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

allowed the rising terror to escape her in the form of a questing call of “Saaaaaammmm!!”

She ran toward the chicken yard only to be stopped by a very disheveled Sam rounding the corner of the barn. He was covered in dirt, feathers and some disgustingly jellied clumps of red. “Don’t go back there just yet.”

Diane saw the blood on the side of his face by his ear and started to panic. “What happened!?”

He put an arm through hers and turned her back toward the house. He gently took the fire extinguisher from her and pointed. “Stay calm, and don’t scare the girl.” He pointed to Sally, who had not stayed put, and was standing wide eyed on the porch step.

“Are you okay? Is everything alright?” Diane moved to go look around the corner, but Sam stopped her with a gentle grip.

“I’m fine. It’s all good. No more rat problem, just a bit of clean-up to do, that’s all.”

She looked at him with a suspicious frown. “You’re lying. I want the truth.”

“You can’t handle the truth. And neither can I, right now. Let’s go eat lunch.”

The white rooster tromped back and forth, crowing, and occasionally chasing the smaller of the broodlings around the yard, yelling insults when they came too close to his perch atop the half-fallen roost shed. He stopped when one of the braver of the young chicks approached and crowed a question at him from below. “Mr. Colonel, sir? We were wondering… why don’t you have any tail feathers?”

He ruffled his neck and gave a head tilt in the young rooster’s direction. “Are you making fun of me, boy?” The young rooster squawked and took off across the yard to avoid any impending ‘training’ that might come his way.

Colonel Sanders cleared his throat. “Well, I suppose the story does bear repeating!”

The chicken equivalent of groans sounded from around the yard as he began his story from atop the mostly destroyed coop.

“So, there we were, facing the worst threat to ever cross our boundaries. Into our very home this threat had come, stealing the nest-eggs of our future generations and taking the lives of our defenders. They were fierce and horrible, but with the distraction techniques I had instilled into our fine female brigadiers, I was able to put the rats on the defensive! I spurred at them. I flapped their very faces as I avoided the razor-sharp teeth, driving them back… back… back toward the gaping hole of hell from whence they had arrived.

“Then, as I flew forward for one last killing blow, the cowardly allies who had previously abandoned us suddenly caused a two-fold disaster when they unceremoniously joined the battle I had already won!”

The rooster flapped his wings wide, scattering feathers and scaring the smaller chicks, causing them to run under the wings of their mother hens.

“First there was a sound of thunder from a stick in the hand of the human ally—if you can call them allies, the egg-thieving… but that’s neither here nor there—the stick made so much noise that all the hens distracting the rats ran screaming from the shed! Then the human did it again just as the rats surged toward me. I was about to take them both out… one with each outstretched talon as I flew through the air, when the world itself erupted in flame and anger. My wings were blasted nearly off as I was thrown against the roof of this very coop!” His foot stomped the twisted tin for emphasis. “I took such a blow to the head that I don’t even remember how, in my rage and addled state, I managed to shred the enemy into just so many gobbets of meat!”

He fluffed his neck ruff once more for effect. “And that, my young featherlings, is how I saved the entire flock on the Day of Rats and Fire! Alas, my poor tail-feathers may never recover, but it is a sacrifice that I would willingly give again so that you may live in peace!”

Sally walked in front of her Dad toward the chicken pen, swinging her bucket of mealworms. “Daddy, are we going to tear down that old roost house that you blew up, now that we built the new one?”

“Naw, sweetie, we’ll leave it there for now. Some of the biddies still like to hatch their eggs out in there. Besides, I don’t know what ole Colonel Sanders would do without his podium.”

“He sure does like to crow a lot,” Sally said with a lilt of disapproval.

“Yeah, but the chicks like it!” He tickled her and she squealed, running ahead as the chickens started running toward her and her bucket.

Even the Colonel jumped down and ran to meet her. Poor allies or not, Sally had mealworms!

The End

About the Author

J. D. Beckwith—a mechanical engineer with delusions of writing grandeur. He writes, reads, plays tabletop & RPG games, grows tomatoes, herds cats, and hides out in the woods of Northwest Georgia.

eConscience Beta (a Sci-Fi/ Technothriller/ Comedy) was his first novel.

Horizons Unlimited: Volume 1 is the first in his space adventure anthology series with stories about man’s expansion into the solar system through matter conversion technology.

He has been published in several anthologies and flash fiction collections of various genres. See them all at his Amazon Author Page.

Or at his blog: Words from the Wampuscat @ https://wampuscatenterprises.com/

Home Improvements

Karina Fabian

Home Improvements Karina Fabian

You get all kinds in the private investigations business—especially when you are a dragon with a holy mage for a partner—but getting hired by a tuxedo-wearing grasshopper to recover his flying house has got to be a record.

It got better.

“I know exactly who took it,” Jiminy snarled as he gnawed on mint leaves my partner, Sister Grace, offered him. “Baba Yaga.”

“Baba Yaga?” Grace asked.

I used my arms to compare the relative girth of the witch with that of our new client. “Riiiight.”

You wouldn't think a bug could roll his eyes. “Not