by Julia Kent
“You want me to leave?”
I thumbed toward Mavis and Rooster. “I owe them time.” Rooster saw me point to them and jutted his neck, pecking Mavis. She turned and looked, eyes bulging out, pinging between me and Joe.
Joe just blinked. “Wait a minute. You’re seriously getting paid to participate in some animal fetish? You’re a chicken dom?”
Rooster overheard that and made his way over, Mavis behind him.
“We prefer to call her a CluckDom, sir.”
“Shut up.” Joe looked at Rooster with an expression of utter incredulity, his neck tight but loosening as he tilted his head to really take in the spectacle.
“There’s a term for it?” I asked, intrigued. “I’m a CluckDom?”
“Technically, we also call you ‘farmer,’ but –”
“I can’t believe this,” Joe muttered.
“You and me both.”
“But you’re the one who – how did you find these people?’
“They found me!”
“Chickens,” Mavis reminded him. “We’re not people right now. We’re chickens.”
“If you were really a chicken you wouldn’t tell me you’re a chicken!” Joe exploded.
“BAWK!” Mavis screamed, a little shrill. Rooster pulled her into the most awkward hug ever.
“How did you find me?” I asked Joe. “How did you get here?”
“Charlotte. No one knew where you were, and then she recommended I come down here and look. I got a temp pass from her and looked in the convention hall. When she told me you walked out with, uh, chickens… well, she was worried about you.” He gave me a strange look. “And rightly so.”
“I needed money,” I said bluntly. “The chicken play fell into my lap.”
“I am remarkably relieved to learn you didn’t seek it out.” He frowned. “You didn’t have them in your lap, literally?”
“I’m going to walk away now and take these two peckers on their walk.”
“How much are they paying you?”
“A thousand dollars an hour.”
“Each?”
“No. For both.”
“You undercharge.”
“You think I could get more?”
“Joe? Mr. Ross?” Rooster appeared. “Would you?” He held out his leash’s end, a look of pleading in his eyes.
“Two grand,” Joe snapped back.
“You’re being rude,” I said out of the corner of my mouth.
“I’m negotiating,” he said.
“Same thing with you most of the time.”
“We don’t have two thousand dollars,” Rooster said sadly. “That thousand we gave Darla is our life savings.”
“Your life savings?” I repeated, stunned.
“Yes,” Mavis said, embarrassment clear on her face.
“Wait a minute,” I asked. “Where you from?”
“Southern Indiana,” Mavis said.
“What do you do for a living?” I dug in.
“I’m a hotel maid.”
I poked Rooster.”And you?”
“Retail shift supervisor.” He named a national sporting goods chain.
“Aw, shit,” I said, digging in my front pocket, producing a pile of cash. I thrust it back at them. “I can’t take this from you.”
“But –”
“Look. I might be down and out right now, but I’m not so low that I’ll take the entire life savings of people like me. I thought you were rolling in it and just throwing your money around for shits and giggles.” I looked at Joe. “You know. Like your mom.”
“Did you really have to mention my mother at an animal fetish convention, Darla?”
“If ever there were the right place to mention her, Joe, I’m pretty sure this is it. She’s the one who puts diapers on her free-range chickens. Outdoor chickens.”
Rooster perked up. “She what?”
“She doesn’t want the chickens messing up the landscaping at their mansion,” I explained, loving Joe’s gimlet-eyed response as the entire scene changed, like someone turned it ninety degrees and I could view it all from a new angle.
Handing all that money back to Mavis lifted a burden off me I didn’t realize I wore around my neck. Suddenly lighter, I felt punchy. Silly. Like I could joke again.
I had fucked up, but it was all just action. Not who I was. I made a mistake but I wasn’t a mistake.
The difference mattered.
“If you want my help, making fun of my mother isn’t going to help you,” Joe pointed out.
“Since when?”
Joe’s lips twitched with a suppressed smile. He planted his hands on his hips and turned on Rooster.
“No money needs to change hands, but here’s how we’re going to do this.”
Mavis and Rooster moved closer.
“I’m leaving,” he said to me. “I am going to go and figure out how to get the band’s money back.”
“What’s your plan?”
“Let me worry about that,” he insisted. The way his jaw went nearly square as he closed his mouth, shoulders flexing and fists closing, told me Joe was managing a swirl of emotions that had turned physical.
“But how will you –”
“Let. Me. Worry. About. It.” He nodded toward the chickies. “You help them.”
“I can’t!”
“Before you go, could we get a selfie?” Mavis squawked.
Joe’s face went flat, expressionless in a way that I knew very well. It meant he was pissed.
“Sure!” I peeped.
Joe looked murderous.
“It can’t hurt.”
“You should take their money.”
“Naw. Not when they’re like me, only before I met you and Trev and got out.”
“Why do you assume everyone from the Midwest is trying to ‘get out’?”
“I never said that. Not everyone is. But the ones who are working as maids in a hotel or as a shift supervisor in retail aren’t living the life of luxury, Joe. But Rooster and Mavis have each other.” I reached for his hand and squeezed it. “Those two are way ahead of where I was when I met Trevor and you.”
“Fine. One picture.”
Mavis and Rooster huddled in, their big feathery masks making my nose tingle. Joe stood rigid, his face turned to the side, no smile.
“Say ‘cheese,’” I said, nudging him.
“Purdue,” he muttered.
“You have to take this,” Rooster said uncertainly, pushing the money on me. “We really do want you to, you know...”
“I do know that,” I said earnestly, smiling nicely at them, my brain racing as I refused them.
Rooster handed me the leash end. “Would you? Bawk?” The soft puff of his cheeks as he asked nicely, back in animal character, gave me pause to laugh.
“Of course,” I said, taking up the reins, so to speak.
Bzzzz.
I grabbed my back pocket, but my phone wasn’t the one buzzing.
“Eeep!” Mavis said, reaching into her costume and pulling out a phone. “It’s our turn in the ticketed celebrity line!” She named a well-known movie actor who had been in a television show about a furry. “We’re so sorry, Darla, but we have to go! They moved up our spot in the line and this is our only chance to meet him!”
Amid a flurry of hugs, feathers, and quick selfies, I found myself laughing, lost in the sheer joy these two exuded at meeting me. Me.
Because I represented something they needed.
“How can you laugh at a time like this?” Joe asked, turning tight and hard, his earlier display of emotion too much for him to deal with. Normally I’d be his emotional caretaker, but right now I needed someone to manage me.
“I am a sick, depraved woman who is one can of body paint away from going out on the Strip and painting a Wonder Woman top on myself.”
“Remember the last time you did that?” He grimaced. “Nasty way to learn you’re allergic to red paint dye.”
I looked down. “Good point. G
etting a leprosy-like rash wouldn’t be good for business.”
“Or our sex life,” he added, looking more pained. “You wouldn’t let us touch you for two whole weeks.”
“I had hamburger nipples, Joe. My breasts looked like a PETA documentary on factory farm cow-processing. Plus, you’re the one who convinced me to paint on Wonder Woman’s pants, so don’t blame me about what it did to my...” I wave at my hoo haw.
“Look,” he said, changing the topic quickly. “I need to go do something for a few hours. Will you be okay?”
“It ain’t like I got money to go anywhere.”
The pained expression deepened. “Right. Let me go see if I can help you.”
“Help? How are you going to help? We don’t have money sitting around we don’t know about.”
He reddened.
“Just... bye.”
Joe was off, on a quest to get my money back. How in the hell did he plan to do that, exactly?
As he faded out of sight, leaving me wondering how I managed to upset Joe on top of everything else, I found myself suddenly thirsty, my body making itself known. I walked quickly back to the convention hall, the ground moving beneath my feet at a fast clip, the motion so soothing. Moving between people dressed as animals, from ferrets to bears to kitty cats, felt less unusual. I was habituating to my surroundings.
Not sure whether that was good or bad.
Water stations were set up around the edges of the room, so I headed toward one, mind running a million miles a minute. As I poured myself some lemon water, I began to walk slowly into the crowd, observing.
Not judging.
Not comparing.
Not worrying.
Just… being.
I started laughing softly to myself, because really? How had my first day in Vegas turned into such a shitstorm? It couldn’t get any worse than this, could it?
And then I remembered that every time in my life I thought that – it did.
As I finished my cup, I searched for a trash can, finding one near a booth with fox tails all along the top, hanging from –
Wait a minute.
The shitstorm just turned into a shit tornado.
CHAPTER TEN
DARLA
“Darla!” Charlotte caught my attention, saving me from a flock of chickens hovering by a trash can, clearly trying to get up the courage to approach me.
Oh, great. I’d told Joe the truth about losing all that money, but I couldn’t face having to tell anyone else just yet. Hiding the truth while having an actual conversation was going to be impossible. Charlotte had those big round eyes and a face that was like a mirror. Contemplative and cool, she was always so composed. Plus she worked as a resident director at a college. If anyone knew how to stare a person down until they coughed up the truth, it was her.
Charlotte grabbed my shoulder and gave me a concerned look. “Joe found you?”
“Yes.”
“I, uh, saw you.” She nudged her head toward the chickens. “Leaving the room, with those two on leashes. I assumed you were being held against your will, kidnapped into AnFet sexual slavery,” she joked.
I tried to laugh. I failed.
“Darla.” Her voice dropped into immediate concern depths. “What is wrong?”
I started crying again, my face feeling puffy and huge, my tear factory a perpetual machine.
Wrapping her arm around my shoulders, she guided me to the back of the enormous convention hall, the air alternating between stifling hot and freezing cold as we wended our way through the crowd. Everything was a blur of posters and stands, samples and toys, all the colors and feathers becoming streaks of color on an artist’s palette.
Double black doors at the back turned out to be the entrance to a private room where people who worked the booths could take breaks. Charlotte plopped me down at a big circular table with eight chairs and I sobbed, trying to be quiet. In half a minute she returned with a cup of water and hot coffee with cream. Sitting next to me, she reached for my back and rubbed it in slow circles, trying to calm me down.
“Whatever’s wrong, it’s okay. It’ll be okay.”
“No. It won’t. I fucked up so bad. So bad. Way worse than anyone.” This was, I had to admit to myself, worse than getting your cellphone stuck in your vagina. I had hit rock bottom.
I was worse than Amy.
“Is it something illegal?” She took a careful, almost orchestrated sip of her coffee, long lashes touching the bones of her eye sockets, not quite hitting the edge of her sculpted eyebrows. Blinking once, she waited me out.
“Not technically.” I pursed my lips and thought for a moment, breathing in the aroma of my coffee, remembering thousands of times when that scent alone was enough to make me relax, recharge, rejoice.
“Are you in trouble with Joe and Trevor?”
“Kinda. Joe’s trying to help me.” I took a deep breath and grabbed the ice water, my lips trapping the thin lemon slice against the edge of the glass as I sipped.
“Joe knows about your problem?” Her tone made me roll my eyes.
“I’m not pregnant.”
Regret washed over me instantly as I remembered how much she and Liam wanted to have kids, and how Charlotte had a blood clotting disorder that had led to two miscarriages. My conscience had a brief but intense conversation with my heart and reckoned that I hadn’t said anything offensive, but to stay away from the topic.
She just nodded. And waited.
“It’s a financial problem,” I admitted. Being with Charlotte was like being with Wonder Woman, except one who was fully clothed but knew how to use the golden lasso. Was it getting hot in here, or what? And while Charlotte would never be mistaken for Gal Godot, with the dark hair, the big eyes...
Same response from her. Silence, a nod, and patience. Charlotte was mercilessly thorough when it came to making me be real. No artifice could get past her, so why not cough up the truth?
“I borrowed a bunch of money I can’t afford to pay back.” That was a little bit of truth, so don’t judge me. I was trying. Being in denial is a rough place to live. Some people make it their permanent home, custom designed for their individual tastes.
Me? I was a foreigner in Denialand, trying to read the signs that made no sense, wondering if I could figure it all out because it was safer than No Man’s Land.
“You need money?” Her eyes narrowed.
“Yes.”
“I thought you were frugal.”
“I am. I just made a mistake.” It felt like a chicken bone was caught in my throat.
“How much of a mistake?”
“Does it matter?” Did it, really? Was the magnitude of my fuckup somehow bigger if the dollar signs were higher? The true error was in borrowing the band’s money without permission. Once that transgression happened, the rest was just trivia.
“No. But it sounds like it’s not a small number.”
“It’s not.”
“And Joe is going to help?”
“Yep.”
I was growing weary of her questions, and yet at the same time they provided a road map to linear thought. This was strangely soothing, being led to face what I’d done. Joe was trying to rescue me, but Charlotte? She was trying to get the whole picture out of me, one question, one pause at a time.
“Do the chickens have something to do with this?” she asked, then sipped.
“Indirectly.”
She set down her cup of coffee, leaned in on one elbow, and said, “That requires an explanation.”
I could totally see the dominatrix in her.
“The chickens asked me to be their CluckDom,” I started to explain, Charlotte’s arched eyebrows flying high.
“Because of the YouTube videos?”
I gaped at her. “You know about that?”
“You don’t?”
I stared at her. I was determined to out-wait her, and I did. She pressed her red lips together and finally said, “Liam showed me a subforum on Reddit where they
talk about you, Joe, and Trevor as if you’re gods.”
“Chicken-kinky-sex gods,” I said, starting to snicker.
“I can’t believe you didn’t know! You’re so up on social media and viral videos.”
“Only if it’s about the band, though. If people are taking videos and doing weird shit behind the scenes with ‘em, I don’t know about it.”
“You know about the Random Acts of Crazy fanfic on Wattpad, right?”
I laughed. “Yeah. Nothing any fangirls write is actually as weird as we are in real life, you know.”
“Why does that not surprise me? I just watched you walk two human chickens on leashes.”
“That ain’t even the worst of it.” Mavis and her egg came to mind. What had she done with the egg?
“Do you post on Wattpad?” she asked suddenly, tilting her head slightly. “I know you’re writing fiction.”
“Me? No. Not there, but it’s a good idea.”
“Where do you post your writing?” Her questions were intimidating, different from talking about this with Amy. I wasn’t sure why, but it also felt more prideful. Like I was being taken seriously.
“I, uh.” Huh. I hadn’t planned to reveal this just yet to anyone but Amy, but why not? “I’m about to self-publish a book. It’ll be available on all the major eBook retailers.”
“Seriously? You’re going for it?” She smiled at me, her excitement such a change from her normal composed self. It felt good to make her react so positively. “Maybe that’s your answer.”
“My answer to what?”
“Your money problems. If you sell enough books, you can make more money.”
“I would have to sell a lot of books to get out of this mess.”
“Why not you? Why can’t you be the lucky one who hits the jackpot?”
Ouch. My chest tightened and the panic returned all at once, like being dive-bombed by a flock of hungry buzzards.
“Right,” I said weakly, grabbing the coffee and gulping a few mouthfuls, grateful for sustenance. It wasn’t even about the coffee itself. Charlotte’s caretaking was rejuvenating. I thought of Trevor and Joe, how Joe had come and found me, worried. Where was Trevor? And what would he say when I told him what I’d done?
My phone buzzed. I ignored it. Facing Trevor right now felt like a kind of death.
