded and walked to the kitchen. He took a new glass from the plain wood cabinet above the sink. He placed it on the table next to his glass and Bible, mumbling to himself as he looked around for the bottle of vodka. He regularly misplaced things.
A thin line of sweat ran down the side of his face. Agitation building.
Bjoern moved to the little gas oven. He turned on the front burner. There was a quick whooshing sound and then a ring of blue flame flared up. Without hesitation, he pushed his shirtsleeve above the elbow and thrust his exposed forearm over the fire. With his other hand he took hold of the wrist for support. He held it there steadily, even touching it against the burner grate. The flesh reddening, blistering. Old scars burning away, deeper. The acrid smell. Searing pain absorbed by intense facial contortions. At one point he opened his eyes and, turning his head, spotted the bottle in the dust-covered, narrow window-through the curtain a silhouette of it sitting on the sill.