CRACKED: An Anthology of Eggsellent Chicken Stories by J. Posthumus (read after txt) 📕

“Yeah, we did, didn’t we?” Michelle wolfed down the rest of her meal, twice what Delores had served herself. With a round trip to home and back, Michelle probably hadn’t eaten in a day or two. Delores shoveled more vegetables onto the girl’s plate and watched as they disappeared.

“Where did you learn to use that cute little gun of yours?”

“Like I told you, Dad was a prepper. He took me to the gun range with Mom. It took me over a week to guess the combination to the gun safe. That was a bad week.”

Not wanting to pry, Delores sat in silence with Michelle, reveling in the feel of a full belly for a few minutes until the girl spoke up again. “Delores, down there in the park you said I could shoot Chuck if he came around again.”

“I only wanted to scare him. We don’t seek out trouble like that, sweetie. Not unless he tries to push me around, anyway.”

“No, that’s not what I meant. You said it like I could stay here with you for a while.”

Delores scratched her head. The girl was right. Delores had treated Michelle as part of her little family down there when things got tough. “Well, I’m not going to live forever, and you might be able to convince me to take you on as an apprentice. Khan, what do you think about Michelle?”

Khan looked up and tilted his head to one side before returning to peck at another piece of liver. No objections from the birds, so they were clearly happy with her plan. It would be a huge responsibility, but it felt right. One more stray given a home.

The End

About the Author

John M. Olsen edits and writes speculative fiction across multiple genres and loves stories about ordinary people stepping up to do extraordinary things. He hopes to entertain and inspire others with his award-winning stories as he passes his passion on to the next generation of avid readers.

He loves to create and fix things, whether editing or writing novels or short stories or working in his secret lair equipped with dangerous power tools. In all cases, he applies engineering principles and processes to the task at hand, often in unpredictable ways.

He lives in Utah with his lovely wife and a variable number of mostly grown children and a constantly changing subset of extended family.

Blog: https://johnmolsen.blogspot.com/

Inspection Report

Clair W. Kiernan

Inspection Report Clair W. Kiernan

I hope you can read this.

There’s not much light and I can’t see what I’m writing.

I’m using the notebook I keep in my work overalls and it’s not too clean. But I’ve got a zippered bag and maybe that will keep it dry, at least. So, whoever finds this will know what happened. Please, God, let somebody find this.

Of course, we had no idea this was going to happen. I was busy shoveling manure. Most of the time, I’m shoveling manure. When I’m not shoveling feed or checking water lines or replacing lightbulbs, or a bunch of other stuff…

My name’s Billy. I do most of the dirty jobs around here. My dad told me to expect that. I just started after school let out this spring…

I was putting this morning’s manure into a nice, neat pile, like Jake says to do, and about to go to the oldest pile and stir it up to see if it’s ready to use for fertilizer. We do use some of it on the farm but most of it I bag up and people buy it for their gardens. But it’s got to be good and rotted to be safe. Anyway, I was just about ready to go do some stirring when I noticed there was a bright spot in the sky and not where the sun was.

I just stood there and watched it get bigger and bigger for a little bit, until Jake yelled at me.

“Git movin’, boy! That crap won’t stir itself! Then get the feeders filled and clear the trays in number one! Go on, move!”

“But, Jake,” I pointed up at the sky, but he was already walking away.

“Ain’t got time fer yer foolishness, boy. I gotta get the office and shop ready fer the inspection today. We got Mr. Harvey from the home office coming in before lunchtime…”

He walked off, grumbling like usual. Jake was always either grumbling or yelling about something, usually to me.

I went and stirred the old manure pile, but I kept sneaking a look every so often at that bright spot. What could it be? A star? My brother likes to read, and he’s always telling me about crazy stuff like suns exploding. Don’t see how that could be as important as knowing when a manure pile is safe to put on your tomatoes, but it takes all kinds. I tried to figure out if the spot was moving or not, but it was pretty low over the hills before I ever saw it, and there were trees blocking me, and anyway, Jake was already in a mood. Then I had to go fill the feeders and clean up the trays in the number one incubator, and by the time I was done with that, the bright spot was gone. I looked over toward the hills as best I could, but I couldn’t see anything.

Jake was still in the office, and the sun was real high, pretty near noon. I didn’t want any part of seeing the big boss come around for inspection, so I went to check on the poults out in the field. They were mostly fledged by now and scratched and pecked the ground looking for bugs or seeds or whatever they wanted. A chicken is mighty dumb, but they at least know when they’re hungry. Not like Mamaw’s cat, who just whines and cries whenever anyone goes in the kitchen, but if you put out food for her, she’ll turn her nose up at it half the time.

The poults