This won’t be a fancy story about a hero’s journey, nor will it be the tragic story of a revenge stricken youth that’s out against the world, nor will it be a story about a technologically advanced future where people sink their minds into the web. (I’m not very creative if you still haven’t gotten the gist of it.)

I’ve always had this urge to write something, anything. I’ve had numerous ideas for stories as I wanted to dabble in from mystery to science fiction, but what I’ve noticed is that I cannot find the power in me to write build up as I found myself rushing for the climax. As a young man in his growing period, I dislike my main character to be weak and yet having him be the most powerful man in the universe from the get-go doesn’t really amount to much if I set out to write a story filled with fighting spirit. [1]

So the natural conclusion I came up with is this: I’ll simply write about myself.

I can loudly hear some of you asking, “In a site about fiction stories?!”.

...Well, if I were to be honest with myself, I’m the only one who cares about this aren’t I? But I like explaining myself, and I have this awesome joke about the whole ‘fiction’ thing so hear me out!

Because I don’t want this to come out and bite me in the ass, I’ll be forced to change all the names. Except for the people I don’t like. Those people don’t deserve to have their names changed.[2]

So that deducts around 0.1% of the realness of the stories. I guess another point to be taken out is the fact that I’m recalling most of these by memory and have only been committed by word of mouth, so there might be slight alterations here and there (I’m sorry for being so ancient). So that’s another 0.3% taken out. As for why it’s 0.3% and not any other arbitrary number,  well, I’ve got a very logical reason. It’s because I’m pulling these numbers out of my arse.

~~Interception from the future~~

Greetings! Future-Author here, I had to cut down on the whole reasoning as to why this book belongs in a site for fiction. Several pages filled with my most prided jokes, *poof*, gone. As it turns out, there’s a genre for ‘Non-Fiction’ in the site, so the whole section was made redundant from the start.

This is why one must do research before starting anything. By no means was I simply too lazy to rewrite the above, nor the fact that it pained me to delete something I’m proud of. And most importantly, it’s not like I noticed it mid-writing just to fact-check the whole thing and then felt like I ate a nasty bug, and that I shouldn’t further embarrass myself, okay? Are we clear? Great.

~~Interception from the future over~~

Now to explain what this whole ‘book’ is about. As you’ve read moments earlier, it’ll be mostly about myself. I’m that narcissistic. Pretty much the whole thing would be about me talking about fun little anecdotes like the numerous times I’ve been bullied, or the day I had my haircut while people I was acquainted with were fighting with the riot police right outside of the barber’s shop. Just fun little stuff like that.

And now then, to knock this out of the park, I’ll be giving out a taste of the kind of stories I’ll be talking about. I initially planned for this to be a chapter on its own, but I’m an attention whore. I want to have people read this book of mine, so I’ll be shameless and plug this in with the introduction.

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Footnotes: 

[1] This is not me calling anyone out, it’s purely just my own taste. In case you didn’t know, I’m a scrawny male in his late-teens, a couple of years before he becomes twenty. I can’t strangle a chicken even if I wanted to (Although I believe that 80% of human-kind can’t do that either). I’m not into fist fights, verbal fights or any kind of fights at all.  Anyways, if an upcoming author takes offense at my statement, just know that I’m deeply sorry.

[2]  I’m changing all the names regardless of anything. This was just me purely trying to be funny and failing at it due to the joke being overused. It’s times like these I wish I had an editor to help me out with the jokes and telling me which ones work and which ones don’t. But then again, I keep being told that I’m not funny so maybe all of my jokes are bad... 

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Of course, what’s the best way to have someone shower you with attention? Hm? You don’t know? Well, I’ve already hinted at it. I’ll give you three spaces to think about it.

Still can’t come up with an answer?

It’s sob stories! Stories about bullying! Y’know, ‘grab ‘em by their sympathy’ as they say! And y’know, this isn’t one of those stories where I was beaten and my lunch money taken away from me. Oh no, this is more than that. This is...deeper? This has been illuded countless times in video games, be it from Zelda up to Gears of War. It’s chickens. I messed with a chicken--well, a rooster to be more accurate (I’d rather not offend anyone by categorizing another species)--and it all started because I’ve trusted the wrong person.

So, let’s start with the setting. I live in a small village, so everyone pretty much know each others. Especially with the fact that there’s only one school in the area, so there weren’t many unfamiliar faces when it came to either kids or adults. So with that, as far as I knew, kids bullying other kids was pretty much nonexistent. Even if someone were to bully another, it’ll eventually end with just a simple fist fight, This was especially the case because most people knew each other, and as long as it wasn’t too serious, parents would even encourage their children to settle things for themselves be it verbally or with old-fashioned violence.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

At the time I was in fourth grade, which is probably eight or nine years old? I had a fifth grader as a friend of mine, so I was pretty much above the squabbles of little children at the time. No one would mess with me, and I wouldn’t mess with anyone. It was like an unwritten rule in our class--nay, school---because if you messed with someone that had a connection with an upperclassman, you’re pretty much would be in a world of pain.

Why would anyone go out of their way to try and fight a battle they’ll undoubtedly lose? Especially when it came to someone who did nothing towards you. So even little kids had a sense for the art of war, and I pretty much ascended to higher realms compared to the peasants I took to be my classmates who fought or made up on a daily basis, who burnt with fighting spirit and brotherly love.

James--the fifth-grader friend of mine--had a family that was into raising chickens. Rumor had it (Well, can you even call it a rumor if I heard it from the person himself?) that most of the chicken they raised were trained for routine chicken fights. As a child, all I felt was awe from how he literally could’ve commanded dozens of chickens to any battle with him. At the time, I couldn’t think of any better supporter than him.

So of course, as anyone would, I kept bugging him about showing me his seasoned veterans. At first he would dodge the question or brush me off, and because I didn’t even know where he lived, I started to grow suspicious.

‘Could it be that you don’t actually raise chickens?’

When I asked that, he would adamantly deny it, and swore to everything under the sky that they were raising chickens. He would even vividly describe their living conditions, how they were being raised in an emptied out pool in their house, and how he likes to eat their eggs for breakfast and other boasts.

So the second logical conclusion I came up with, one that I probably feared the most at the time, was: ‘Can it be that they’re normal chickens?’

As the old sages used to say, even water can dig through stone given enough time, and James finally had gave concession and agreed to bring me with him to his place after school. Oh how I regretted that decision.

The first ominous sign was that James lived right next to a cemetery. Like you could literally take a couple of steps and move from just outside his front gate and right over some random person’s grave. Because this was a small village, our cemetery wasn’t even graced with a simple wall. The only thing that distinguished it from normal barren land were the humps on the ground, the few tombstones that were scattered about (There weren’t many fans of tombstones for some reason) and a shed that was used to clean the corpses before burying them.

After seeing me spooked, James simply shrugged and invited me inside. As soon as I went through the front gates, the first thing I noticed were small cages where small, cute rabbits were residing. After closing the gate and making sure that there were no openings leading to the outside world, he walked to a random rabbit cage and opened it.

The rabbit seemed unfazed as it took its time coming out of the cage. It slowly walked--or hopped--gracefully as it bewitched my young mind. At that moment, I firmed my mind and steeled my will to beg my mother to get me a rabbit. But that’s a story for another time.

Anyways, after messing around a bit he asked me if I wanted to see the chickens. Remembering my main goal, I reluctantly removed myself from paradise and unknowingly jumped straight into hell. He gestured that to the empty pool that housed hen houses that the chickens were there, and that we should go down and greet the chickens.

My senses at the time were simply too dull to notice the (probably) wicked smile plastered on his face, as he told me to go down to the pool first using a wooden ladder. I innocently nodded and did as he said, and went down first as he made sure to steady the ladder to make sure it doesn’t slip.

As I finally made my way down and detached myself from the ladder, I looked up to tell me that he can come down now. But before I could do that, he started laughing like a little villain (He totally did, I’m not making this up). With an Umph he pulled the ladder up as I froze in place.

At this point, I remembered that various thoughts ran through my mind. They all centered around how this was an ambush by the leader of the chicken troops. (I swear, to me at the time, this name I came up with sounded badass.)

After a minute of nothing happening and no chickens visible, I sighed in relief. It would have seemed that my imagination was simply too active. At that moment, I decided to finally shout that the joke went too far and he should lower down the ladder for me. That there was nothing here to see, and that the chickens were probably scared of me and that was why they refused to come out.

And it seems that my loud shouting probably startled the chickens, as a rooster strutted out and started eyeing me down. After a few seconds of locking eyes with it, I faltered and took a step back and averted my gaze. Sensing my weakness (and the fact that its owner was laughing in the background), the rooster took a step forward and decided to have a sparring match to get to know me better. The only issue is, I didn’t know that because I could not understand chicken speech.

He jumped, spread his wings and decided to show me how a chicken flying kick would look like as he scratched my arm. After that, he unbelievably followed up with a peck towards my legs as he strategically made me lose my footing. As I fell down, he sensed the danger I would hold if I were to ever regain my composure as he went into a flurry of weak but fast attacks that included wing swipe, gatling pecking and finally finishing it off by stepping on his defeated enemy(me).

After getting used to its attacks, and realizing the fact that the rooster’s comrades are probably just watching from inside the hen houses, I finally understood that this was nothing but a one-on-one sparring match.

Holding nothing back, I brushed the rooster off me and stood up. However, that simple motion took a lot of pain and energy, so in response I inadvertently looked at my legs. (I was wearing shorts at the time). I noticed blood was coming out, and with that realization I grimaced as I did my best to hold in my cries of defeat and looked at the sky.

Noticing me taking a moment, the rooster as the gentleman he was, decided to give me as much time as I needed. The sky was simply too hot as it forced my face to break out in a sweat, and as to not embarrass me, the rooster decided to call it a draw as he backed away and went back into his dwelling.

At this point, James finally grew a shred of humanity as he lowered down the ladder for me to climb.

Later that day, James' parents decided to sell us a rabbit for cheap, so the fluff healed both my soul and body. Until a couple of weeks later when while they(My mother) were cleaning the rabbit’s cage, he decided to say adieu and walked into the sunset.