“I figured that,” she drawled. “Anyway, why did you start laughing about being in a scary movie?”
I remembered the moment well. After all, it wasn’t every day a girl got kidnapped and ran for her life with only a bra protecting her nipples from the branches and bugs.
“We’d been discussing it before we were kidnapped and how cliché it was when the chick in one of those movies is either naked or partially dressed. When it happened to me, I think my reaction was a coping mechanism because I was scared.
“With a movie, if we freak out during a scene or struggle to watch it, we have choices on how to get through it. Going through it in real life and not knowing what the guys were going to do next… I guess I just wanted to make the situation semi-tolerable for us both.”
I’d come to that conclusion months after it happened to me, but it’d affected my mental state for a long time. Add it onto what my family went through for years at the hands of a petty asshole with a pathetic grudge, and it’d taken me a long time to function in a way I thought was ‘normal.’ Well, normal for someone from my family, which was likely classed as ‘fucking insane’ for the rest of the world.
A familiar hand clasped my shoulder and the thumb swept up and down the back of my neck. I called it the Montgomery Move, one that he’d perfected over the years that calmed me down or made me feel protected.
Cyn smiled softly up at me. “Well, I think you’re a damned hero. I’d have lost my mind if I’d been in your shoes. Then again, I don’t know how my sister managed to cope with being shot in the leg either.”
Jacinda had been uncharacteristically quiet until this point. “You never know how you’ll react until you’re in a specific situation.”
That’s the thing. No one ever knows how they’ll react to anything until they’re going through it. Hell, I didn’t know how I would react after I walked through the salon, canceling on clients again until I’d managed to shower and get some clean clothes. That didn’t even take into account the possibility of other things happening that could affect my reaction.
What if I did do a Marilyn Monroe? What if I slipped and ripped the bag? What if I got stopped on the way home, and they frisked me?
Who knew what could happen?
One thing I did know was that I didn’t want to be as harsh with Mark as I’d been previously. In fact, I was kicking myself for it. He could still have meant he was relieved we hadn’t gotten pregnant at the time, but maybe he hadn’t meant that?
We could never truly move forward in life until we’d made peace with our pasts and the things in them that we disliked or that hurt us. I was going to have to do that soon.
The next morning…
Crispy was dead. I wasn’t going to fry him or make him into a tasty meal, I was just going to kill him and rejoice in the peace and quiet.
Storming over to my window, I didn’t bother opening the curtains before I thrust open the same one I’d opened the previous day, fully expecting him to be behind the one he’d been standing outside of yesterday.
Except, no, the awkward clucking bastard just wanted to ruin my life that little bit more. The way I found this out was feeling a thump against the glass, and when I looked closely at it, I saw the outline of what looked like a ghost chicken. I could make out a lot of the features, like the comb on his head, that little weird testicle bit under his chin, his beak, and the outline of his feathers, in what looked like grease or a fine powder of some sort.
Being sleep-deprived never worked well for me, so it took me a moment of staring and blinking for what it could mean to hit me.
I’d just knocked my niece’s chicken off my window ledge, likely plummeting him to his death right next to my porch.
“Oh, shit!”
Peering over the ledge, I expected to see some sort of chicken massacre—like a pancaked rooster on the floor, his feathers being ruffled by the wind—but there was absolutely nothing.
Grabbing my phone, I ran down the stairs to the front door, totally freaking out, as the possibility of Crispy’s fate changed in my mind.
“What if he’s paralyzed from the top of his wings down and is using his beak to pull his poor body across the grass? He could be trying to get home, so he dies with the people who love him, and it’ll all be my fault,” I wailed, throwing the door open.
It happened the second my foot touched the ground in front of the door—a weird crushing noise, followed by something hot and wet. Then a sharp pain shot up the middle of my foot, making me cry out.
I’d just stood on the paralyzed chicken. I knew it. The sound was like when I crushed a box, and there was no way he’d survive that.
I couldn’t look down. I just couldn’t do it.
Remembering my phone in my hand, I unlocked it with my hands shaking and rang my brother.
“Ren,” I rasped when he answered, “I need you. Something awful happened. I just paralyzed your chicken and stood on him.”
I didn't look down for the whole two minutes it took for him to get to me. I couldn’t look down.
I couldn’t face seeing myself wearing the poor guy like a slipper.