“Is that…a fucking chicken?”

Barking madly, Lily is beside herself in excitement. I’ve never seen her bite at something before. Sure, I’ve witnessed her throw a pair of socks. Grabbing the balled up pair in her mouth only to whip her head from one side to the other, releasing her grip at the final moment as if to add an expletive to the end of an unheard thought. But this…

“Okay! Okay, girl! Jesus, Lily…” Looking away for a moment to check behind me. No sign of ‘ol boy yet.

“Lily!”

It was too late.

A final squawk meets a low growl at the neck of an, admittedly, peculiar looking chicken. Its feathers are no longer bright, but muted and mottled, mimicking the pale mosses around us. It crumples and releases to gravity, as Lily beams with pride.

“Well, you got it. Okay, yes…good job, ugh. Hold on. Sit.”

A closer inspection of a potentially adaptive or disease-ed chicken was not on my itinerary this afternoon. I hadn’t seen a chicken in ages, not an alive one anyway. Sure, I’ve seen the corpse chickens waddling about, no feathers in sight and mostly falling off their own bones in a mess of skin and scales. Crusted over near the thigh tissues and thicker masses while the rest of the body made itself soup. Thick with fatty, marrow-rich, jellies. But this one doesn’t look like it’s scaled at all. My mind begins to race on thoughts of what could be happening to Lily, now that she has taken the offending poultry down.

“Drop it for me, girl.”

“Okay, we gotta go. H’up!”

My voice cracks across the marshes as Lily launches into her usual race across the landscape. A champion among ghosts with no one to compete against. Still, it makes you smile. And there, just in the periphery, is our pursuer. Locked in their place, parallel to me at about eight meters away. Standing as if in a trance, blocked from moving forward.

I turn facing the direction of their gaze. It looks the same as it ever does. Same stretch of wetland outfitted with knotted and gnarled branches sticking out of the mud like hands reaching to God, desperate with longing; praying for release. I glance back in Lily’s direction. She’s waiting at her usual spot on a makeshift pallet.

“Good girl,” I chuckle.

I look back at the confusing fowl, somehow not foul. Still dead, but still not the dead I’m used to seeing.

Wondering aloud, “...where did you come from?”

Taking a deep breath I align myself with ‘ol boy across the way. Transferring the weight in my feet back and forth to steady and ready myself. OCD taking its course and demanding a few more rotations of the movement. Briefly ruminating on how idiotic I feel. I lift my head up to face the foreign, but not foreign, landscape. We hadn’t been out this far yet, but that’s the whole idea. To map it. Construct and lay out the pallet for Lily as trail markers and stations for rest. Safe spots for waiting and observation. But, today isn’t a “pallet day.”

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

I step forward.

Nothing.

It feels like more of the same. The same muted browns and greens I’ve seen for the past five years. The same rot. The same promise of buried bodies just below.

The wind whips through my hair as I let out the breath I was holding, turning around to head back to Lily. Suddenly, the same smell wasn’t the same smell. I turn back towards the wind with another inhale. Adjusting my head back and forth to find the scent again.

“Lily, come!” I call.

I watch as she leaps and bounds, ears all the way back for peak aerodynamics. She looks ridiculous. Tail and tongue wagging in amusement at the potential for a new game. “Good job! Thanks, girl! Okay, sit here,” pointing at the alignment with our neighbor.

Obedient as ever, she sits to face the invisible blockade.

“Wait,” I commanded, waiting for the wind to pick up again. We wait, breathing in the same stale, familiar air. “Come on,” I whispered to myself. “Please?”

As if heard, the wind brushes across us. I turn my attention to Lily whose attention is focused on me with her head low.

Her head lifts, nose searching. “You smell that?”

It wasn’t must. It wasn’t unfamiliar, but it was…sweeter? A summer’s day reprieve. Cool and soft, laundered through the natural filters of the atmosphere. Gentle, subtle.

“Salt, it smells like fresh salt air, right?” I ask as if she can answer. “We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto…” I mused. “You wanna check it out?”

The reply was clear with a jump launched from her hind legs. A habit I could never break. When the excitement was too much for her to bear, like right before her breakfast or dinner time, she would jump. The routine was always simple: bathroom break, followed by food. She always jumped up at the door, touching her nose to the handle as if to tell me to “hurry up.” But, given that her body is long, I was always afraid she would hurt herself in her older age. Twisting wrong and slipping a disk. Paranoid that my best girl would be paralyzed because of my inattention.

Look at us now. Now, I have to trust her instincts. She’s kept us alive. Small enough to be stealthy, but big enough to defend herself. Agile, in her own right. Fast.

Glancing back at the mess of scales and barely upright form of a human, they’re still…still. My heart is racing, my brain running a thousand miniature circles of wonder in thought of what this could mean. Eyes darting rapidly as if in the deepest of dreams with thoughts ricocheting in and out of focus.

“Shit, the sun.”

We have to make it back home before the sun gets too low. I hadn’t noticed the creeping ache in my bones. Distracted by this new…something. The scales were starting to hurt and it only got worse at night. We didn’t have much time before we were both left out in the dark.

Lily looks disappointed.

“I know, girl. We’ll come back tomorrow. You’re tired aren’t you?” I leaned down to cradle her head and stroke her chin. She lets out a huff through her nose. “Oh okay,” I tease.

“Let’s go,” I said, snapping twice to gesture at my heels. “Let’s take it easy on the way back. Oop! Don’t forget your chicken.”

Lily trots over to her prize and happily pulls it towards me.

“Oh, I have to carry it?” My hands on my hips. “You know, I’m not the one who murdered an innocent today. Still, maybe we have dinner?” I said hopefully. Placing the chicken in my pack inside of an old plastic Kroger bag. “Or, a dissection exercise from BIO 202. We’ll see one way or another. It’s not like the process is different, but your Dad was the scientist, not I.”

“Alright, let’s go home, Bundy.”