The Real is Returning; Nature is Healing
It was the truck that made me realise there was no such thing as ‘normal.’
It pulled up to a pump alongside me at seven in the morning while I was on my way to work: a massive boxy thing, carrying a herd of sheep. Maybe it was the cold morning air, or some eerie effect of its lights glowing in the mist, or the hundreds of eyes peeking out through gaps in the siding, but I was struck by the contingency of it; I had always known that such things existed, this was the first time I’d ever truly seen one. It moved on and I stared as it disappeared into the mist, unable to put what I had experienced into words. A flash of that feeling returned whenever I saw a livestock truck after that, and it got harder to describe each time, but the realisation remained.
My extended family assumed that their way of life was inevitable and enduring, that every generation until doomsday would have a house and two cars and kids and a regular job – and they called themselves ‘realists.’ Only the doctors and lawyers and soldiers among them had any inkling of the temporariness and fragility of it.
We saw in each other’s eyes that none of us believed in it, but we all behaved as if we did.
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When it started to happen, people died because they stood around doing nothing, dumbfounded. People argued about whether what we were seeing was really what was happening. Patterns were noticed but not comprehended. Explanations were suggested that fell short of actually explaining anything: mutated bird flu; genetic tampering; Satan. The Gaia theories started to gain traction quickly – if Mother Nature wanted to wipe us out, chickens were an ideal agent. They were the most widespread bird in the world, but more importantly, they were ridiculous: that was the advantage they had over things like sharks, or viruses.
Some people died trying to fight back, refusing to suffer the indignity of what was happening. The chickens they managed to kill were the remaining ordinary ones; all they did was make space for the new breed.
They couldn’t bring themselves to talk about it at first, terrified of being laughed at. They were right to be, but not for the reasons they thought. They wondered aloud, after much hesitation, if the chickens had a legitimate grievance. It was indeed a silly thing to ask – not because of the animal itself, because that was immaterial really. Nothing needs a personal motivation to ascend the ladder; power is an end in itself. Humanity didn’t conquer Earth as revenge for being eaten by sabretooth tigers; we just did it because we were able.
I will admit that I laughed when that spokesman said, “These chickens cannot be reasoned with,” though. That was classic.
As chicken attacks became more common, people forgot how to do stuff. They stood dithering at ATMs, helpless, unable to focus, like they were afraid the machines were going to bite them. The bottom had fallen out of the world. Everything was a threat now. Venturing outside for anything became an ordeal, as rumour made labyrinths of our towns.
Those same neighbours of mine who had kept chickens in their back yards were now pressuring me to join a new kind of chicken-specific Neighbourhood Watch programme. They’d found a roost in an old barn just outside the village, and it was up to us to root it out. I asked them what they were trying to hold onto. Did they really believe that their previous lives were just on hold, waiting to be resumed when the ‘crisis’ was over?
Of course, the operation ended badly. The new chickens didn’t strike to kill: they went for the eyes and waited for their disoriented victims to exhaust themselves. The attack on the roost fell apart as combatants broke off to drag the wounded to safety. After that, they stopped calling them ‘chickens’ and started calling them ‘jungle fowl,’ the better to diminish the humiliation of being torn asunder by something whose natural habitat was supposed to be the supermarket freezer.
I couldn’t stop myself laughing when I heard it, and of course, in the whimpering, affronted heart of my once-sedate suburb-in-waiting, they assumed that I was laughing at their comrades’ enucleation.
“Belinda lost both her eyes, you sick fuck!”
“Well, at least you got a moment of thrilling self-righteousness out of it, so she wasn’t blinded for nothing.”
They wanted to hit me, but that wasn’t in them. Instead, they phoned my employer to try to get me fired, only to discover that the company didn’t exist anymore, because most of the city had been evacuated already. There were no evac plans for the satellite villages yet, and reports said the chickens were getting bigger. I took that with a pinch of salt until I spotted one the size of an emu, strutting through a car park with the mangled corpse of a cat in its beak.
A UN team was sent to Harappa, the place where chickens were first domesticated, to see if any clues could be found. There were loads of gaps in the chicken fossil record, and the prevailing theory now was that dormant genes were reasserting themselves, causing the birds to bud teeth and grow thicker claws. The UN lost contact with the team the day before my neighbours decided to evacuate themselves.
They conferred among themselves, and lied to me about what their plans were. I knew that they didn’t want me coming along, and I also knew that none of them would say so to my face, so I only asked to see them squirm. To my surprise, though, one of them dropped the act.
“Why are you like this? You were fine until a few months ago, and then you turned into a cranky jackass. What happened?”
I couldn’t articulate a good answer for him. All I could think of was the sheep-truck in the early morning fog, full of fearful eyes.
“I saw the Real,” was the best I could do.
I watched the convoy head off a day later, with all the good furniture strapped to the roof-racks. Someone had slashed my tyres so I could not follow, but they had not accounted for the awkwardness of packing up while I watched them in total silence. I waved them off and kept watching until the last car had turned up the slipway onto the bypass.
It was then that I truly started living my best life. The imaginary gap between nature and culture had finally been demolished. I raided the neighbours’ houses and took all the stuff they left behind. I spent entire days in bed, reading. I took up painting again. I watched the weeds and wildflowers sprout up through all the neat little lawns and occasionally wandered out to marvel at all the farmland going to meadow.
That’s where I got attacked by a ‘jungle fowl.’ It came running at me out of the tall grass, head and neck stretched out low in front, a thirteen-footer with its toothy beak open in anticipation. I knew it was faster than me, so I climbed trees, tumbled over walls and fences, even crashed through a greenhouse, and it kept after me until I got home again. It kicked at the door for a few minutes, and then tried to break my windows with sundry thrown objects, with little success. Eventually it gave up and slinked away, but my house was marked now; it would circle back to observe the place at least once a day from then on. Out of necessity I became a nomad of sorts, moving randomly from vacant house to vacant house so that the chickens couldn’t follow my routine. I only had one burglar alarm go off on me, and thankfully the noise covered the sounds of my escape even as it drew the chickens’ attention.
Life returned to normal in the end, all right. Just not for us. The village and the surrounding landscape returned to vibrant wilderness, and flora and fauna proliferated. The reign of the whinging naked apes who needed everything neat and tidy was over; the humans who survived were the ones who got over themselves and realised that there was nothing of the old world worth resurrecting.
One of the last announcements before the emergency broadcast systems went dark revealed that the phenomenon was spreading: phasianids all over the world were showing unnatural mutations and heightened aggression, and there were indications that other galliformes would follow suit; after that, the anseriformes, and then who the fuck knows. The rolling fields of tall grass are patrolled by man-eating pheasants and turkeys now, as well as chickens.
And you know what? As long as I keep them occupied by feeding them the bodies of the neighbours who return here to salvage their stuff, I’m the happiest man in the Real.
Jack Fennell is a writer, researcher and anthologist who teaches at the University of Limerick. He is the editor of the anthologies A Brilliant Void (2018) and It Rose Up (2021).