Two Days Ago: The Chicken From Fae

Today's post is a response to the GBE2 prompt: Two Days Ago.


Two days ago, Andrea had opened the cabinet looking for peppermint tea and found the chicken.

Since then, she had wondered aloud how the chicken possibly could have found her way into that cabinet and from whence she had come.

"From whence?," her teenage son Faramir repeated incredulously. "Is that even a term?"

Andrea sniffed. Her son, like most teenagers, was an asshole. She had decided the best policy was to ignore this. The chicken in the cabinet was small and pert with red feathers and bright eyes. She cocked her head often with apparent curiosity and would utter a low, pleasant chuckling croon. At first, Andrea had set the chicken outside in her fenced backyard and given her a bowl of dry Corn Flakes and some water. Later, upon doing a bit of internet research, she removed the Corn Flakes and substituted shelled corn and some rolled oats. The chicken appeared sad and anorexic. Andrea went outside and encouraged her to eat, bringing her own breakfast sandwich to have alongside her in order to model the proper behavior. The chicken snatched a bit of egg from Andrea's hand and began bouncing up and down on the patio, pleading for more. They ended up sharing the egg sandwich.

"Cannibal.," Andrea told the chicken.

There was obviously no way that the chicken could have come into the house and ended up in a kitchen cabinet, so Andrea didn't bother to waste much effort exploring the possible logical explanations for this. Upon some contemplation, she concluded that the chicken was placed there by the Fae as an act of their usual inexplicable whimsy. She called the chicken Titania and looked into hiring her friend to build it a coop. While researching coop design that afternoon, she stumbled across a pattern for chicken diapers and decided that this was the way to go. She promptly got out the sewing machine, sewed several diapers and inserted them with feminine pads. Thus, Titania was to be installed in the house full-time. The next morning she laid an egg in the cushions of Andrea's couch, which Andrea fried up and shared with Titania.

"You are completely bat shit, Mom.," said Faramir. "I swear if Child Protective Services knew about this, they'd give me to Dad."

While speaking, he sweetly stroked Titania's feathers and she closed her eyes and cooed a deep, satisfied coo.

I am sad to report that in her enthusiasm for the love and care of Titania and Faramir, Andrea forget to offer thanks to the Fae that gifted her the cabinet chicken. It is, of course, never a good idea to ignore the Fae. They tend to be like snotty old aunties about this and like same aunties, will exact vengeance.

On the second day–today, upon returning home from work, Andrea found Titania home alone and Faramir nowhere to be found. She called the school, his friends, his father and the police. He was nowhere. Finally, in searching his room, she came upon a sprinkling of fairy dust, like the cast of scales of tiny iridescent serpents and realized what had happened. One note was left by Faramir's pillow, scrawled in a hand at once childlike and inhuman:


"Sacrifice the chicken and we will give you back your son."


Note: This post is a tribute to my mother, who writes things like this, only much, much better. Today she got into my head through our shared DNA, took possession and told this story. I screwed it up because it had to be translated into Tara. You should really read her. Her blog is "B" Stings.