PoxnersFlight

by Jon Torres

  Welcome to my short story entitled, "Poxner's Flight". This is my customary introduction, where I say, (1) Just in case you didn't know, The answer is: Yes, all the characters on this planet are chickens, and (2) that's 'chickens' as in bird-fowl-rooster-comb-clawed-feet chickens. Not coward. Well, maybe except for Poxner in particularly moments, where he only sounds incurably fearful. But he is never a weakling. In fact, he is probably the strongest, bravest coward I know of.

  If you've read the novel "CHICKENS: A Space Adventure" then you probably know all this already. But it is not necessary in order to enjoy the following tale.

  *****

  ONE FINE MORNING IN THE PLACE KNOWN AS THE ANCIENT CITY OF THE CHICKENS...

  Poxner's machine teetered precariously on the edge of the municipal tower. It wouldn't have been so frightening if he hadn't been sitting in it this time. The small crowd forming down below wasn't helping, either. He should have told his best friend, Omeek, he was going to do this today. Meanwhile, the crowd was getting bigger.

  "Look! I think he's lost his mind!"

  "Is he going to jump?"

  "Hey, everyone! Poxner is finally going to kill himself!"

  The chilly breeze punched at one of the wings from underneath, making Poxner almost lose his balance. He began to flap his own wings, causing the larger cloth-and-reed contraption to flap. Poxner took a breath, adjusted his stance and glanced fearfully down at the cobbled street. He intoned his own prayer to the gods.

  "I really hope this doesn't kill me!"

  And then he leapt.

  The crowd gasped.

  Well, actually, most of them ran for cover.

  Poxner pumped his arms furiously, angling his tail to move the rudder just a little to the left. His feet pedaled a second set of wings towards the back, and his head operated the front-rudder. The noise of the beating wings attached to all those squeaky pulleys and ropes was deafening.

  Somewhere below he saw Omeek pointing at him, running and shouting. Good old Omeek, he thought, always there to lend an encouraging word, give his moral support...what a friend...

  What Poxner didn't realize (and was probably better off not knowing) was that Omeek was not there to say, "I'm here for you, my childhood friend, to see the triumph of your lifelong dream" or offer to say anything else encouraging like that.

  Unless you count yelling,"Poxner, you suicidal idiot! Watch out for Bonko's manure

  cart!"

  From here, Poxner couldn't have hit the manure cart because he was too high. In fact, for a few seconds of flapping really hard, he felt like he was suspended in mid-air. It was that brief moment that he began to feel he was at last flying, his dream was so close to being complete, everything he worked hard for was coming together, and nothing else mattered.

  Until the tail-rudder broke off.

  This is one of those times when a true hero can save the day and avoid a horrible

  disaster by tapping into an inner power that sets him or her above ordinary folk.

  However, this is also one of those times that, even if it didn't help, screaming very vile, shocking and disgusting word you know was quite understandable, if not entirely appropriate for the occasion. Poxner did exactly that, not out of his deep spiritual anguish over the circumstances, but for two better reasons:

  (1) He was going to end up breaking the cobblestones with his face, or whichever part of his body happened to land first.

  (2) And it looked like it was going to really, really, really hurt.

  Whatever was left of the crowd below was scrambling to get indoors, or at least out of range.

  Struggling to regain control of the creaky, yawing contraption, he discovered the rudder-cables had yanked the main wings permanently open, consequently putting him into a powerful down-glide he could not steer.

  He ran out of things to yell-- he had even managed to come up with some choice phrases that hadn't been invented yet. But that didn't stop him from screaming.

  At least he was too far from the manure cart.

  But he was getting dangerously close to the Crystal Temple.

  Gathering his wits about him, he paused long enough to stop screaming.

  "If I can fly cleanly in through one of the temple windows," an inner voice told him,"and back out through another, maybe I can still save myself, and I can try to make this work. Or I can just continue screaming."

  After pondering this thought briefly, he chose to continue screaming.

  It might also bear mentioning that he employed a second strategy, which involved shutting his eyes as tightly as he could. Granted it was not the best, or even one hundred per cent effective as brave-and-heroic tactics go, but it was sure easier to imagine he was somewhere else. Besides, he was going much faster now.

  Luck, as you probably know, has a weird way of working out. As it turned out, he sailed into the east window rather safely if not uneventfully, with his wing-tips barely brushing the curtains as he flew in.

  "Yes! Bless my Luck! Haaaaahh!"

  This is what can be said of what happened at the east window. What happened at the west

  window was a completely different matter.

  It is because Luck also has an equally weird way of abruptly leaving when you notice it's going in your favor. Or maybe it just leaves whenever it feels like it. This is being said here because some things held the west window a little different from the east:

  (1) The west window was two featherbreadths narrower than the east window, and it was re-finished last summer.

  (2) The west window was closed.

  Poxner opened his eyes and seeing the oncoming window with the shutters drawn in, he spontaneously thought up of yet another tactic, which was to yell even louder. Alright, so this is just a variation of an earlier theme. But this time it had the effect of waking up Father FluffNest snoozing down below, and it helped in bracing Poxner's body for when it would come to an abrupt halt.

  His body did not come to a stop, however, because he simply blasted right through the shutters in a spectacular explosion of slats and splinters.

  His gliding-machine, though, did not follow the same path. The wings and pedals broke clean off his wings and feet, and fell, crashing to the church floor, leaving Poxner still shooting helplessly through the air, but was now free to flail his limbs in a way that truly showed how he felt, which was an extremely literary place poets would describe as somewhere between unbounded terror and hopeless panic.

  Anyone just passing through town and happened to look up would have seen a flying idiot wearing what looked like a costume made of broken reeds, flapping his arms and screaming unheard-of obscenities of every sort. Except technically Poxner's style of 'flying' was now best described as 'plummeting'.

  The conditions now became perfect for him to hit that open manure cart.

  Fortunately, he did not hit the open manure cart.

  He mostly hit the manure that was piled high inside the open manure cart.

  Had you blinked while watching this tremendous crash, you would have seen an immense heap of dung instantly turn into a nasty green cloud, blossoming above a flattened cart, and an even flatter-looking Poxner. Omeek was the only one who came to see if he was alright. But even Omeek was hesitant to touch him. When the green cloud drifted over him, his own face took on a green stain of its own.

  "Poxner! What have you done this time? Pheeeeuuww!!! You smell worse than a pasture of sick woxons! Did you break anything?"

  "No," he replied, coughing up smoky green mini-clouds out of his beak, "only...the glider, the church (cough!) this cart, and (cough!) your claim to being the biggest village idiot we've ever had!"

  "That last part remains to be seen--I still hang around you, don't I?"

  Father FluffNest appeared
quickly at the scene with a ready rebuke.

  "You kids should be arrested for the trouble you cause! You'll be grown bantams soon and it's time you acted like it! Look at the new window! It cost quite a lot to get it done! Look at Bonko's cart! If you were in church more often, you'd know how to behave better!"

  Poxner and Omeek looked at each other's mucky faces and turned to the priest. It was Omeek who spoke fist.

  "Your Reverence," he answered, offering a grimy, smelly, manure-covered wing in a grandiose gesture, "would you like us to go attend the service now?"

  The indignant clergyman stormed down the alley, shouting, "Poxner, remember this--get it inside that tiny brain of yours that CHICKENS WERE NEVER MEANT TO FLY!"

  The two friends walked off in the opposite direction, towards the river.

  "Come on, Poxner, let's get you cleaned up before supper. Something tells me we're going to need a lot of soap. You gotta wash beneath the feathers."

  "Omeek, do you think he's right? I mean, all I do is cause a big mess around here, and people laugh at me."

  "They do NOT!"

  "I know you don't, but that's different. That's just you being a good friend. Maybe I should leave town. There's nothing for me here."

  "Poxner, the only thing keeping me from going mad at the grain harvest sometimes is thinking of your crazy flying stunts, and wondering what you'll dream of next. This town needs you to keep it laughing because they forget about the Rain-Fire even for just a little bit."

  "But is that all I'm good for? A laugh? I always dreamed I'd do something important, not be the laughing-stock or the village idiot. Don't laugh. I really do want to build a flying machine."

  "What about those farm machines you built? Aren't they worth something?"

  "The combine-harvester was fun for a little while and so was the pedal-tractor. But part of me feels it's wrong to stay here forever, and I'm afraid that if I don't listen to it, a part of me will die for not giving it everything I've got. I want to look back on my life one day and honestly tell myself that I am proud to have done all I could."

  "Poxner, I just figured out something about you."

  "What, that I need to do this to become who I really am?"

  "No-- it's that you need a stronger helmet. You've clearly taken a blow to the head too many times."

  "Omeek!"

  "Just kidding, just kidding...sheeesh! Hey--I'll race you to the river."

  "Okay, on the count of three: One...Two...Go!" And Poxner was off, dripping a green trail of sweaty manure-flecks behind him.

  "Hey! You didn't say 'Three'!" Omeek looked at the filthy trail and picked up a small scroll Poxner had dropped. It read:

  ////////////////////

  They will all sail the endless oceans of space

  and that's what I long to do

  to touch world upon world

  and see the wonders of the cosmos

  The universe is a grand story within a story

  waiting to be told

  I must be there

  to play the song of the stars

  the music in the temple of infinity

  Let me sing the song

  and tell the story

  I can touch the mind of the gods

  Let us sail the endless oceans of space

  ////////////////////////////////////

  "He really believes this stuff, doesn't he,"he mused, "Sometimes I wish I was as smart as he, and sometimes--"

  "Yo, propeller-butt!" Poxner caller from across the street. "What's taking you so long? Come in, the water's fine!"

  "Not with you making the water green, dung-head!"

  "Just go upstream! Besides, you're dirty, too!"

  "Hey, you think they'll make us fix the window and the cart?"

  "Naah, Crazy Bonko's just going to laugh it off, and say something like 'I'll just take my shovel to the preacher and get some more!' and we can't fix the window because we're not allowed up the ladder, not after the incident with the paint-can and Bianca's grandmother."

  "Poxner, you're too smart and cocky and mischievous for your own good."

  "You forgot handsome."

  *****

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, ON THE ROAD TO GRAND KIRKOPOLIS...

  Poxner sat on a small grassy hill overlooking the highway, gazing at the village he had just left.

  "It all looks so small from here," he whispered, "My entire life was there, never been outside of the old boundaries. Until this day."

  He took out a small bag of fruit, picked out a ripe bao-bulb and began eating. "Look at smoke coming out of the tavern's chimney stack, the wagons rolling along in straight lines, the crisscrossing streets densest as they all met at the central market. Things really look different when you see them from far away. I wonder if others have seen Ancient City this way. Surely I can't possibly be the first..."

  Poxner was still lost in his thoughts when he was startled by a rustling amongst the bushes nearby.

  "GRRRRWWEEEEHP!"

  "What was that?" Poxner nearly jumped out of his sandals as he dropped the fruit-bulb. He spun around towards the source of the voice he just heard, but no one was there.

  "BUOOOOL-WAAAAHH-AAAHHK!" This time it came from further up the grassy ridge, above Poxner's head, still hidden in the tall vegetation.

  "Show yourself! Fight me like a real chicken!" Poxner demanded, (there will be no mention of trembling or quavering in his voice. Even if there was, a little). Spreading his feet, he hoisted the entire bag over his head in a defiant posture. With the possibility. He decided stand his ground to see if either his stalker or his resolve would falter.

  He waited for half a minute.

  "KEWRRRRR-HWAAAA-BLAAAHHHHHH..." came the distant reply. It was even further up the overgrown ridge, off to the left this time.

  "That's RIGHT!" barked Poxner, with a little jump for emphasis. "Keep running away! Afraid to come down and fight me, are you?"

  Nothing but silence hung in the hot morning air. And stayed there for an entire minute. Poxner was getting irritable.

  "Are you still here?" he asked.

  More silence.

  "Oh good, you're gone," he breathed.

  The reply came as a whisper just above his left ear.

  "BREU-HWEEEEEEEEEYaaaAAAAAPP?"

  Poxner screamed at the top of his lungs (like this: "AAAAAAAAGGGH!!"), and hurled the entire bag of fruit into the curtain of tall grasses behind him. Scooping up his satchel, he scrambled down the knoll and ran as hard as he could.

  "AAAAAAAAGGGH!!" (Poxner sometimes likes to repeat himself when he's scared.)

  He did not notice the strange figure walking out of the grass and picking up one of his schematics that he dropped. Unraveling it, the mysterious chicken made some strange clucking noises to itself for a while, before rolling it back up again and stalking down the hill.

  Meanwhile, Poxner kept on running, And this time it's easier to say, "running" instead of more busily describing his downhill journey with, "a combination of stumbling + basic-level tumbling + getting up and rolling sideways against his will + panicking and sliding on the ground with his backside + trying to get up, but having to repeat the whole thing again until he hit something at the bottom".

  So we shall just say it was "running". It's a little less embarrassing for him that way. Let's spare his feelings for a moment.