this is oh so blue
                              A MAGAZINE OF FICTION, POETRY & MORE!
black       
                                            this is black shadow
     ZYGOTE
            IN MY
                COFFEE.COM

ISSUE #14
 
   $O.OO
July 2004
___________
                                       
                                     
                  
                                ZYGOTE IN MY COFFEE.COM
                        
***BIO*** Aaron Howard: i'm a writer from the midwest living in new york.  ambling through
daily life.  working on a volume of poems and a western
© 2004 zygoteinmycoffee Ink.
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Quantity&swiftness equal quality
by Aaron Howard
(I'll get to Hannibal.)  The fox, red, makes his way through the hole
in the chickenwire.  A small mat of his hair gets stuck in the heady
prongs of twisted wire.

Rogue Reynard.  And, as most foxes are, handsome.  This fox knows what
he is doing sneaking into a henhouse like a weasel in Luxembourg.  He,
the fox, not the Luxembourgese weasel, (who we will likely not
encounter subsequently but, it should be noted, the weasel prefers red
to white, eggs to butter and often vacations in Monaco where his uncle
lives near a parakeet farm.)  But the fox carries himself like royalty,
like the commander in chief of any citystate or island republic you
like.  Regally he slinks his way through the aforementioned hole in the
chickenwire.  The hole is quite large enough to allow his entry.

It is not a hole that came from the manufacturer.  The fox is not aware
of its origin, only of its location and that it (the hole) is a recent
development, but a fortuitous development at that as it provides him
ingress.

And within, like many a henhouse, it's dark, dusty, much chicken shit,
feed, water, that stuff they give birds so their eggshells are
stronger, stiffer, whiter and opaque.  Chickens sometimes lay eggs in
funny places.

It is not eggs the fox is after.  He is pursuing the warm still-beating
flesh of as many young pullets as he can slay.  Any and every bird
whose leg or neck comes within reach of the fox's jaws is to be gnawed
upon til they are no longer warm and still-beating.

Simply:  still.

And the fox, being sly and no egg-sucker, easily achieves his every
intention.  He works through the night killing and slaying and noshing
occasionally, but briefly.  The chickens carry on like it's a monster
flick and there's a moth from hell chasing them through the streets of
Tokyo.  They make a ruckus.

The dogs take to barking.  The woman wakes to the barking dogs, but
being groggy and perhaps hungover, she takes the time only to throw
some pasta at the dogs and curse them in Lebanese.  No, it's English.

She returns to bed without noticing the cackling issuing from the
henhouse.  The fox hears the tossed pasta, becomes wary and desists.

The chickens cackle and gather on the roost.  The fox watches and waits
for each to take its place.  The fox goes strolling up the ladder.
(They can climb trees you know.)  He chases the better part of the
flock from the roost to the floor.  Oh how unlike from whence they
fell.

The fox jumps from the roost to the back of a frightened chicken.  The
gnashing jaws of our feline-seeming-canine clamp down on the
outstretched neckgullet of the running chicken.  The fox shakes the
chicken and breaks its neck.

The dogs, again, with the barking.  Woofs and howls and hollers.  The
woman tosses in her bed.  She gets up and goes outside with some
parsley to flay the dogs.

Once outside, after yelling, she is able to hear the yipping fox and
most audaciously cackling chickens.

She sets the dogs loose from their pen and they change their barks to
the tones of the chased.  This tips the fox off and he drops the bird
he's working on.  He licks the blood from his sly smile and turns
toward the hole in the chickenwire.  The woman walks briskly to the
door of the chicken house.  The dogs all around her anxious to get in
at what they smell.  Or at least to get a chance at a chicken.

The woman slides the latch and pulls the door open and the dogs pour in
like a liquid riot squad.  Arf.  Yarf.  Yawp.  Woof.  And they follow
their collective nose to the hole in the chickenwire and bark at it.

The woman is aghast at the grisly scene.  Japery.  The dirt and chicken
shit are littered with fresh corpses and blood and misplaced feathers.
They won't lay for weeks.  There's an egg. Japery.  She hollers and
bobbles and chortles.  Japery.  That is her conclusion.

The smallest of the dogs gets her head through the hole and can't go
any further.  Or get out.  The other dogs continue to bark.  'Go on get
out of here.  You're not gonna catch him that way.  Shoo.'

Two dogs get the drift.  Another isn't so quick on the uptake but at
least stops barking at the hole.  The woman tries to free the bitch
from the wire.

The dim dog that stopped barking but didn't leave takes up killing
chickens.  The woman tears a half-attached slat from the window by the
hole and flings it at the dog.  It smacks him a good one.  He yelps and
runs outside.

The fox killed fourteen chickens.  The dog killed one.

By the time the dogs get out the door the fox is well on his way to his
den.  The woman frees the she-dog.

Japery.  She hollers and gurgles and outgrabes.  Japery.  You old
buzzard.  Japery and abomination.

Japery.

(Hannibal crossed the Alps with elephants.)