Pecking Order
Chicken feathers, a once-white-now-pink tinge, are deplumed by enemy's beak, fluttering in lazy violence as if a July snowstorm. The mad farm bird pecks the exposed flesh incessantly, some corn-fed jackhammer void of remorse. Deep red flows, first just a dot, but then a little river.
The flock takes notice, jaundice eyes incensed by the blood, and mob-lynches the weakling. Its feathers are all gone now, removed in some reverse acupuncture frenzy, and red-tipped beaks pulverize the soft flesh into oblivion. Their fallen kin is motionless save for its undulations as fowl cannibals remove sinew strings and now-pointless organs.
This is the image that races through Anne's mind as she prepares to interview at a New York City advertising agency. She is called in.
"Tell me a little about yourself...Anne."
"Well, I grew up on a farm in rural Minnesota. I graduated with a marketing degree..." and so forth.
"We could use your diverse background here, Anne."
An all-female department, an estrogen-laced cyanide capsule. Anne already senses the death rattle her first day, when they crowd around her like a zoo exhibit, noting her "interesting" accent.
"How do you pronounce 'garage'? Grauge? Ha-ha! Isn't that something?"
Anne remembers that day vividly. She was 11. A stray Longhorn hen was traipsing along the farm's red dirt road. She thought it would be happier amongst other chickens, even if they were a little different. The Rhode Island Reds thought otherwise. They mutilated the newcomer beyond recognition before its first moon. A blood moon.
"There's an order to these things," Anne's father explained. "Outsiders just don't survive. Don't fit into their hierarchy."
The corporate hen house plots. Plots against the straw-haired rube from the one-stoplight town. They peck at her. A backhanded compliment here. A vicious rumor there. Did you hear that simple slut gave a client head? They peck, confident they'll break the skin and the blood will flow. And then. And then...
A meeting in the boardroom. The flock's beaks and talons: petty-razor sharp. Ready to tear flesh. Watch the outsider bleed out.
Anne thinks otherwise. Anne thinks it's better to be a farmer than a hen. Anne unsheathes a butcher's knife and hacks the neck of her nearest coworker. Nicks the cervical vertebrae mid-presentation. Damn near lops her head off. Beautiful blood hissing from the opening, pitter-pattering on the tabletop like a Jackson Pollock original. Seven shrill New York screams. Then six. Then five. Then four. Then three. Then two. Then one. Silence.
Anne emerges from the slaughterhouse, bathing in the red, placenta-like goo of the damned, reborn a bad country bitch. Her eyes are clear and her mind is sharp.