A Poultry-Ghost Story

When your pet becomes dinner!

Photo by Ben Wicks on Unspl

The smell of blood seeped through the cellar door. What had happened in the dirt floor basement in the night I wondered? Sure, there had been other times the chemical smell of iron permeated the kitchen but last night there had been nothing going on. Too quiet—it had been too quiet.

I glanced at the rusty lock on the door and noticed the latch was partially open. Not enough space for a person to come through but clearly it had been tampered with.

It could only have been one thing and it would have had to move right through the solid wood door. Nothing human could have squeezed through.

What’s that smell, I asked my brother when he came down for breakfast.

Aw, that’s nothing, just the rooster hanging from the rafter down in the basement.

But, the latch, I said.

Probably the old chicken’s ghost coming back to haunt us, he said as his fingers reached out and crawled up my neck.

Did we know when we got the chicks as pets at Easter, they would become dinner someday? That our mother and brother would chop off their heads in the basement? That the smell of burning feathers would seep through the cellar door and overpower us with the strange smell?

Did we think milk came out of a tube hanging from a machine? Did we wonder when our friends stood in awe of a glass of milk with a head? Didn’t everyone have a milk machine in their kitchen? Did we clammer at the table for more? More milk, more bread?

We did. And when our rooster was served on a platter, we looked at each other and shrugged.

When I look back, I can begin to understand how feelings get pushed down and hidden inside. I never stood up to my mother and refused to eat our chickens. I did what I was told and swallowed the roast poultry. None of us would dare to contradict our mother. It was food and we were lucky to have it.

The experience, however, for me became a threshold, a harbinger to what would become a lifelong compulsion to hold back my feelings, keep them to myself, making me needless. It wasn’t until my late fifties I was able to feel safe enough to be able to verbalize my needs.

Much later I’d write about my feelings in my novel, Paper Bags. For me, writing gave me the opportunity to put down on paper what I was too afraid to say out loud.

If you had the chance to write about your fears, would you? Let me know in the COMMENTS.

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Remember, there’s no expiration on dreams,

Trish

To order my novel:  www.woodhallpress.com/paper-bags