# Over Easy by AnonEmis

Author: AnonEmis
Tags: Clean, Death, Drama, rooster

Yes, I'm alive. I'd like to apologize for suddenly going off grid and failing to upload the stories I said I would. Things happen, but I'm back. I'm not sure if I will be posting as frequently as I used to but I'll do my best. Anyways, I'm trying to get back in the swing of writing so please feel free to leave feedback and critiques. Apologies for the formatting near the beginning, exporting from MS Word to the uploader is confusing.
-AnonEmis


Over Easy
By AnonEmis

"Since
all life is futility, then the decision to exist must be the most irrational of
all."

-Emile M.
CioranI was born one day with
no alternative. I fell through my life already knowing what I was alive for and
what I would be. However, that made everything hollow, without mystery or
curious dirt trails that led away from my routine to a grand adventure. I
realize now that it was not my fault, seeing as I was deprived of many. things.I have never seen the sun rise.
I have never shared
secrets with a friend.

Or felt my feathers catch
the wind.

Or dreamt of a
nightmare, for inevitability made fears and hopes useless.

When my mother hatched
me from my egg, the first thing I remember was feeling my someone's frightened confusion.
That frantic sense was omnipresent for my first moments in the world. I felt a
jolt of feral excitement as my beak cracked through the shell, the rush of air
drying out the fluids of my container, causing my feathers to plaster against
my paper skin. Like a frenzied maelstrom, I burst from my cage, shrugged off
the brittle fragments, and began crying out to the air.

My small warbles were
cut off when a warm body fell upon me and forced me down into the straw nest. A
frantic rustle of feathers and a shifting of her body obscured my vision as I
was forced against her stomach. Suddenly, I felt something sharp poke my flesh.
Thankful for the distraction, I turned my head. I caught a glimpse of a cracked
ovular object. The shape of the container was distended, squashed like a crushed
pastry. Yellow and white goo dripped and flowed from the jagged peaks of the
rim. That was when I realized I was just born. I was alive. Alive and scared.

I didn't see the next
few days, rather, it was like a series of sensations. If I was cold, another
body would draw closer and I would stop shivering. If I was restless, a soft
crooning streamed to my ears and lulled me to sleep. Despite the comfort, I kept
my eyes screwed shut, afraid of the terror from my first seconds. Eventually,
my curiosity won out. I opened my eyes.

Screams punctuated the
air as digits like thick armoured snakes snatched me away from warmth and
enveloped me in plastic. I felt a rush of vertigo as I was lifted high into the
air. Through the gaps between the gigantic fingers, I saw my mother's face for
the first time. Her frenzied eyes were all I saw. I looked up and I saw what
the fingers were attached to. A face, with features like melted wax and plastic.
Two bulging eyes, a pudgy beak-like thing with pulsating holes, and two rows of
white slabs framed by red bands of flesh. A mane of red hair framed its
grotesque face. Fortunately for my sanity, the hands formed a sort of sphere
around my small body and enveloped me in darkness. I could hear the desperate
squawks piercing into my skull, amplified by the darkness of my prison. My beak
opened and I emptied my lungs in an outburst of terror, hoping desperately that
my feeble cries would penetrate the inky darkness. The shaking continued in a rhythmic
thump, shaking me to my bones and drowning out the shrieks of my mother.

Suddenly, the hands
opened and I tumbled out blinking and saw in front of me, a grizzled and ominous
rooster. He was somber looking, with dark drooping feathers that shrouded his
thin frame and head with a ruffle of chestnut feathers that choked his neck in
a bristly collar. A cruel, curved beak supported two fleshy medallions that
hung from his neck like shackles. His eyes were shot with red cracks. The
cloaked bird peered at me from his beak, his crimson crown twitching as he
exhaled softly. I met his gaze with reverence while he seemed disinterested,
like a predator would regard an unappetizing quarry. All of a sudden, he began
to stride forward. Fear clenched my heart. Was I about to die? Frozen in place,
I could only watch as his large form blotted out my sight.

---

 Over the next few days I began
living with the grim-looking rooster in his own little house, the memories of
my birth fading fast. It was sparsely furnished with a large straw nest in the
corner and large bag of feed beside it. That humble place became my home while
the rooster began teaching me how to speak. He would trace letters into the
dirt encrusted floor and then speak them out loud, expecting me to repeat. It
was an agonizing process, which often ended in the rooster painfully cuffing me
across the head and leering down at me with a single beady eye. I railed at my
jailor, screaming at him with words that would intermittently devolve into
gibberish. I longed for the outside. So, so much. Eventually, Pluto tired and
changed his method. He would point out objects in the house and vocalize them.
Finally I began to make progress. In three days' time, I knew how to say his
name. By the end of the fourth week, I could speak full sentences. I remember
seeing the surprise etched on his features and then the small smile that
accompanied it. It could hardly be considered a real smile, more of a small
twitch of the lips, but it melted away all the resentment I felt towards him as
I basked in his pride. With a motion of his wing, he urged me to follow him. My
heart skipped a beat when Pluto neared the closed door. It skipped another as
he beckoned me over before pushing the door open and releasing me to the
brilliant light and air.

 As I stared out into the world in
wonder, Pluto stood next to me, placing a protective wing around my small body.

 "Your name is Charon." He said.
"Welcome to the world."

 Looking up at his face, I cheerfully
chirped.

 "Hello Pluto, my name is Charon."
His thin smile widened
only to vanish as a slamming noise resonated in the air. Both our heads snapped
to the source of the noise and my heart clenched in terror. I could feel Pluto
stiffen and quickly place his own body between me and the disturbance. As I
peeked around his chest, I saw a gigantic wooden panel open on a nearby
structure to the left of Pluto's house. A shape shambled out of the open door.
The shape had a pudgy body, with stick like appendages protruding from the
sides and bottom. I could not see his features, but my mind was resolute. It
was just like that nightmarish monster I saw when I was just a baby. A harsh
nudge to my back galvanized my legs and forced me to move. As Pluto pushed me
back to the house, I could feel tenseness in his voice.

 "Humans," Pluto spat. "Don't let any
of those monsters see you."

His gravelly voice was
tinged with a mixture of disgust and fear. As I sat inside and watched Pluto
close off my portal to the outside world, I felt a sort of relief.

---
 Months went by in a whirl as Pluto
slowly acclimated me to the way my life would play out. We would sleep in his
little shelter until dusk, just after the two humans had retreated back to
their home. Then, as soon as their door closed shut, ours creaked open. Pluto
and I silently crept out of the opening and sat on the grass, positioning
ourselves so that Pluto's house hid us from the tell-tale glow of the human's
windows. It was a lovely routine, to be free of the stuffy miasma of the house
and stretch for a few hours while the rooster simply talked. It didn't really
matter to me what he lectured about, how to avoid chicken-hawks and other
predators but mostly about the types of trees and how they changed according to
the season. I remember occasionally glancing at the foliage of the nearby trees
to give Pluto the impression that I was listening; I thought it was especially
beautiful how the lush green colours would slowly shift to a vibrant, fiery
hue.

"What do you think of
those leaves?" Pluto asked one day.

I shrugged, lifting my
wings and rustling them in indifference.

"They're very pretty."
The rooster snorted.
"How shallow."
"They're leaves.
They're red. They're nice to look at.
What else do you think they are?" I rolled my eyes.

Pluto turned his
feathered head, gazing at the crimson-wreathed branches. With a sigh, he spoke.

"I think they're a
warning."

---
Most of our times
outside followed the same routine, with Pluto pointing out something visible
from our spot in the grass and asking me for my impressions of it. He always
avoided drawing attention to the rickety chicken coop, the tattered roof just
visible from over Pluto's home. I was old enough to know that's where I was
born but Pluto still seemed to think I was too young to go inside. I would try
to wander towards the ramshackle door, drawn in by visions of a crying hen and
a scared child. He always stopped me though from entering the coop with a small
whack on my head and a few stern words eventually pushed the coop from my head.

"Why can't I get this
through your thick head? That place has nothing to offer you, Charon. Don't
bother." Pluto glared at me, his red eyes unblinking.

"What are you hiding,
old man? Why can't I go in?" I glared right back, doing my best to force back
tears from the pain. I stood with my feet firmly planted and met his eyes
angrily. We continued staring, both of us daring the other to look away. Minutes
passed and my legs began trembling, my resolve slowly melting and pooling at my
feet. Just when I was about to break down and apologize, Pluto shuffled forward
and wrapped a ragged wing around me. The rooster was trembling.

"I'm... not trying to
hide anything," He murmured haltingly, as if he were trying to find the words. He
held me a little tighter.

"I'm trying to protect
you. I'm not allowed in there either. Not anymore. The humans would likely kill
us both."

"I hate the humans." I
said sullenly. Feeling my anger dissipate, I leant my head into his side.

Pluto chuckled, his
raspy voice like sawdust. He had a funny laugh.

"So do I."
"Not surprising," In
spite of my best efforts, my lips turned up in a small smile. "You hate almost
everything."

That elicited another
gruff chortle from the rooster. He looked at me and his smile became bitter.

"You're not wrong, I
find this world detestable."

He withdrew his wing a
few seconds later and the evening air snaked through my feathers, making me
shiver.

"We're going back
inside, it's almost dawn." Pluto began walking back home.

"You'll catch a cold or
get eaten by a hawk if we stay here." He added.

I nodded and began
following him.

"One more thing." Pluto
stopped walking and stood still. I stopped as well and looked at him.

"Yes?"
He turned his head and
fixed me with a steady gaze.

"Don't call me old
man."

...
Many more weeks had
passed and Pluto's house became just a little smaller as I grew up. With each
passing day, my thoughts strayed further towards that chicken coop. When we
were outside, I caught myself staring at the building looming ominously in the
half-light but never dared to bring it up again. As far as Pluto was concerned,
the topic was taboo.

It was particularly
freezing day where the winds could be heard whistling through the cracks in the
roof. We had been forced to stay inside for days because the cold had become
murderous and bit through my feathers and into my skin like talons. Even
inside, the chill was present. For the first time in my life, I could not
sleep. Pluto and I were sitting in our home, he was dozing on the shared bed
while I lazily scratched words onto a clean spot of wall with a small piece of
charcoal Pluto scavenged from around the pile of junk by the human's house.
While I wasn't envious of their blatant and wasteful attitude, I did envy their
hands. Bits of dust and black powder often found their way into my throat as I
hacked violently and let the charcoal fall from my beak onto the wooden floor.

SLAM
A splintering crash
snapped me out of my lethargic stupor. The sound echoed in the hollow space of
the house and I immediately knew where it came from. I quietly creaked open the
door and was immediately blinded by the brilliant white. Snow. I remember
learning the word from Pluto but this was the first time I had ever laid eyes
on it. Then I heard the crunching, like eggshells being trampled underfoot.
Feeling dread seize my body, I opened the door further and saw the human. In
its pudgy hand, it clutched a limp figure. My breath lodged in my throat. With
a leg firmly grasped in the human's grip, a hen gawked lifelessly at me through
glazed, dead, eyes. A switch flipped in my head and the floodgates opened.
Memories, long since repressed by the trauma of birth, burst in front of my
eyes.

Mother.
Dead.
The door closed behind
the human and my mother's corpse. Frenzied panic seeped into my head. Grief
wracked my body. My body shuddered in agony. My breath became explosive bursts.
My lungs drew in air.

I screamed.
"Mother!"
I burst from the
doorway, the rusted clasp of the lock slashing into my side as my feet flew
over the snowy powder. Vibrant crimson stained the sterile white snow but
adrenaline strangled any notions of pain.

"Mother!"
 I tripped and stumbled. Head over heels, I
slammed into the ground face first. As I spat out freezing snow, I screamed
again.

"Mother!"
A sharp screech
answered me. For a brief, euphoric moment, I thought she answered me. A second
cry from above shattered any illusions. As I skidded to a halt, I glanced to
the clear, morning sky. With massive wings spread, wicked talons outstretched,
dagger-like beak ready to maim, a hawk dove upon me.

I cried out in terror
and agony as the larger bird landed on me and began tearing into me. I felt my
flesh being shorn from my bones like wet paper. Tears flowed from my eyes as I
whipped my head in a frenzy and wailed in terrified agony. I was going to die.

A thump and a startled
yelp forced my eyes open. As I desperately tried to keep my insides from
spilling out, my wavering vision turned to see Pluto and the hawk in a
blood-fueled frenzy. The hawk's beak snapped at the rooster, tearing into his
side and wrenching feathers and skin from Pluto. With a shriek of pain, Pluto
doubled over. The bird of prey took advantage and plunged down, aiming for the
exposed neck. My heart caught in my throat as time slowed down. The hawk
missed. Pluto scrambled out of the way and buffeted the hawk with powerful wing
beats. Distracted by the multitude of blows, the hawk faltered. Pluto dove in
and began his own vicious onslaught. His own beak ate through the larger bird's
flesh as easily as air and his talons shredded the hawk's vulnerable
underbelly. The fight devolved into a maelstrom of bloodlust. Beaks and talons
tore through skin and into organs. Feathers flew into the air. Red droplets
stained the snow.

With relief, I eventually
saw Pluto stagger away from the motionless, mutilated, and bleeding hawk. But as
I saw his one remaining eye widen in horror and grief, guilt shot through me.

I caused this.
"Charon!" Pluto's
ragged cry tore into my heart. As I watched him limp towards me, his organs
barely contained in his shredded body, I started to cry again.

"Charon!"
When Pluto collapsed
inches away from my feet, still calling my name, I managed to choke out a few
words.

"I'm sorry, so so so
sorry Pluto. I didn't mean-"

My voice petered away
as Pluto gently reached over and placed a shredded wing over my body.

"It's alright," He
croaked in between labored breaths. "I caused all of this. All because I
couldn't control myself."

"What? What do you
mean?"

"This world is
horrible, child. I'm so sorry for bringing you here." Pluto had closed his
eyes, muttering deliriously. "I'm sorry. For you and your mother."

"Pluto!"
The older rooster's eye
opened, a mere slit. He smiled peacefully at me.

"I'm happy though."
Pluto gathered me closer in his embrace.
 Blood
ran like rivers from our wounds and pooled on the ground.

"We'll see each other
soon. Okay? In a much better place, I promise."

He paused, blood
starting to leak from his mouth. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see a
human running towards us, a girl. With fiery-red hair. Another cough from Pluto
forced me to turn to his mangled face again.

"Soon we'll be in a
place where we're free and happy, I swear to you, child. I'll wait for you ok?"

Pluto's eye glazed over
and his smile stiffened.

"I'll wait for you." He
whispered.

"Pluto!"

Source: https://sofurry.com/view/618305