The Chicken Thing on the Doorstep
Bobby Wright began getting bizarre phone calls on a Wednesday around 9 pm. This was after he had eaten chicken in a variety of ways for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for a full week without realizing it.
"Hello," Bobby said, and when the caller on the line was silent, "Who is this, please?"
"Hello, chicken breath."
"Excuse me?" Bobby said, thinking it was somebody pranking him again.
"You have eaten chicken thrice daily for half a fortnight."
"Who is this, and why are you talkin' like that?" But our friend Bobby realized that he had indeed eaten chicken three times a day, and he used context clues to figure out that a fortnight was two weeks.
The caller replied, in a dreamy, almost singsong cadence: "I have glimpsed vistas hitherto undiscovered by man . . . realms of cyclopean structures presided over by great winged beasts . . . beaks and feathers monstrous in size and shape . . . red combs and wattles miles long . . . chicken thighs Thicker than buildings . . . the eyes of Old Cluckoth oozing with an intellect and malice beyond comprehension . . . ageless, gigantic chicken scratchings etched in exotic stones . . ."
"I'm hanging up."
Bobby hung up and went back to watching TV. As he was watching the sitcom Friends, however, and Rachel and Joey were arguing about who put the human head in the freezer, it dawned on Bobby that he recognized the voice of the caller: It had to have been his old roommate from college, Frederick Barnelby, who, to Bobby's knowledge, had gone on to become a successful ornithologist specializing in chickens. But why was Frederick calling now and how had he known about all the chicken he'd eaten?
The next calls he received from Frederick were not in human language, but more closely resembled the sounds that chickens make.
"Fred, why're you doing this?" Bobby said at one point. "We used to be friends! How did you know I ate so much chicken this week?"
After midnight, there was a knock at the door.
Bobby opened the door to find a large figure there, corpulent, covered in a trench coat, scarves and large hat so that nothing could be seen. The figure handed him a note, and when Bobby grasped it with shaking hands, he found the handwriting to resemble chicken scratch, but otherwise was readable English. It read:
YOU GUESSED RIGHT. I'M YOUR OLD PAL FROM COLLEGE. IT'S ME, FRED. FREDDY BOY. I WAS STUDYING SOME OLD BIRD BONES IN SOME OLD RUINS BUILT BY A CULT OF AN OLD CHICKEN GOD WHEN I SPILLED MY CHICKEN NUGGIES, AND, UH, OH, IT OPENED UP SOME KINDA THIRD EYE BEAK. I COULD SEE AND SMELL MANY THINGS ON EARTH AND BEYOND. 'SPECIALLY IF IT RELATED TO EATING TOO MUCH CHICKEN. WELL, YOU'RE PROBABALLY GONNA BE VISITED BY SOME TRANSCENDENTAL CHICKEN BEINGS SOON. PEACE OUT. GOTTA COLLAPSE IN A PUDDLE NOW.
And sure enough, as soon as Bobby finished reading the note, his old pal from college collapsed in a greasy puddle. The clothes sagged over the amorphous blob, and Bobby shrieked for a full minute, air ripping through his lungs and throat, before running inside and bolting the door.
When the coroner's office examined the mass later, they did identify the remains as having been Frederick Barnelby's body. But inside the putrescent, hideous mass they found some strange items, such as a chicken-like skull the size of a human head.
Credited to Rick_the_Intern
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