//------------------------------// // Waning Gibbous // Story: Flew The Coop // by Bandy //------------------------------// The hole in the chicken coop’s protective wire mesh was twice as wide as a pony. Artemisia let the bag of feed slide off his back. The anger started slow, a faint nagging feeling like the first moment of wake when he realized he’d slept through his alarm. Except instead of missing breakfast, six of his chickens were dead. Well, three were definitely dead. He counted another twenty survivors strutting around the coop, blissfully unaffected. That meant another three were missing. He didn’t have to think too hard about where they’d gone. He set the bag of feed down and went back upstairs to his bedroom. His thoughts grew darker one stair at a time. Only once the anger was out completely could the grief set in. Things like this needed time. He knew from experience. In his bedroom, mangled chains and leather restraints littered the floor. A few were still attached to the bedpost. The one he’d drilled into the wall last week had been ripped out, along with a large chunk of plaster. So many were broken in so many places, it was impossible to determine where the first failure had occurred. That wasn’t entirely true, though. Failure started with him. Not taking enough precautions. Not sending his chickens away to Fluttershy’s like he usually did. Full moons came once every twenty eight days, like clockwork. He should have been ready. He should have known better. Burying the dead and patching the wire took him the better part of the morning and left him caked in dirt and simmering with self-loathing. By the time he left for the Ponyville Hardware and Artisanal Sauce store to pick up fresh chains and belts for some rudimentary restraints, he’d all but boiled over. The cashier, a distant cousin named Beauty Blush who lived a few blocks down from him, gave him a worried look as he placed his items on the conveyor belt. He set a silver hatchet down a little more forcefully than he meant to, and she flinched. “You, uh.” Blush coughed. “You okay, Arty?” “Fine,” he said automatically. “How’re you.” “Good.” She looked down at the leather belts and padding and chains, and she raised an impeccably-plucked eyebrow, the top of an accusatory question mark. “Heard from the fam lately?” “No.” He’d never seen kindness in her eyes. Only a mixture of distaste and concern, like she was weaving an elaborate conspiracy theory as to why it was his fault she peaked in high school. “Did something happen today?” she asked. “Yeah. Something got into the chicken coop. I lost six hens.” “Ah. So that’s–” she pointed to his chest. “That’s not your blood, then?” Artemisia looked down and noticed several pronounced smears of chicken blood running across his moonlight-silver coat. Heat bloomed in his cheeks. He’d been so caught up in fixing his failures he’d forgotten to clean himself off. After a scalding shower and a series of pills, Artemisia went to work on a new experiment. He strung thin-gauge metal wire at even intervals around the freshly-rewired chicken coop, then affixed the end to an air horn aimed at the house. If something so much as brushed against the wire, it would put stress on the wire and pull the trigger on the air horn. Sound deterrence. But building the trap burned precious daylight. By the time he returned to his bedroom and started rebuilding his restraints, the afternoon sun hung low in the sky, an anvil tied to a fraying string. The restraints Artemisia used on himself were ruggedly practical and devoid of any semblance of aesthetics. Workwear belts looped through heavy chains. A sixty pound boat anchor on a bike lock with open zip ties waiting to rip shut around his leg. Thin-gauge metal wire wrapped around the bedframe and padded with duct tape and kitchen towels. No wall-mounted restraints this time around. Not enough time to fix the hole in the wall. Not enough time to do anything. As twilight loomed, he stepped back to examine his work. The results, frankly, sucked. They’d last ten minutes, twenty tops. No chance they’d last the night. Maybe they will, he forced himself to think. The moon’s not full anymore. Maybe it’ll be enough. That evening, he stepped over his trap and went into the coop to feed his hens. One of them, a shy hen named Shirley, would only eat out of his hoof. Artemisia spread seed on one side of the coop for the rest of the birds, then sat down on the other side to feed Shirley. “There there,” he cooed. Shirley made little clucking sounds back at him as she ate. He couldn’t speak chicken, but he was pretty sure that meant, Thank you. Shirley was getting up there in years. She barely laid eggs anymore. But Artemisia had never put a chicken out to pasture because of a silly little thing like egg production, and he didn’t plan on doing it now. His gaze turned north. In the waning light, he could see the dark blob of the Everfree forest a quarter of a mile away. He couldn’t deny the wilderness had a certain pull. It was part of why he’d moved to Ponyville in the first place. Maybe it was his unusual situation. Maybe it was just a penchant for extremes. No one’s eating chicken tonight, he thought to himself. The sound of the air horn ripped Artemisia from his dreams. He was still in his bed. Still secured. Good. But if he hadn’t triggered the alarm, who had? He lost precious seconds undoing the locks and cutting the zip ties. Hatchet in hoof, flashlight in mouth, he raced towards the coop. His mind whirled with confusion. If not me, who? The rush of running towards an enemy in the dark blinded him, quite literally, and he almost tripped over the deer lying on the ground beside the coop. “What–the heck–was that–” the deer wheezed. His dazed, dark eyes flashed to Artemisia. Then the ax. Artemisia moved the flashlight into the side of his mouth and said, “Why were you trying to break into my coop?” “I wasn’t–oh jeez–do you have any water?” “No. Chicken killers don’t get water.” “Hello? Deer? Herbivore?” The deer took another gasping breath. “You’re the only killer out here. Scaring me half to death with that noise machine.” He snorted. “And what are you doing with that ax?” The adrenaline drained from Artemisia’s blood. An anvil of tiredness dropped on his back. “So you weren’t trying to break into my chicken coop?” “No! I’m training for a marathon. I was just running through your yard.” He propped one leg up, then another. At full height, the deer was a head taller than Artemisia, not counting the impressive rack of antlers on his head. “Some neighbor you are.” “Look, I’m sorry. I’m dealing with something–” “Yeah, you’re dealing with something, alright. When winter comes, I’m scratching my antlers on your trees.” With that, the deer shook the dew off his coat and bounded off into the dark. Artemisia let out a deep breath and sank to his haunches. That had been a bust, but it was at least comforting to know his booby trap actually worked. A tired smile came over his face. Yeah. That was just a proof of concept. A test of the system. So when the real monster came, he knew he could rely on it to work as intended. He turned to go inside only to feel a lance of searing pain fall across his back. He fell to the ground, mouth frozen open in mute agony. The pain came faster than a forest fire and clung like lit tar to his coat. He rolled over as it spread to his face. His fur was turning black, his eyes were on fire, the irises turning red and swelling until he was certain they’d pop. The moon peered out from behind the clouds, so close to full. Artemisia screamed in terror and raced inside. He flung himself up the stairs and desperately started slipping on the restraints. The zipties were all cut. He hadn’t bothered to replace them before his mad dash outside. Stupid. One foreleg split apart as he tried to belt it. The metal buckle snapped. No worries. He could use the clawed fingers now sprouting from his hoof to restrain his legs. He got both legs cinched down, peeling ribbons of fur from his skin in the process. He held his one hooved foreleg down and leaned on the belt with all his weight. A searing seam split his spine into pieces. He arched his back. The leather groaned. His gums boiled. Teeth cracked. In the moments before he lost consciousness, he heard the strangely muffled sound of his own bones breaking inside him. He’d gotten three limbs restrained. That was admirable. But it wasn’t enough. Morning came, another pristine Ponyville summer day. If he’d been in his bed, Artemisia would have felt the sun just barely tickling the tips of his hooves. He could flick his tail so it fell on his belly and feel the warmth locked in the hairs. Instead, he woke up with the light just under his eyes. Pain thrummed from his head all the way down to the base of his back. He felt the scratchy couch cushions beneath him, noticed a few copper-colored stains he’d have to wash out later. He’d really done a number on himself this time. Artemisia stayed on the couch all morning. The sun traced a slow finger down his neck, then to his side. He didn’t bother moving until it touched the bump of his hip bone. He took his hoof out from underneath him and touched a warm sunspot on the couch. An image of a hot skillet crossed his mind. Something wet plopped into it and sizzled. He burst into tears. Outside, something darker than dew glistened in the grass. Mangled chicken wire curled in on itself. Beyond that laid the decapitated head of Shirley the hen. Beauty Blush gawked at the leather lashing and lanterns and metal wire on the conveyor belt without bothering to contain her distaste. “So, uh. Having a party?” “Stop it.” The pleasant muzak coming from the hardware store’s loudspeakers grated on Artemisia’s ears. His tail flicked erratically back and forth. He was painfully aware how the bags under his eyes made him look crazy. But he was going crazy. It was a perfectly natural response to the deaths of his chickens. This was reasonable. But Beauty Blush didn’t seem to think so. Not from the look on her face, anyway. She rang him up without a word, then turned to her supervisor and asked, “Mind if I take my fifteen?” The supervisor nodded, and she undid her apron and walked around to the other side of the conveyor belt. “Let’s get a coffee,” she said. “I got work to do.” “You’ll work better if you have some coffee first.” In truth, coffee sounded good. He hadn’t really slept all that much, so some liquid focus couldn’t do any harm. With a sigh of acceptance, he nodded and let Blush lead him out the door and across the street to one of the town’s new StarBucks locations. Blush took a long, slow sip of her frappuccino, smacking her lips for effect, then said, “Can I be candid with you, Arty? You look like you’re about to snap.” “Sue me. I’m stressed.” He passed an iced americano from hoof to hoof. “My chickens are getting killed.” “But is this really about the chickens?” “Uh. Yeah. It is.” She tilted her head. “Is it?” His crazy eyes must have gotten a little too crazy for comfort, because she backed off almost instantly. “Okay. Okay. Totally just about the chickens.” She took another sip. “I saw your parents the other day.” “Oh.” “They came by the store for a new garden hose. They seem to be doing well. Their flowers are coming in.” He couldn’t help but laugh out loud. “Good for them.” “I told them about your chicken problem, and we all–” “You told them?” He jerked his hoof. Coffee sloshed over the rim. “Why’d you do that?” “Cuz it’s so you. We all had a good laugh over it. Just Arty being Arty.” “It’s not funny. Something’s killing my chickens. Half the time, it’s not even eating them. I know what it looks like when a coyote gets in the coop and eats a chicken. I’ve seen it. This is malicious.” Blush reached the bottom of her frappuccino. Silent sips turned to burbles. She tore off the lid and tipped it up. The decorative cherry on top fell into her mouth. She chewed, swallowed. Then she said, “This is why no one from the family talks to you anymore, Arty.” Artemisia flared his nose. “Excuse me?” “I’m telling you this cousin to cousin, because I care about you. I want you to get better. But you get fixated on these little things, and you let them take over your life. You go crazy.” “I’m not crazy. Something’s–” “I know, the chickens. It’s sad.” She paused, something uncertain on the tip of her tongue. Then it tipped. “This isn’t the only unhealthy thing you’re fixating on, Arty.” Artemisia stood up so violently his chair fell backwards. The whole coffee shop turned to watch him storm out.