My chickens huddle around the coop door, crying to be let free. I undo the lock, twist the bar upright, and swing the door open. They squawk as they shove their way through, racing off to hunt for worms and bathe in the dirt. Except for Rosanna, who lays nestled against the corner. I step inside and reach down, running my hand along her smooth, golden-bronze feathers. She’s a Rhode Island Red, and sits here every morning. Waiting for the sun to escape from the swamp’s dense canopy.
Through the prickly brush which rustles at the yard’s edge, and down a steep decline, lays the swamp. A vast expanse of pitch-black mud. Tall, spindly trees emerge from the bog and blot out the light with their swaying leaves.
I watch with her as the first sliver of sun breaches the tree line. Warmth washes through the yard. Reaching Rosanna’s corner first, as always.
Later, the chickens bustle about, foraging in the grass. I lean back in my lawn chair, skimming through a crappy horror book. Trying to ignore the hunger as it wells up in my chest, weaving dirty fingers between my own. Damn it. I fumble in my pocket for the pack of cigs and my mom’s lighter. Its surface is scratchy and the silver has worn from use. I stole it from her, when she wouldn’t stop smoking around my younger sisters.
“They’re my children, Hannah,” she said. “You’ll be having yours soon enough.”
I don’t, have never wanted kids. And I certainly wouldn’t have more if I couldn’t be bothered to love the first.
As the cigarette fills my lungs with a crude warmth, Rosanna peck-peck-pecks at the dirt – score! A fat worm wriggles in her beak. But before she can scarf it down, two of the others scope out her catch; Rosanna dashes away with her prey, her sisters hot on her tail. They disappear around the back of the house, clucking.
It’s not what you wanted for me, mom. I know.
On the day I left, she blocked the front door. Pressing her back against it, slender arms braced against the frame as if to keep the outside out. “I understand. You need space, you want to explore. But don’t waste time. Don’t wait to find a man, raise a family. And when you do, you’ll come back to us,” she said in that harsh, demanding voice. “You have to.”
I’d like to say that I bit back with all of the scathing words I’d rehearsed in my head. But my tongue caught in my mouth. I turned around and took the back door, tracking my shoes on the carpet.
A harsh cough scrapes up and out of my throat. I lay my paperback on the grass, walk to the curb, and spit. Crushing the cigarette against the street with my heel. Pocket the stub, then back up the grass and down into my chair. I hate cigarettes, hate my mom for infecting me with this yearning.
Sally, a barred plymouth rock, twists her head, and starts to peck at the cover of my paperback. “Not nice,” I say, scooping her up in my arms. She clucks as I smooth down her black-white feathers. Soon, she nestles up against my stomach and closes her eyes. We sit together for a long while. Holding each other until the blurb on the novel’s cover becomes indiscernible by the light of the sinking sun.
Like the dreadful blare of an alarm, a chicken’s cry is picked up by the wind. Incinerating the evening calm. Sally jumps awake, clawing through the fabrics of my shirt as more voices join together in the shrieking; I wince, and shove to my feet, clutching her tight against my chest. No time to get the gun. We sprint towards the backyard as bubbles of dread expand in my chest.
But the backyard is free of blood and strewn feathers. The chickens flail about, running in circles around the dark-oak coop. Except for Raven, a black bantam. She stands guard, watching the swamp and its trees which endlessly knock-knock against each other. Who’s there? Raven’s black coat glistens like obsidian in the dusk.
With Sally in one arm, I undo the lock and swing open the coop door. She drops from my grip and flaps her wings, landing inside. The others rush in after her. I count them as they file in. One by one they silence their cries and fill their gullets with feed. My heart slows as the pressure in my chest deflates. Raven though, she won’t budge from her watch, won’t stop calling out to the swamp. “Did you scare the others?” I kneel down next to her, scratching her head with my finger.
Prickly bushes creep out from the swamp, reaching their thorny branches across the no-build line. A few feet away stands the coop, which hides in the shadow of my house. Its wooden frame is encased with wire and roofed with blue sheet metal. A slanted staircase leads up from the dirt floor to a wooden nest. Raven wrestles against me as I pick her up and drop her inside with the others. I make a final count for the night. Tilly and Torry, Daisy and Sally, Raven and Gracy and Goldie, and Roxanne. Again, the numbers tick up in my head. Someone’s missing. Rosanna. But not soon after that thought does Gracy’s crying stop. She watches through the wire as, with a slow, self-assured trot, comes Rosanna – picking her way through the thorns, her talons black, mud leaking from her beak.
I stare down at Rosanna as she sidles past my legs and into the coop. Until now, the girls have steered clear of the swamp. And always I sit with them in the yard, ready to throw myself at any fox who dares step foot past the brush. But I can’t protect Rosanna, any of them if they disappear under the thorns and out of sight.
Rosanna ignores the feeder and climbs up the runway. “Not hungry today?” She disappears through the small, square door. Apparently not. Rosanna leaps up to her perch with a thud. I hear her rustling feathers as she settles for the night. I grimace as I remember stomping up the stairs to my room, and locking myself away.
I tuck my paperback under my arm, pack away my chair in the shed, and make a final pass by the coop for the night. My heel sinks into something soft. A chicken mess? Down, at my feet, is a pile of dirt and the hole from which it was dug, pressed against the wall of the coop. Someone’s been busy. Trying to burrow in. My throat squeezes tight. I kick the dirt back into place and stomp the Earth. The swamp shuffles and creaks and rustles. Fat flies buzz around my ears and tease at my nape, daring to land. I think it’s time to build a fence.
Later, I lay secure beneath the weight of my thick blankets. Legs curled in and arms wrapped around my knees, I let my eyes flutter shut. Darkness takes shape. Something emerges from the swamp. A woman, veiled with syrupy, dripping mud, clawing her way through the thorns. She skulks up against the coop, reaching long, dirty fingernails through the wire… I shrug the covers free and rush to the window, shoving it open.
Warm air leaks out into the silent night. Silent, but for the whistle of the swamp, which waggles its bony fingers. All is black and convulsing in the shadows. I retrieve the shotgun and a box of extra shells from under the bed. Laying the barrel against the wall and the ammo beside it.
I don’t sleep. I listen.
Morning comes, eventually. Sunlight is shuttered by the overlapping treeline. My head is thrumming, and my stomach gurgles. Time for breakfast – freshly laid eggs, if I’m lucky.
I slip on my boots and slide out the front door. The chickens are already up and pecking at the feeder – except for Rosanna. But she’s always first, much to the chagrin of her smaller sisters. Today, the bantams need not struggle against the others for a place at the table.
I prop open the side-flap to the nesting box. Rosanna is crushed against the corner of her stall, head tucked under her wing. I reach my hand in, smoothing out her ruffled feathers, then nudging her out of the way. She whines and snaps her beak into the flesh of my fingers as I push her away from her egg. An egg which should be caramel-brown, and not a dark crimson. It’s soft. The egg’s shell gives in under the pressure of my fingers. It’s sticky, and it pulses with heat. I wipe the shell with my sleeve, but the color sticks. Rosanna shrieks and stabs her talons into my fingers, drawing pinpricks of blood.
This is a sparse town, and the nearest veterinarian lives more than two hours away. I pace in the yard as I make an appointment for tomorrow. But why? Rosanna’s young, and strong. My watery eyes are drawn to the burning, morning light which bleeds through the canopy.
Worry sizzles and snaps in my brain as I turn the stove up. With two quick cracks I empty fresh eggs against the pan. Yellow goodness drips down the curve and starts to simmer on the steel.
My eyes are drawn to the brilliant shimmer of the crimson egg. I don’t own a rooster, so the egg can’t be, ah, occupied. But it hums with life. Something about its bloody color, and the way its surface molds to your touch. I take its softness and whack it against the pan’s edge. Nothing. I dig my fingers into its membrane-like shell and tear it apart.
Curiosity turns sour as a dirty brown gunk leaks from the egg and splats into the pan. Its putrid stink forces its way up my nose down my throat. My hand seals my mouth in an attempt to keep down last night’s dinner; the yellow eggs lose their color as they melt together with the brown into a thick, muddy mass. As the black pan gains heat, bubbles pop up from the amalgamated goo – it warbles and shrinks, creeping inwards until it is nothing but steam and a lingering sense of nausea. The pan is empty. It cooks nothing.
I stand there for a long time.
And then I get my chair.
I sit against the coop, calling out to Rosanna. She refuses to leave her nesting box, and responds to me with a high-pitched chicken cry. Laying egg after egg. By evening she rests atop a pile of four crimson eggs. She won’t even jump and perch with the others.
“It’s going to be okay,” I say, scratching her head. “We’ll get you checked up tomorrow.” I leave her with a kiss and lock up the coop, wiping my eyes with my sleeve. Darkness sets in, rolling up from the swamp. I take a cigarette from my pocket and set it alive with mom’s lighter. Something’s hurting Rosanna on the inside, and it isn’t something she can understand. That’s the worst of it. An animal can’t make sense of their suffering, can only cower and cry. The smoke rises and joins with the clouds overhead, blotting out the sky.
I lay in bed, sweating profusely. Still wearing my jeans. Though the window is open, my blankets still cling to my damp skin. I listen for so long that I start to hear murmured words in the trees, in the frigid gusts of wind that blow in through the curtains. Consciousness wavers, in and out. Then something shifts. From one bed to another. I find myself in the dreamy etching of my old room. Posters tearing along the edges, desk strewn with books and pencils.
She raps at the door with those long, unkempt fingers. “Hannah!” she screams, and suddenly she’s inside, at the edge of my bed – mom – stinking of alcohol and vomit and sweat and sex – and she leans over, smothering me with her embrace. “You need to make more, Hannah.” Her words slur and her balance sways. “Make more.” I try to wriggle free but she pins me to the mattress with her long arms, poisons me with that putrid odor. “Little Grandbabies for me, won’t you make more?”
At first, I can’t tell if it’s real or not. But the raucous cries of the chicken burn through the dream all the same, setting my mind ablaze. I throw myself out of bed and grab the shotgun. Cursing every wasted second, I stuff the ammo and my phone into my pocket.
The shotgun weighs heavy in my half-asleep arm as I race through the house, and burst out the front door. Pressing forward through the frozen air. All the while my girls scream and beat-beat-beat their feathers.
I round the back corner and ready the shotgun, shouting over the cacophony. “Who’s there?!” Pounding my foot against the Earth, kicking dust into the air.
At the far edge of the coop sits a pile of dirt. A hole, burrowed under the wooden frame. And, cowering in the corner of the first floor, a fat raccoon with grubby fingers. “Bastard!” The fat raccoon trembles as I kick the wired lining of the coop.
The chickens are safe in their nest, clucking up a storm. Thank god. But why hadn’t the raccoon climbed up the runway? I hit the coop with the barrel of my shotgun, rattling the wire, but he doesn’t budge. He hugs the wall, scrunching his quivering body into a tightly-packed ball. “Come on, little guy. What’re you so afraid of?”
It’s then that I realize what I hadn’t before. What I hadn’t heard over the echoing cries of the chickens and the thumping of my own skull. What I hadn’t heard.
The night is alive with a ferocious, stinging wind. But the trees are still dead. The swamp is silent.
I turn and see it – swallowing up the prickly brush as it trudges closer. A heaving darkness, more pure than the night. Understood only as absence, by the outline of shadow that hangs around it.
From its side it extends a long, sludgy limb – which it winds back and smashes through the wall of the coop. I’m struck in the chest by thick debris and thrown back, crashing against the ground. My head knocks against its wall, and the crack squeezes the sense out of my brain. The chickens’ shrieking rings out and echoes into the far reaches of the swamp.
Through blurry eyes I watch the slimy darkness sink low, beneath the coop, and stretches out its dripping limb towards the raccoon. From the stump grows four, spindly fingers, which hook around the neck of the raccoon. It snarls and shrieks, but cannot escape from the wet grip of the gasping, bubbling mound. And soon its cries are cut, as a black tentacle flows out from the palm of the muddy limb and into the raccoon’s mouth. First, its lips, and then its cheeks, splitting open as the mud descends further, further into its bowels. It peels the raccoon in half, like an egg split against the edge of the pan. And from the depths of the broken corpse emerge three, wriggling creatures. Unborn raccoons, glowing the same crimson as Rosanna’s eggs.
So carefully the creature picks up the fleshy children, and then crushes them in its fingers. Black mud seeps out from their ears and their mouths and gushes out through the whites of their unseeing eyes. The mud melts into the mass of the creature, and it grows, swallowing up more of the night.
This thing – is the gunk from the eggs – is the abyssal bog itself – and now it’s creeping its arms through the door to the nest. The ground spins wildly underfoot as I try to stand. I move to step towards the shattered coop, but my foot falters, and I’m sent down to my knees. Helpless, as the mass retrieves the four, crimson eggs, and then Rosanna. Not Rosanna. Stolen away from her sisters, drowning in the mud as the creature squeezes her against its torso. She flails her feet and cries, head jerking left and right. Its sopping, wet fingers trace down her back, again and again, as if to soothe her.
The shotgun wavers, try as I may to steady my aim. I can’t shoot like this. I’ll kill Rosanna.
The monster trudges back down the path, disappearing into shifting depths of shadow.
A burning wetness leaks down the gaping hold on my head. I reach for it, stain my hand with the blood of my melting brain.
It hurts, more than anything ever has before.
But still, I can move, I have to. Because Rosanna can’t. Because she’s family.
I let the blood seal my fingers to the lacquered wood of the shotgun’s barrel.
With wobbling legs I push up from the dirt and stagger down the winding trail. Plunging into the depths of the swamp. The sky is swallowed up by the canopy, and the trees look down upon me, dreadfully still. A snaking vine of thorns catches on my bare ankle, dragging through the skin as I race by. My socks sink into the frozen, wet earth – sink deeper and deeper, until the mud rises halfway up my legs. And still I press forward. Through the hornets which swarm and sting at my arms. Past the bramble which snags me as I hobble by, prickled with blood. I run and run, until the mud is up to my knees, and a low, crimson glow awakens in the night.
All around stretches an ocean of hungry, pulsing mud. Suckling the life from my skin like a newborn. Red animal corpses lay half-submerged in the bog. Baby rabbits and foxes and birds, crushed and mangled like the baby raccoons. Still dripping with the last remnants of the tar. Rosanna’s cries shoot up along the trees and resound painfully in the night. I plunge further, further still. Until I find that towering mound, which slopes up out of the bog and hunches over Rosanna – squeezing the life out of her in its sloppy, misshapen fingers. From a bent, black limb emerges that same black tentacle, which writhes and reaches out towards Rosanna’s beak.
“No!” I force my legs forward through the heavy mud. The mound shifts, turning towards me. Somewhere from the hollows of its dripping body emerges a warbling scream.
I aim the shotgun at the base of the creature, push the safety, pull the trigger. The shell explodes outwards, splitting into shrapnel that shreds through the walking abyss.
But as the ringing of the shot fades, the holes in the creature’s flesh are filled in. Rosanna shrieks and rapid-fire-flaps her wings as the muddy tentacle slides in through her beak. I make to fire once more, training the end of the barrel at the creature. Push the safety in, pull – in that instant, a mound of wet flesh shoots out of the creature’s side, ramming with the speed of a bullet into my arm. Bone snaps with a deafening crack.
“Argh, fuck! Fuck!” I’m sent back, clutching at my bent arm.
The shotgun drops to the mud. With a wet, slurping noise it is sucked into the depths of the bog. I drop down to my knees, grasping in the darkness with my good hand. The mud grows tight around my wrist and my feet, chaining me in place. All I can do is watch, as poor Rosanna is torn apart from the inside.
“Rosanna! Rosanna!” I sob. I hope that she hears me – that she feels my love – that somehow, it’s easier now that I’m here – as the creature reaches down her throat, ripping her in half. It claims a final, crimson egg, which shines like a blazing sun in the darkness. And then it discards Rosanna, and her beautiful, fiery feathers; tossing her into the mud like a peeled banana. Used up for all of her worth. As if she wasn’t warm and smart, as if she didn’t rest her eyes when I held her, as if she wasn’t family. It cups the five eggs. Crushes them into that dark paste which feeds into the collective.
I writhe and struggle but cannot budge. The creature turns to me, watches the tears stream down my face. And then it starts to glide across the surface of the mud. Towards me. My scream is swallowed up by the warm, wet mud, wriggling around me. Soon, the whole of my body is dragged deep into the heart of the creature. All is overtaken by the suffocating darkness.
An army of fish, sucking away with their toothless lips. A massive, fleshy, tongue. Rolls of fat and sweat, folding endlessly. Fingers take shape in the heaving mass; they trace the length of my lips and then pry them apart. I writhe and try to bite down, to fortify my insides from the mud. But it squeezes through, and props open my jaw with a heavy arm — and rushes in.
I feel a great stretching in the skin of my throat as the mud travels deeper. Entangling its tendrils through the branches of my lungs, and sinking further still. Can’t breathe, can only taste the infected waste as it slides in and crashes down like a waterfall. My own cells turn against me as the mud takes control. Black droplets cling to the walls of my stomach, feeding on my fleshy insides.
I don’t want to die, don’t want to bring more of this twisted filth into the world. Scream but I can’t, voice drowned out. Try to move, but the abyss is so heavy, only managing to wiggle my fingers.
The ends of my lips start to peel as the flow grows faster. I think of Rosanna. Rosanna with her soft feathers and her reptilian claws. Screaming as she was torn to pieces. My broken arm swells with blood and fire. The gash on the back of my head burns. My heart races against the current of the darkness. And then I remember mom. Remember all of the things I never had the strength to say.
I focus all of my dwindling energy onto my fingers as they reach for my pocket. Somehow they force their way through the mud and grasp the lighter, and hold it tight.
Click, click. A light blazes in the darkness.
The creature warbles as its flesh bubbles and boils. It pulls back, rushing out of my insides and shrinking away. Soon, the mass melts into the black expanse beneath.
I cough a tremendous, splitting cough, hacking out wet spurts of mud. Sweet, midnight air rushes in to take its place. After a moment of silence, the trees start to shake once more. Drowning out my screams as I stomp and kick at the mud.
The lighter’s flame flickering against the wind, I take Rosanna’s corpse in my good arm. Her body is split, stomach spilling out from the side. And yet she is still beautiful. Her cold feathers, slick with blood and dirt, glow like dying embers in the fresh, frozen dark. “I’m sorry,” I sob. With Rosanna’s dirty, leaking corpse held tight, I stumble down the path home.
At the coop, I lay her body in her favorite corner. Where the morning sun will reach first. My chickens start to wake, dropping down from the perch to the sound of my sniffling.
I walk to the side door and reach inside, hugging them one by one. They lean their weight against me as I take them each to the car. When everyone’s inside, I drive a distance down the road. My body aches as I trudge back up to my house, to the swamp. Something’s growing inside of me. I feel it now, heavy and dark in my gut.
But gods be damned if I don’t try to burn it out of me.
With a shaking hand I drench the thorny brush and the bushes and the trunks of the trees with gasoline. Screw the wetlands. Mom. This is my life, my family, and I won’t live by anyone’s terms but my own.
I click the old lighter on and fling it into the darkness. A great blaze bursts to life. The flames shoot up the trees and spread across the canopy. A trail of fire jumps between the brush, crawling up to me… Lapping at the lawn and the coop and then the house with its scalding tongue. Night air boils in the face of the great bonfire. First, a deep breath. Then, I start down the path into the swamp. It burns a fiery red as brilliant and proud as Rosanna.