Demons, Freaks & Other Abnormalities
Page 15
Stroebecker pressed back against the wall, staring now at the thing’s face…a visage composed of rotting chicken heads gathered from the place from which it just came: beaks lined and piled in the place where human lips should have been, poking out six or more inches into a single moving bill that clucked a deeply hideous sound not born of human nor fowl; its eyes, now multifaceted orbs composed of the eviscerated eyes of a hundred or more chickens, each rolling as one; and the rest of its face, doused with decaying feathers and dark patches of grainy skin.
And yet, despite the horrible deformity and freakishness of the monster before him, it still held on to the human features that were once its own, that were once Dave Richardson’s.
It opened its beak composed of beaks, and growled, “Bosssss…”
“Oh dear god, help me…” Stroebecker uttered, sliding along the length of the wall, through the pool of blood and waste on the floor.
The chicken man leapt forward, clucking in its horrible deep tone, its tongue, blue yet shockingly human, spilling from its mouth and dripping a thick runner of saliva. Stroebecker screamed as the thing sunk its newly formed talons into his thighs.
Peering down at him with its terrible chicken face—Stroebecker could see the gruesome detail of the chicken heads carpeting the top of its skull, as if they had somehow been sewn together—the chicken man spread its wings, showing amid its splay of rotting feathers two purple-knotted human hands at the very ends of its wings.
The chicken man clucked…and with alarming speed shoved a scarred hand deep into Stroebecker’s exposed belly-button. Stroebecker’s breath escaped him, replaced now with an all-consuming wave of agony as the chicken man’s hand disappeared into his hefty flesh. It dug deep down, leaning forward with all its weight as its groping, tearing fingers prodded and searched.
Its beak open and from within gurgled out, “Nooooeggggg heeere…”
It pulled its hand out, trailing out a rope of intestine ringed about two if its knotted fingers. Using the intestine as a leash, it splashed through the pool of waste, pulling Stroebecker with it. The fat super flailed through the pool, the agony twisting through his body as he was dragged into the hanging room nearly stealing his consciousness.
“No, dear Jesus, no!”
And as he was dragged away by the chicken man, he could peer only at the swath of blood his body was leaving behind, first floating upon the surface of the waste, then on the damp floor as the pool thinned out.
Now, below the shackles, his blood gathered in a dark pool.
The chicken man yanked Stroebecker up with surprising strength and shackled him up by the toes. Stroebecker bucked and thrashed as much as he could, but his near-dead weight and gushing injury was too much for him to combat, and he fell nearly motionless with the top of his head pressed against the floor and his blood flowing across his torso, into his face.
The shackles began to move. Stroebecker could see the chicken man’s clawed feet dart by as the shackles moved him into the boiler room. His head banged against the side of the electrified pot of water. The shackles pulled him forward, a severe pain now registering in his toes as the bones were dislocated. He flipped up and over the side of the pot into the electrified water. Volts darted through his body. But what was enough to stun a chicken merely tickled a man of nearly three-hundred pounds. He emerged choking, but still conscious, his line of sight following…
Oh my God…
The chicken man had never let go of his intestine. It had come out of the hole in his navel like string from a party favor, at least thirty feet of it trailing back into the last room.
Life was escaping Edwin Stroebecker, and finally he was finally stunned as the chickens were…or were supposed to be when the lopper took off their heads.
But, as he’d known, those that weren’t proper stunned moved around too much, and the lopper would slice through someplace other that their necks, like their breasts.
Or if you were Edwin Stroebecker, just below the knees.
The last two things Edwin Stroebecker heard before he died were the sound of his legless body thumping to the floor, and the sound of the chicken man clucking with laughter.
~ * ~
The workers arrived the next morning to find quite a mess. Their supervisor hadn’t arrived for work yet, and neither did their foreman. They looked around, unsure of what to do. There was a delivery scheduled in an hour, and the cleanup crew apparently hadn’t done their job last night. There was blood everywhere, and a horrible smell coming from out back.
“Over here, guys.”
The workers followed the voice into the hanging room. There was more blood on the floor here, and a whole pile of what appeared to be chicken guts beneath the lopper.
“Seems as though the drainage system backed up.”
The workers turned and saw Dave Richardson standing in the doorway.
“What happened?” one of the workers asked.
Dave eyed the workers intensely. “Every now and then someone tries to hose a whole chicken down the drain. Seems like a real big one got caught.”
Dave peered down at the pile of guts. Peeking out amid the viscera and feathers was a human eye. Dave used the toe of his boot—a boot that barely held the claw hiding it—to shove the guts over it.
“I’m the new super here,” Dave said. “Let’s get this mess cleaned up before the truck gets here.”
The men nodded and got right to work.
And Dave went to his new office, scratching the itch on his back—damn feathers—that wouldn’t go away.