Just No Chicken

by Jonathan McLelland

“Hey.”

(...)

“Hey, I just wanted to call to thank you again for dinner. And to apologize again.”

(...)

“You couldn’t know.”

(...)

“You’re sweet to say so, but I don’t know why not.”

(...)

“No, I really just can’t.”

(...)

“Yep, the fire thing.”

(...)

“Oh yeah, a bunch.”

(...)

“Six? Maybe seven? I forget.”

(...)

“Right, it is a lot.”

(...)

“Somehow I’m always the one who calls the fire department.”

(...)

“No, most of them were nothing much. Trash fires. Grass fires. Stuff like that.”

(...)

“Right, but a couple were worse.”

(...)

“One was a five-year-old boy who was trying to kill God.”

(...)

“Uh huh.”

(...)

“He had a box of kitchen matches, and he was lighting them and throwing them at the sky, trying to kill God.” 

(…)

“I never found out.”

(...)

“I can still see his face. I’d Google him if I knew his name.”

(...)

“Yeah.”

(...)

“But the chicken house was the worst.”

(...)

“Full of chickens.”

(...)

“Exactly as bad as you’d think.”

(...)

“Yep, now you know.”

(...)

“Definitely the worst, but not the weirdest.”

(...)

“The pond.”

(...)

“It was just on fire. The water.”

(...)

“No idea. It’s the middle of nowhere. There was nobody else around. It was just burning.”

(...)

“Yep, but it was out by the time they got there. They thought I made it up.”

(...)

“Right. ‘Calamity Jane.’”

(...)

“Yep, not vegetarian. Just no chicken.”

Author Bio:

JON McLELLAND runs a small architecture firm with offices in Tuscaloosa, where he lives with his wife, and Nashville. His other side gig is teaching seminars on Sustainability at the University of Alabama. His stories have appeared in RUST Keepers, Every Day Fiction, Defenestration, The Bacopa Literary Review, Drunk Monkeys, Does It Have Pockets, and Sortes Magazine.