Sticky Fingers: Box Set Collection 2: 36 More Deliciously Twisted Short Stories (Sticky Fingers: The Complete Box Set Collection)

by JT Lawrence

  She takes the chickpea can with her and walks around her flat, checking all the windows. She touches the locks as she goes, counting them. Mid-count, she hears a noise. A scraping, a whirring. Is someone trying to get in? Is the front door locked? Icy sweat.

  There is a high-pitched squeal at her heels, and Betty jumps in fright. Her beagle scurries away from her with hurt in her eyes.

  'Oh, I'm sorry,' she says, moving to hug and pet her. 'I'm so sorry, my girl. There's a good girl. There's a good girl.' The words soothe them both.

  Sometimes if she talks loudly enough to herself, she can drown out the voices. Not in public, though. She shouldn't talk to herself in public. She doesn't like being in public anymore. Sometimes she has to show people the note; she doesn't like that, the look in their eyes.

  Squatting on the ground, she feeds the dog some chickpeas. She’ll start the counting again.

  Outside the door to her apartment, there is humming. A large man in overalls is polishing the parquet corridor. When he moves beneath the glow of the lightbulb, you can see a shiny burn scar on his arm.

  9

  Chicken Math

  “You’re crazy,” said my husband, his eyes twinkling with a mixture of amusement and confusion. My boss had the same expression just days before when I turned down his offer of a promotion; one that would mean a significant jump in income. The new job title would come with more responsibility, more client meetings, and worst of all: more management of people. Longer hours, more extended conversations. My anxiety level was high enough, thank you very much.

  “I’m not crazy,” I said to my husband, John. “I’m obsessed. There’s a difference.”

  The week before, I had been an up-and-coming chartered accountant in the most well-regarded financial institution in the country. Now I would be trapped in the purgatory that comes with being a woman unwilling to rise to the heady temptation of the success ambition brings.

  “It’s not the life I want,” I told my boss, who was baffled by my decision.

  “What do you want?” He seemed genuinely interested.

  The problem was, I didn’t know.

  I knew I didn’t want children, and I didn’t want to get married—I made an exception for John because he’s the best person I ever met. I wanted enough money to be comfortable, but not so much that I felt guilty or wasteful. I didn’t need the latest fashion or designer kit. I cut and colour my own hair, much to my friends’ horror.

  What do you want? my boss had asked. The fact that I didn’t know perplexed us both.

  I had been a go-getter in school, but it changed when I entered university. My time there turned my life on its head, and I was happy to be relegated to the quiet corner where the rest of the shadows gathered.

  “You want what?” asked my husband, when, after some soul-searching, I broke the news.

  “Chickens,” I said. I knew it sounded ridiculous. We lived in a suburb in one of the craziest cities in the world. I had no business wanting to keep chickens.

  "Chickens," he said, as if saying it out loud would make me laugh and tell him I was kidding.

  “Just a couple. They’re wonderful pets. Apparently.” Of course, I had zero experience of the birds. I liked the shape of them, and the way they looked when they walked, and that was about the extent of my wisdom. John threw his head back and laughed, but not in an unkind way. Still, it took some convincing. I agreed to do all the work and pay for all the expenses. He’d get beautiful fresh eggs and some new pets who had a silly walk. It’s called chicken TV—just being outside and watching the chickens—and if you add a G&T to the mix, you may as well be on holiday.

  I had an answer for each objection.

  They cluck. Dogs bark louder.

  The neighbours will be unhappy. We will give them farm fresh eggs.

  They will destroy the garden. They eat aphids for breakfast! Literally!

  They cost money to feed. Chickens turn kitchen scraps into pure, healthy protein. No wonder there is the story about the golden goose. They are genuinely miraculous creatures.

  They poo everywhere. It’s great fertiliser.

  I'm not an idiot (most of the time). I knew chickens weren't the answer to my existential crisis. But just thinking about them made me feel better about the world. It was easy to feel bludgeoned by the news headlines; men attacking women in every way: their rights, their bodies, their state of mind. Corporations burning the planet. How is one supposed to get out of bed in the mornings? I would get chickens, and a beehive, and a cow to milk. (Only joking about the cow.) I would plant a vast vegetable garden for us to share, and I would give as much food as I could to people who needed it. For once, since that varsity incident, I had the energy to start a new project. Before I had even really planned it, I had converted the unused garden shed we had inherited with the house and refurbed it. I got out the power drill and attached chicken wire to the window frames, to keep the genets out. I dragged branches I found two blocks away from my house into the coop as perches and made a forest floor for them from dry leaves and rosemary cuttings. John fenced off the area around the coop for the chicken run, and we were in business! The chicken business, to be precise.

  We agreed that if we were going to get two chickens, we might as well get three. My chicken contact tried to sell me a tray of twenty-five chicks. Finally, it was my turn to tell someone they were crazy. It made a nice change.

  Instead of being an insta-mom to over two dozen peepers, I tracked down a farmer in a rural area ninety minutes north of the city. The drive was transformative. I was go-getting again. I was in charge of my destiny. I was getting my chickens.

  There's a thing called "chicken math." It's when you go shopping for three hens and come home with eight. Not only is it common, it's almost expected. I came back with five hens and three chicks, and I was in love with them. I stroked the hens and fed them lovingly, and was rewarded with an egg on the first morning. It was so fresh it was still warm. Yes, I did wash my hands after collecting it.

  Chickens are wonderful creatures. Distant relatives of velociraptors, these feathered dinosaur birds will cheerfully and efficiently peck a smaller creature to death, and they have no hangups around cannibalism. Behind their meek feathered exteriors, they are fierce.

  Despite my insistence that hens were relatively quiet creatures, John happened to be home the first time Cinnamon, our Rhode Island Red hen, saw our tabby cat, Laila. She let out an almighty "PA-KAAAAAAAAK!" and Laila bolted. Imagine being a cat and seeing a chicken for the first time? Terrifying and wondrous. John tried to get Cinnamon to hush, but it was no use. She wanted the whole block to know she'd just spotted a small tiger in our garden. I couldn't help feeling little sparks of joy when I watched them bob around.

  The chicks were little golden feather dusters on stilts. Silly and sweet. I put smooth stones in their water to prevent them from drowning and secured the top to stop the cats from swiping them. My clever husband rigged up a thermostat-controlled heated room to keep them at the right temperature to thrive. I cuddled them at night, letting them burrow into my neck. Sometimes I'd hold their fragile feathered body in my hand, just firmly enough to make them feel safe, and it would work like hypnosis. Within seconds their eyes would close, and they'd nap in my palm. John, unused to having chickens in our bed, joked that he could imagine in a few months' time when they were fully-grown hens and still in our bed for their night-time cuddle. I laughed so much. It felt good.

  They squeaked and peeped all day, but when I turned their light off at bedtime, they fell silent. I slept two meters from their room. During the day, I'd rush home for my lunch hour and sit in the garden with them while they free ranged, pecking at the soil and bathing in the sand. I felt I could watch them for hours. I had always thought I'd make a terrible mother, but being with the chicks made me realise I probably wouldn't be too bad.

  I invited my best friend over and told her to bring her son, Damon.

  “He’ll love the chicks,” I said.<
br />
  She laughed. “I’ll love the chicks!” They brought chicken treats over: mixed grain, comfrey, and a spinning cabbage ball.

  “You shouldn’t have,” I said.

  “Are you kidding? I finally had an excuse to buy a spinning cabbage ball!”

  We settled on a blanket in the garden while the hens milled about, pulling earthworms out of the soil and clucking. When Damon came outside, he got so excited he sprinted to the coop.

  “Don’t run,” I said. “You’ll scare them.”

  He slowed to a jog and crashed into the coop, trying to get hold of one of the hens.

  “Can I pick them up?” asked the seven-year-old.

  “Um…” I said.

  “No, darling,” said Brenda.

  “He can,” I said. “I pick them up. They’re happy to be stroked.”

  Damon cornered Pepper and hugged her to his chest, beaming. I hoped she wouldn't peck him, but at the same time, I thought perhaps it wouldn't be a bad thing for him to learn that you can't just go storming into a hen house without getting some kind of comeuppance. The chicken shared none of my harshness; she looked comfortable in Damon's arms and cooed happily. I snapped a picture for Brenda.

  We sat drinking gin and tonics while Damon played with the hens. When it was warm enough to bring the chicks out, they immediately scampered for cover under the jasmine hedge. We managed to gently extricate two, one for Brenda to hold, and one for her son. The chick perched on her hand and fluffed her feathers, and my heart melted. How precious these moments were.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Damon running after the other chick as it flapped away from him. I frowned and glanced down at the one on Brenda's hand. When I looked up again, time stopped. Damon was standing there, holding a motionless chick. The lawn was electric green.

  “Wait,” I said. “What happened?”

  The baby had been flapping its wings just seconds before.

  “Nothing,” he said, shrugging. I took the chick from him and searched for movement, searched for breath. There was none.

  “What happened?” I asked again.

  “Nothing,” he said. “It’s just sleeping.”

  “She’s not sleeping,” I said. Her fading body was still warm. Her head lolled. The world stood still as the horrible truth rained down on me.

  “Her neck’s broken,” I said.

  “You should take it to the vet,” said the boy.

  I didn’t look at him. Couldn’t.

  Brenda was horrified. Layers of emotion vied for my attention, running together like paint. My heartbreak for the bird, who was only two weeks old. Sympathy for my friend, who began to weep. Empathy for Damon, for he was just a little boy, after all, who didn't understand how fragile chicks were. It's a difficult thing to process, that you've just snuffed out a life. I worried about the consequences for him.

  At the same time, I couldn't help but draw the parallel between what had just happened and the latest news headlines. The stories about the men who were intent on taking women's rights and claiming ownership of their bodies in so many different ways. Legally, spiritually, physically. I couldn't help seeing little boys chasing down animals for their pleasure and not giving the animals' feelings a thought. It was all about what they wanted, their own desire. And then a boy snaps a chick's neck and what do we do? We feel sorry for the boy.

  “It was an accident,” I told him, ruffling his hair. “I know you wouldn’t hurt an animal on purpose.”

  In university, the victim of the unheeded desire was me. Another student chased me down and snapped my neck. At least, that's what it felt like. After he'd satisfied himself, I was the one motionless and fading. I was the one dying from sheer shame. I decided that shadows were good places to hide from rough boys. I was wrong, and was sought out over and over again. It turned out that the shadows made fertile hunting ground for damaged boys. By then, I was so deeply entrenched I didn't know how to get out.

  Brenda arrived the next day with swollen eyes that matched mine. She also brought flowers, gin, and four new chicks—the magic of chicken math.

  “Do you still love me?” she asked, eyes shining.

  “I’d still love you if you burnt down my entire house,” I said.

  Spending time with the chicks hopping on and off my lap healed my heart. Over time, my vegetable garden became prolific and gave me peace. The bees made rosemary flavoured honey. John and I sat holding hands while we watched chicken TV, and I realised how wrong I was when I thought that chickens would not be the answer to my decade-old distress. They had scratched the soil and life had bloomed, and I didn’t feel as if I was in the shadows anymore.

  10

  My Fridge Is Empty

  I don't remember our wedding anniversaries anymore

  my husband doesn't hold it against me

  I have ante-retrograde amnesia from a knock on the head

  I can remember five minutes ago

  five seconds

  sometimes I have flashbacks of older memories

  but not often

  not today

  Today is toast cold with butter and a small white cat

  his tag says Felix

  his bowl is full so I think I have fed him this morning

  but now I see the sun is setting

  the fridge is empty

  I will go shopping if I remember

  I don't like going out

  too much to worry about

  I can still drive but I lose my car in the parking lot

  I lose my money if I don't keep it in a purse around my neck

  purse and a panic button

  Did Jack give me the panic button?

  I can't remember

  I walk outside and see the moving sun on the dark dew grass

  Is it morning again?

  It was evening just a moment ago and I don’t remember sleeping

  The newspaper says it’s 2019 which can’t be right

  I got a knock on my head so I don’t remember everything anymore

  I remember Jack and the babies and when I see the white cat I remember him

  I feed him and he purrs

  does he belong to me?

  Or do I belong to him?

  I prefer a world where people belong to cats instead of the other way around

  my car is gone but I need to go shopping

  the fridge is empty

  Felix’s bowl is empty

  I pressed the panic button and pray someone will arrive

  What is wrong asks the woman wearing the sky

  my car is gone I need to go shopping

  My fridge is empty

  You don’t have a fridge says the woman

  You don’t need a fridge

  I need food for Felix I say

  Who is Felix she asks

  My white cat

  Felix died dear heart

  I begin to cry and I know it's not the first time I've cried for Felix

  you had a knock on the head says the woman

  don't be hard on yourself

  you are doing well

  you’re getting better

  it doesn’t feel like it I say

  can I have my car keys I ask

  I need to get to the shops

  yes love says Jack and hands me the keys

  feed Felix on your way out

  Then I remember it was Jack

  who hit me on the head

  But when I turn to look at him he’s gone.

  11

  Shellfire & Birdsong

  12th February 1916

  My love—

  France is hell. You wouldn't recognise it; it's nothing like those pretty postcards on your wall. I'm not saying I don't want to be here. I'm proud to serve my country and to keep you safe, and apart from that, there is also the adventure that it is to be here with the boys, like playing an exciting game. I wouldn't want to miss it, even though it is truly terrible at times. Sometimes it is as simple as this: I have a job to do, and I'm
here to do it. At other times it is less clear-cut. We are killing men, men that could be us, our friends and brothers, just depending on which side of the line you're standing. And who draws that line, anyway? These are the murky thoughts that come to me in the early hours of the morning when I'm trying to stay warm and awake in the trench that is both my protection and my prison. If nothing else, I have learnt that there is no good or evil, black or white. Just overlapping shades of both and neither, at the same time. Forgive me for rambling, dear heart. I have not slept much, and it is as ever a relief to tell you these things. The men don't understand these things as you do. You are my lighthouse in this roiling storm. You keep me safe and focused, and I love you very much. I may not survive this whole war, but I will stay alive to see you again because that idea has become my shining light. Your light will guide me home.

  I love you.

  Frederick

  PS. I have enclosed a packet of apple seeds for you. We rarely get fresh fruit around here, but when we marched through Calais on arrival, the villagers cheerfully handed us yard-long loaves and some wine and fruit. When I tasted the apple, I thought of you—the bitterness of missing you, the sweetness of the memories I have of you. The seed-star of the core made me imagine planting an apple tree with you and watching it grow along with the children we will one day have, and life will be good.

  24th March 1916

  My love—

  When I am cold and dark, I think of you. It is my sole comfort in a time of pain and uncertainty; not knowing when the next storm of bullets will arrive. I dream of our bed at home and wish we were in it together. I'd wrap my arms around you and warm your skin with mine. My body aches, my skin craves yours. If I could give you my warmth, I would. I would give it all to you and more. Soon the war will be over, and these silly dreams of mine will come true. Visions of us sitting on the porch in the sunshine, dreams of cradling a little baby—will we have a son or a daughter?—dreams of peace and silence and warmth and good simple food. Oh, God! I have never before realised how a simple moment like that could be pure perfection. When I return, we shall have what we both crave, body and mind. I shall survive this war and will come home to you, and we shall have our perfect moments.