Ellen Datlow - Tails of Wonder and Imagination

As I recalled, the deadline was after dinner. I didn’t count on being elbow deep in dinner when she arrived. “I’m almost done here. I just need to get this stuff off my hands and get the bird in the oven.”

“Why won’t you do it?”

“Can this wait five minutes?”

“I suppose so. I’ve waited five years. We all have. I just can’t believe you won’t…”

I body-slammed the chicken on the counter and splattered oil and tarragon everywhere. “Believe it! No! The answer is no! I don’t even know I can do anything!”

“You’ve never even tried!” She touched my oily hands.

It was an eerie moment, her ivory hand laid upon mine as if it weren’t smeared with goop, oblivious to the globs clinging to her beige silk blouse. I felt like the Swamp Thing. Somebody loved him too, as I recall. I looked into Shannon’s eyes, and there it was again. The light. She wanted me to try out my powers more than she wanted to save her brother. Let’s face it. Some brothers aren’t missed. But people wait their whole lives to witness a miracle. “Is that what this is all about? You just want to see me do it?”

“Certainly not.” She almost persuaded herself. She didn’t even come close to persuading me. Quite the contrary. It was too much. Years of guilt and mystery and feeling like a freak, and now the love of my life wants me to perform like a dolphin jumping through a hoop—while the saved, the eye of the storm, the miracle kitty, isn’t even watching, waiting only to eat some dead bird’s heart, cooked the way he likes.

“It is, isn’t it? It’s driving you crazy. A gen-u-ine miracle. Your boyfriend—with messianic gifts. How cool is that? Here. You want to see?” I scooped up Ben’s innards waiting to be sautéed and shoved them deep inside the bird, grasped its oily breasts in both hands and waggled it in her face, then held it aloft, clamping my eyes shut, filling my mind with visions of a perfect chicken pecking celestial corn, or whatever it is they peck, cackling its head off, or maybe that was me. Shannon backed away in terror, knocking over her stool. I squeezed harder, imagined more vividly, willed more forcefully. “Come on you little fucker, live! Live! Live! ”

And then I felt it, a squirming, writhing wriggling in my hands, and the bird broke loose, erupted from my grasp and hit the countertop, skittering wildly, huge drumsticks pumping footless oiled extremities across Formica. It was amazing how fast the fucking thing could go under the circumstances. Headless, it darted back and forth unpredictably, careening from coffee pot to toaster oven to food processor to bread machine, ricocheting off each white surface with a slimy green stripe. I lunged for it, caught a drumstick, but I couldn’t hold on. It hit the floor with a sickening smack and kept running. Then out of nowhere, an airborne Ben landed on its back, digging his claws in deep. Nothing could slip from his grasp. He opened his jaws wide and sank his fangs repeatedly into the bird’s thighs and chest, tearing away huge hunks of flesh and swallowing them whole, but still the bird struggled. The battle raged on, with the thing writhing to get free until Ben had consumed all but the bones. He stuck his head deep into the chest cavity, pulled out the still-beating heart, and devoured it in one bite.

There was a huge clatter behind me, and Shannon screamed again. She’d already screamed several times, as I recall. It was the stockpot lid hitting the floor. The goddamn neck was trying to leap out of the stockpot like a fish. I grabbed a long fork and harpooned it, tossing it to Ben on the floor, who polished it off in no time. No problem. I had plenty of stock in the freezer.

Ben was covered in green goop, as was I. The Swamp Thing and his Swamp Cat. The floor was a slimy, glistening extra-virgin olive oil lagoon. Dear Rachael Ray, I tried your chicken recipe and wasn’t entirely pleased with the results…

I knelt down and started washing off Ben with a wet towel. He was jazzed, purring like an outboard motor, a prizefighter who’d miraculously gone the distance and defeated the champ against all the odds. Usually he preferred to clean himself, but the prize was worth any indignity. It wasn’t every day he scored an entire six-pound bird for his personal consumption. Shannon and I would have to go out for dinner, I was thinking, or there was always takeout. I was in a tiny bit of denial.

I’d been avoiding looking at her, though that must be her I heard whimpering. Finally, I looked up from my sopping, wild-eyed cat, still hyperventilating, his stuffed gut swelled out like he was pregnant. She was standing in the corner by the kitchen door, backed into the coat rack, still holding an umbrella cocked like a baseball bat. She’d picked it up when the reanimated chicken was headed right for her, before Ben leapt to the rescue. “Still want me to heal your brother?” I asked. In retrospect, not the best thing to say.

She looked at the umbrella as if she had no memory of how she came to be holding it. Judging from the look of terror on her face, she remembered, perhaps too vividly, what had just happened—the bizarre battle that had raged at her feet—two immortals in a battle to the death.

Ben took a step toward her. “It’s okay, Shannon,” he said. “It’s dead now.”

She threw down the umbrella and dashed out of the house. Her car started seconds later and roared off, tires squealing. I’d never known Shannon to drive like that.

“Don’t worry,” Ben said. “She’ll be back.”

“Yeah. What woman can resist us?”

The aroma of tarragon and garlic and death hung heavy in the air. I should mop it up, I thought, but I couldn’t face the prospect of reliving the moment just yet. The one for me, the love of my life, was gone. Ben had wandered off and was licking the floor. Maybe he can make himself sick licking up the residue of this disaster, I thought. But that’s right. He never gets sick. Remember-r-r-r? “I’m going out,” I announced.

Ben knew not to say a word.

I walked over to the barbecue place and had chicken that tasted like vinegar and smoke, fire and brimstone. I drank cheap beer and listened to a steady stream of country and western whine, guy after guy pleading for their lovers to forgive them their sins, hanging on to enough hope to manage three chords and a catchy plea built around some outrageous conceit, but none of their desperate hope was contagious, and I remained hopeless. These guys strayed, lied, drank, whatever—typical fucked-up guy stuff. None of them had ever resurrected a six-pound roaster as a clearly hostile act in the midst of a rational discussion. No. At some point, the weirdness has to set off deeply rooted survival alarm bells to head for the hills and not look back. I didn’t know how anyone could just work around something like the ride Shannon had been on ever since she was just trying to help and made Ben an appointment at the vet.

Somehow I knew this time, maybe for the only time, I was right and Ben was wrong. Shannon wasn’t coming back. I started crying, and the manager came over to tell me I had to leave. I couldn’t believe it. I ate his bad food, listened to his sad songs—whose composers would be out of work if they couldn’t rhyme die, lie, and good-bye with cry, cry, cry—and now he wanted me to leave because of a few tears ? I could’ve done a whole lot worse than tears. I had a good mind to find his walk-in and resurrect his entire inventory, set it loose in the dining room to run amok in his crappy sauce, but of course, I didn’t. Wouldn’t. Ever again.