The Chicken Ate My Keys! Page #2

An Interpretive Short Story

• Fiction
• Humour
• Short story
• Drama

								

“Why would you put it under there?” He couldn’t understand why this child would do something so ridiculous. “Why, Marianne?” 
Slowly, her eyes lifted and met his. “I didn’t want you to go. You’re always going.” She sniffled again and ran over to where her mother stood, tucking her face into the satin of Martha's evening gown. 
Stuart just stared. He wanted to keep yelling, to tell his daughter how stupid it was to hide his things, but he saw the look in Martha’s eyes. He needed to leave. 
He knelt down onto the ground, then flattened himself completely on the cold floor, stretching his arm out into the blank darkness beneath the cabinet until his fingers brushed polished metal. Slowly, he pulled it out, dusting off the slight layer of dust covering the bottom. He ran out the door. Martha heard his feet as they crunched on the gravel driveway.
He pulled on the car door handle with so much force it hurt when it didn’t open…it didn’t open? Maybe today God was just laughing at him. He cursed a long list of words in his head he didn’t feel good saying out loud. He fisted his hand into his pockets for the car keys. They were not in his pocket. 
“What the hell?” He checked the other pocket, then his pants, nothing. Spinning around, he was scanning the ground, his legs beginning to wobble. He felt a roar of rage bubbling within him. All he wanted was to go to work. Was that too much to ask? What the hell could’ve happened to those keys?
He was about to storm back inside for the second time this morning when, from his left, he heard a hacking cough. He glanced over at one of the white hens that had ventured onto his lawn, far from the safety of its coop. He watched as it once again hacked up empty air, fluttering its stubby wings behind it. 
It couldn’t be, he thought to himself. There is no way a chicken ate my keys. But he knew, in the deepest part of his mind, it had. Everything in this goddamn house seemed determined to prevent him from going to work on time. 
He stalked toward the foul animal. His feet glided over the grass. The chicken turned its neck to look: big, empty, stupid eyes meeting Stuart’s. He stopped. His muscles didn’t twitch, but his heart thundered. Stuart Wolf would go to work today, and nothing was going to stop that. With a final flare of his nostrils, he pounced.
 Jumping towards the chicken, a strangled scream came from his throat. He landed chest first in the grass, morning dew bleeding into his shirt. Before the chicken could scramble far enough away, Stuart's hands wrapped around its throat.
Upon hearing her husband's yelp, Martha ran outside, wondering what strange creature could make such a noise. What she found was Mr. Wolf, kneeling on the ground, in a mess of blood and feathers.
“What are you doing!?” Fear was spilling out of her voice, yet he didn’t stop his fingers from prodding through the chicken's exposed innards looking for the devoured keys.
“Mama?”
“No, Marianne, stay inside!”
“Mama…”
“Stay!” Martha turned back to her husband. “Stuart!” He paused. She had never said his name with so much rasp and disconnect. “What the f*ck are you doing?”
“It’s the…keys,” he croaked.
“What?” She could barely make out his words.
“It’s the chicken…she was…coughing.” Martha recalled the sickness moving through the coop over the past chilly weeks. All the chickens had it at one point. She had told Stuart. He wasn’t listening, “She ate my keys. The chicken ate my keys!” His hands were empty. It settled on Martha just how much he wanted to leave, how much he must’ve hated coming home to her. He would kill to stay away. She felt a small presence behind her.
“Dad?” 
Stuart looked at his daughter with his big, empty, stupid eyes. He saw her pudgy hands where his keys dangled. “They were by the cabinet. I think you dropped ‘em.” She looked afraid, but she didn’t look away.
Stuart stood up, shaking a little, loose feathers falling from his clothes. He walked over to where his wife and child stood, held out his hands, and waited until Little Marianne placed them in his crimson palms. “Thank you.”
He went back to where the briefcase lay, next to the chicken carcass. He picked it up, walked to the car, unlocked it, and got in. Martha watched as her blood covered husband drove down the dirt driveway, slowly swerved onto the road, finally going to work. She went back inside and locked the door. It would be he who slept in the chicken coop that Monday night, and every night thereafter.
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