WILLODEAN (THE CUPITOR CHRONICLES Book 1) (52 page)

She reaches down and yanks a wild dandelion out of the ground. I
reach down and get one too.   I let it spin in my fingers. 

“It’s time to go. But before we leave. Make a wish.”
The little girl says. 
I close my eyes. I make a wish. An incantation of soul and spirit. Grit and courage. Stars and moons. Faith and hope. Seven. I open my eyes and blow a
child’s breath. 
The needle-like slivers detach from the pod
and I feel my heart hurt as if they were plucked from it. 
They swirl and spin in the air like t
histle angels, holding our prayers and drifting to heaven to deliver them. 

“Dream big Willodean.”
The thistle angels say. 
“Never give up hope. Never.” I spun around to talk to the little girl excited with what I had seen and heard
but she was gone.  I look everywhere but she isn’t there. 
A horn blows in the distance and I see my father pulling in the driveway. Ind
eed, it was time to say goodbye. 

DING! The little bell vibrates and lifts me from my dreams, spells or witchcraft, who knows at this point. I am still in Doc's office on the couch, not in the pasture, not dancing with
thistle angels or dreaming big. 

“That was lovely Willodean.”
Doc says. 
“Quite a change from our other visits. You have done ver
y well. I see such improvement since your first visit.  You have taken your pain and transpired it into beauty through a
poetic route of storytelling, unlike I’ve never seen you do before. Stunning. Absolutely beautiful. Have you been journaling?
Whatever you’re doing, continue.  It’s working.”  S
he leans over and clicks the stop button on the recorder.

“
It is?”  I said startled.  I had no idea I was poetic.  In the genes I reckon. “Yeah, Doc, I’ve been journaling a lot lately.”

“Good We’ll start up here next time. Say around Thursday of next week?”

“Sure.” I stood
up and walked towards the door.  Before I left my eyes fell upon
the musk dripping from the
King’s kisses inside the vase. 

“May I have one?”

“Ohhh.” Doc said rushing to get the vase. “Of course. Yes.”

“Oh no. Just one. Thank you.”
I spun the stem around in my hand, unaware of the thorns.  It pricked my fingers allowing the pain to rise up from hidden places inside the house, inside me.  The scented musk
rose up wild and free, frosty and pure. I felt as if I was there again. 
The day I left the man. The day I left the land. The day I left my life.
I scheduled anot
her appointment and drove home trying to process all I remembered today. 
I pulled into the driveway, killed the ignition switch on Annie and turned to get my purse. The flower I sat on the dashboard was now lacquer black, hardened and running with blood. My vision went dark and acrid.

Murder

I was a witness to
murder. 
The slinky slithered down the metal steps making a clink, clink, clink sound. What followed was a blood-curdling squawk from a nightmare
I hadn’t dreamed yet.  Bawwquawk. Bawwquawk.
Bangs and clattering rang out. A white cloud explodes from the other side of the coop till it looked like it was snowing in July. The hit woman of hens rounds the corner, wild eyed and in mission mode. The butcher of beast is wearing a green nightgown with a blue apron. The poultry poacher’s feet are sloshing around in her deceased husband’s knee length rubber boots, two sizes too big, which swallow her skinny legs like a sea monster. T
o hold them on her feet she walks with a wide gate so she looks like one of those monsters in a B-rated movie of King Kong.  She has curlers in her hair wrapped with a yellow scarf.  In one hand, an ax, the other hand has the victim in a headlock.  Squawking, feathers, mushing sea monsters—it w
as a pillow fight gone horrible wrong. After a few intense hula-hoop moves, squawking, sloshing and swishing,
a violent snap breaks the air and the limp chicken falls to the ground.  A swift
whack makes it headless. 
Jesus! Talk about a shit raining.
 I had never witnessed an execution before. Ichabod Crane and the Legend of Sleepy H
ollow has nothing on Maw Sue. I’m pretty sure my life is over after this freakish beheading incident.  I would be Willodean, the
girl haunted by chickens. To escape the madness I’d write a book called, 
The Coop Killin' Legend.
 Mr. Sanders of Kentucky Fried chicken would be a big endorser making it a best seller.
Of course, this is in my head where all things go a little loop-de-loop but in the real world, it just got worse. 
It always gets worse.
 

Maw Sue picked up the bleeding grotesque chicken by its feet. In my vision, the earth stopped rotating.
I stood suspended on the porch while I watched it play out. 
Her sea monst
ers let out warning sounds. 
Slosh, slosh.
 
My heart beat outside my chest and everything was in slow mode.  She lifted the chicken up, and threw it through the air. 
I watched in spiral and gravitate, blood spurting openly out of its neck like a water gun. I had no time to run, no time
to react. It landed on my feet and spilled out its fresh blood between my toes. 
My body was frozen stiff but my insides were a pinball machine, thrashing and bouncing against constricted walls with no way out. The smell reached my nose and I went to wobbling. It wasn’t like when I accidentally killed my goldfish or when I mashed a dying caterpillar covered with ants, to put him out of his misery. 
It was a different death smell.
 It reminded me of Maw Sue’s madness, the bedroom, the metallic scent of pennies and the house inside me. I hear the president screaming all over again but I can’t do what he says because I can’t move. My stomach did flip-flops. The tiny hairs inside my nose twitched which put my gift to high alert mode and my defenseless body went to quivering.

“Oh my God!” I screamed.” Yuck! It’s on my feet.” I bounced
across the porch like a rubber ball. 

“When you get t
hrough with your princess fit.” Maw Sue says looking at me awkward.  “W
e have a job to do.” She wiped her murderous hands on her apron. She looked like Mr. Ratcliff, the town butcher, who by the way, enjoys his job, way, 
way too much
than a person should.  I’m just saying. 
Wait a minute. 
We?
 How did I get into this?

“I’m not touching that thing.” I screamed at Maw Sue.

“Uhh yes, young lady, you are.” She said matter of fact. “Go on. Pick it up. It ain’t gon’ hurt you to pluck it.”

“Pluck it?”
I said disgusted with the thought.  Maw Sue looked like
a mass murderer
waiting on an accomplice.  I wasn’t going to oblige. 
The mere thought made me nauseated, so much a po
nd of frogs lodged in my throat and made awful noises come from my mouth. 
Braawwk! Ribbbettt!
 I was
like those dogs that eat grass to induce vomiting. 

“What in Sam Hill is wrong with you child?” She spit and adjusted her jaw.

“What is wrong with me?
” I said puzzled.  “
I have blood on my toes and I didn't decide to kill a chicken, today, that's what’s wrong.”

“Pick up the chicken for God’s sakes.
My goodness. 
Quit throwing a conniption. It’s a chicken.”

Correct.  It’s a chicken.  A dead, bleeding chicken. 
The shit raining she warned me of
didn’t wait for me to grow up.  It arrived early. 
Maw Sue
wasn’t backing down.  She pointed to the chicken with a stern look. 
I fumed, sighed, bit my lip and held my breath as I picked up the slaughter
ed sacrifice by its cold rubberized yellow claws. 
My stomach churned like a washing machine. The frogs in my throat
rebelled. 
The pin ball machine inside me went haywire.
Ping, pong, ping, pong. 
I dragged t
he bloody chicken off the porch, down the steps and pass the shivering slinky.  The henchwoman with sea monsters sloshing, was ahead of me, r
ambling
words I couldn’t hear because I was so horrified I was dragging a bloody chicken by its feet. 

“Kids, I mean how they gone survive if worse turns to worse?” She turned around.

“Eat what the deer eat?”
I said the first thing that came to mind. 
She gave me a look that was less than desirable.

“Eat what thaa—are you—serious.” Her apocalyptic eyes raked over me. My sarcastic banter did not win her over. I was only repeating what dad told us to do if we ever got lost in the woods.

“Well, one things for certain, I won’t have you standing in the soup line, that’s for sure. At least you’ll be able to kill a chicken.” I'm not sure what it is with old people and soup lines. Papa Hart talked about the soup lines too. I lollygagged behind her, hurling a blob of salvia and part of last night’s supper every few feet.

“Now sit it down right there.” She
said.  We had stopped in a raw patch of dirt a few feet from the coop.  There was angry steam rising from a
blue
speckled pot sitting on the dirt beside a silver loaf pan.  I did what she said and
laid the chicken on the cursed ground. My inner dialogue devil was having a field day. 
I will never be the same.
My life is over. 
Never be the same. 
My hem-hawing did not phase Maw Sue in the least. It only made her more adamant to teach me a thing or two, as if plucking a chicken was a mandatory survival tactic, some sick rite of passage for all ten years olds.

“Now watch this.” She said.  Instantly I was ejected into a sick, twisted storybook and could not get out. 
She picked the chicken up and plunged it into the scalding water. My vision went dark, my face contorted and altered. I heard Maw Sue’s voice in the distance rattling on and on. All I could hear was the splashing water and Ichabod Crane laughing. 
Snap! Snap! Snap!
 Twigs broke one after another.  Or maybe it was my own bones cracking. 

“Are you listening to me?” 
Snap. Snap.
 
Maw Sue’s knobby fingers appeared in my vision snapping, then her face, then the rest of the nightmare. 
“Now you just do this a few times, two or three dunks will do.” Her voice was cheery as if she was teaching me how to sew or make ice cream cones. I had weird visions of baptisms, Barbie and Ken, PJ and a headless chicken. I felt woozy again.

“Hmmeeeccckkkk.” A strange burp of
words blurted from my mouth and I lurched forward. 
I had no idea I could vomit and swallow at the same time. She pulled the scalded chicken out of the pot and lay its hot body at my feet. Steam rose off its flesh and into my smell zone. My nose went into
a jerking mechanism in attempts to resist the foul vapor. 
Every cell in me jittered, popped and rammed into one another. The henchwoman grabbed a handful of feathers
and to my horror, jerked them out.  The roast beef I had for supper was trying to make its way back up my throat.  It was all I could do to not fall over.  The wet feathers were
in a pile on the cursed ground.

“Now start plucking.” She said.  Then nudged me with her hands.  I had no choice. 
I plucked, heaved, hurled. Held my breath, plucked, heaved, hurled. Closed my eyes, plucked, heaved, hurled. Spit on the cursed ground, gagged a little, plucked, heaved, hurled. It was the grossest thing I’ve ever done. I plucked till the bird was naked
finally relieved that it was over.  It is a known fact that in most
horror shows, just when you think it’s over, it's
not.  That’s
when some poor smuck is butchered.

“Now dry it off.” Maw Sue said pulling a dish rag from her apron pocket.

Dry it off.  Is this bath time? 
What’s next? Baby powder and lotion?
I didn’t know how much more of this, I could take. Once I dried the chicken to her insidious satisfaction, sh
e flipped open her bic lighter and flicked the jagged dial until a bright yellow flame leaped and laughed. 
As if not having a head or clothing wasn’t bad enough, she torched the fuz
z off the chicken’s skin.  The vision burned my eyes. 
It was then I discovered that the metallic scent of bloody death was a freaking cupcake scented candy festival compared to the smell of bloody-
burnt-
death. Images, words and thoughts exiled from deep inside the House within me, uncurling monsters in my stomach with all the torrid fragrances of the rotten abyss, the damned, the cursed soil, a thousand transgressions, hell’s flames, burning bodies, rattling skeletons, headless chickens squawking. I swallowed down breakfast and last night’s supper for the third time. 
But it gets worse. Horror stories always get worse.