Murder

I just murdered the four red chooks. They had been guilty of eating all their own menstrual waste and tearing the feathers off each others breasts. I rung their necks. The first one was patchy, she had lost most of her feathers to the others. She had a skinny neck which softly crunched as I twisted it. It felt like grinding pepper. She struggled weakly and went limp. I laid her body on the ground. I was premature, she wasted no time and ran away. I could not catch her again easily so I grabbed another. I did not stop twisting until I felt the neck start to come apart under my fingers. She lay still when I released her. I quickly caught the patchy chook and finished her off too. Whilst trying to catch the third chook the two chooks whose necks I had already rung got to their feet. They ran with their heads hanging loosely at their sides, beaks opening and closing soundlessly. Small quantities of blood splashed the ground and loose feathers swirled around them. The paler of the two remaining chooks, disregarding the death throes of her sisters, was excitedly feasting upon the loose feathers. I grabbed her neck, wrenched and twisted it. She lay still for a moment then ran and hopped around the pen bumping into me. I instinctively grabbed her and pushed her to the back of the pen towards her now dead sisters. She turned straight back towards me her head swinging by her side her neck bulging and bleeding. I deflected her again. The smell of chicken shit, blood and my own sweat mingled in the dust. My spit tasted like iron. I turned to the last chook, she was the alpha of the flock. Her feathers were lustrous, she stood proudly and fixed me with an unforgiving yellow stare. I knew she was the reason I’d decided to kill them all. She taught them all their bad habits. She was the queen of the pen and I wished I’d killed her first. Her neck was thicker and harder to break than all the others. Even as I pulled and twisted I was afraid of her cold eyes and rank smell. Her head came away in my tightly gripped right hand and I felt dirty to my core.

When the bodies had gone flaccid I lowered them into an old rice sack and tied it tightly with some old video cables. I threw them in the bin and will take them to the city dump today. Afterwards I went inside and showered. I scrubbed myself like Pontius Pilate.