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The Story
Marlow caught his breath on the petrified stump his Daddy used to kill chickens on, staring at a chicken he needed to kill.
The old fowl had to be the one. The last one. Sure of foot, the house had told him. Simple of mind. Sour of song.
“Marla.” Daddy’s voice said her name clearly, through six feet of soil. “With that brain and that limp, had to name her after you.” The last of the flock.
Marlow wrung his blood-stained hands. Some flaked off, not much, but what did he rolled between his fingers into an inch-long needle. He aimed it at Marla, who gobbled down a grub before squawking a success that made Marlow’s ears ring like they did when Daddy’d smart him with the flat of his hand.
Marlow looked at the flat of his hands, striped in what he had done, all of the ones he’d done in. But the wrong ones. Daddy had been simple of mind and sour of song, but not sure of foot. Marlow had been too anxious for him to fit the bill. Thought it might have been two birds with the one stone that was an axe. Oh, well.
He threw a stone that wasn’t an axe at Marla and she gracefully dodged it.
Sure of foot, it had told him. Had to be the one. For he had nothing left. But by God he couldn’t catch her.
Marlow punched the soil, rusty with old blood. He thought of that blood, feeding those grubs that old chicken fed on. Consuming its brothers, sisters, and children. A foul fowl. No wonder the house wanted her.
“Whatcha do, Low?”
Marlow winced at the sound, ear still ringing. It was Billy, lip puffed with chew, drooling and grinning at him with brown teeth. Just what he needed.
“Fixin’ to kill that chicken,” Marlow said.
“Old Marla?” Billy’s voice dropped a few octaves to match Daddy’s. “But she pretty. She Billy friend. One friend.” Bill held up two fingers.
“She is the one,” Marlow said. “The last one, and the one.”
“Billy no see.” He put both hands over his eyes.
Marlow looked at the boy. “Suppose it’s for the best. You go on now.”
Billy scratched his collar bone, then pointed at Low. “Billy still have more friend.”
Marlow’s bones ached as he stood. He thumped them hard to shut them up, then crouched low in the grass, stepping on the green patches to keep quiet. Marla was busy getting fatter, beak-deep in the ground, her plume of tail feathers so wide he just couldn’t miss.
A few feet away, Marlow went for it, diving with his arms out, because if one missed, he’d have one more, but swiped air twice instead, face planting just where Marla had been a moment ago, tasting more than mud.
Billy was there, laughing so hard he almost choked on his chew. “Low eat poop. Low eat poop.”
Marlow spit out undigested seed and wiped his mouth. He tried and tried again, the chicken always evading him. It had circled back, now standing on the stump as if to mock him.
“Marla think Low funny,” Billy said. “Billy, too.”
Marla’s wings flapping, beak squawking, even worse that before, was a barrage that Marlow couldn’t take. His hands wouldn’t stop it, so he tried to add his wailing on top, but all it did was make the bird squawk louder. Finally, he thrust his head into the mud, but down there all he heard was Daddy. “Named her after you.”
Consciousness fading, Marlow thought he’d won. Daddy was silent, Marla was silent, and most importantly, the house was silent. Then he felt a pounding on his back and saw daylight.
Billy’s head floated with the clouds. Then Marla flew with them. “Got her, Low.”
Marlow sat up, head spinning. He closed his eyes until the world settled, and sure enough, there was Billy, Marla held by her tail feathers, thrashing.
Marlow snatched the chicken from the boy before she started her sour song again, and he barreled to the stump, scooping up the axe that he’d sharpened to split stone, slammed her to that petrified wood and brought that blade down, losing a thumb knuckle like a potato peel, but barely noticing because of the voice inside him that soughed across the yard from the black windows, through the rotting teeth of porch rails, chilling his blood because blood is what it needed. A sacrifice is what it needed.
“You done it, Low,” Billy said. “But Billy helped.”
Rigid, ignoring the boy, Marlow stomped back to the house with headless Marla spilling a trail the entire way.
The house spoke to him most in the kitchen, where its exposed veins spread from around the window above the sink, pulsing in time with his own heartbeat.
Marlow waited for it to answer, waited for it to tell him he had appeased it and it would let him rest, let him die. But all he heard was the drip of Marla on the hardwood.
“She was the one, damn you,” Marlow hissed. But anger quickly devolved into grief, and Marlow pounded the hardwood as he had pounded the soil outside, the house repeating its demands in time, bringing him a pain that would have killed him if the house would let him die.
Sure of foot. Simple of mind. Sour of song.
Then a terrible, knife-sharp sound came from the window. Marlow crawled across the floor to the counter, where the knives were, where he would try to silence everything, anyway.
Through the smudged glass, Billy pranced in the yard, somersaulting, bounding over the old fence and scrambling up a tree with hands that had caught Marla. Singing something sour.
“Sure of foot,” Marlow said. “Sour of song.” He didn’t have to say the third.
Marlow regarded the infection that spread up the walls, through him.
“Billy,” Marlow shouted from the porch. “I got something else I need help with.”
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