by Joy Carletti
Photo: © Depositphotos.com/dima_sidelnikov
for Cora M.
Task: Kill my chicken, Norman. Cook Norman (you can decide how to cook him. I don’t care how, but it needs to be a gluten free recipe. I own the America’s Test Kitchen Gluten Free cookbook if you need ideas.) Then leave, you don’t even have to clean up, I know how I like my kitchen so don’t worry about it. It’s not a hard task really. I just find I can’t kill and cook a chicken that I raised from being a baby chick. Sorry. Thanks.
Pay: $35/hr
—
Killing the chicken had been surprisingly easy. Hilary had googled how to do it and came up with several methods, but the chicken seemed ready to die. When she brought out the makeshift chicken cone, Norman inserted his head quite willingly and almost sighed as she cut his jugular with a butcher knife.
“I’m sorry, chicken… er, Norman. I mean, I guess you’re old and stuff. It seems unfair. But, like, everyone has to die. And that nice old lady has to eat.” Hilary watched the chicken bleed out. It didn’t move, didn’t flap around or struggle like the internet warned it was going to do. It just lay there. Perfectly happy to die.
She started to butcher.
The moment the chicken’s head was off, Hilary started hearing the voice. It was a strong masculine voice, like George Clooney but with a vaguely Jewish accent. Or maybe German, Hilary was bad with accents.
“She’s done this before, you know. You’re in for it. You’ll leave this house an empty shell of yourself.” It ended with a depressed sigh. The voice was like an old man at a senior center trying to sound sinister but utterly failing.
Hilary quit her feather plucking for a moment and looked around. She tried to evaluate the situation analytically. Normal house. Bright kitchen, granite countertops. Too bright? Nah. Was it weird that the lady – Cora? – kept her chicken in an elaborate oversized birdcage in her den? Maybe, sure. But that totally explained why she couldn’t kill the chicken. Was it weird that Cora just left her to kill Norman? No, certainly not. That was the point of hiring a Tasker to do a Task: you don’t have to do it. Or be there while it’s done. So this was just a perfectly normal chicken killing.
But Cora hadn’t mentioned anyone else was in the house. So who was the voice? And was it just a New York accent? Like in a Woody Allen film? And if so, what borough?
Hilary shook her head and began to pluck again, dropping feathers in the compost bin.
“You could be gentler, you know.” The voice seemed really put upon now.
Hilary paused. “I’m sorry? Am I hurting the dead chicken?”
A throat cleared. “You never know what someone feels when they’re dead. Imagine what your next life might be. You could be a sheep. Or a goldfish. Or a crocus flower. Think about what you’d feel as a crocus flower.”
Hilary jerked out a handful of feathers. “I don’t really need to examine my life right now. Cora only agreed to pay me for three hours work and this chicken needs to roast for over an hour so… time’s a-wasting. I mean, I don’t even know who you are.”
The voice sighed deeply. “Oh sweetie. I’m Norman.”
Hilary abruptly stopped plucking. “What the – what?”
“I’m Norman. I’m the chicken. And thanks for stopping, that plucking was not pleasant at all.”
Hilary stared at the chicken, then at the room at large. “You can’t be the chicken. You’re dead. And a chicken.”
“Well, there was a point at which I was a philosophy professor. Then I was an anteater briefly until an encounter with a puma ended that. Then I was a German shepherd. Then the chicken bit, which has been unpleasant at best. Hmph. I imagine I will be something else now.” The voice – er, Norman – seemed hopeful at that last bit.
Hilary sat down hard in the teal kitchen chair. The kitchen seemed much too bright now, too cheerily colored. Nothing seemed right about any of this. She wondered momentarily if she was on Candid Camera. She peered around briefly but nobody jumped out at her. Where the hell was Cora? And what was that accent??
“Uh, Norman, I think you might just be a ghost now. I mean, if it works that way. Does it work that way? Holy shit, I’m asking for afterlife information from a dead chicken.” Hilary dropped the half-plucked chicken in the roasting pan and began pacing the kitchen.
“As I said, I taught philosophy, so you needn’t fret. You’re not making bad choices, sweetie. Hmm. I’ve never been a ghost. This is an interesting development. Though… I really would rather not haunt this house. This is not a good place.”
Hilary looked into the roasting pan, as if the chicken carcass could give her some solace. “What’s so bad about this house?”
“I probably shouldn’t have said anything.”
“What the hell, Norman, we’re having dialogue here! Don’t clam up.”
“Okay. You got hired to come here and do an easy, menial task, right? Off craigslist or TaskRabbit or some such site, because that’s what Cora does. She hires people, and she pays them well, because she knows they lack confidence in the job, because it only sounds menial; it’s actually quite complex.” Norman’s voice was revving up in intensity, and oddly, the chicken was sort of shaking in the pan. “And she’s made it sound like quality doesn’t matter. And so you came and you set upon that job, even though it’s weird and you’re probably a nice girl who doesn’t normally kill chickens. And in a couple hours you would have texted Cora and told her you were done and she would have come back and yelled at you about your poor butchery and terrible skills and sloppy cookery and bad recipe. Because CORA is really a closet dominatrix who has no friends. Or rather, she’s a dom who doesn’t know how to go about finding a submissive. So she just hires people to yell at. They always leave here crying, miserable, shells of the people who came in. And being her pet chicken in that environment has been agony!”
Hilary could stand it no more. “What the heck kind of accent IS that?”
“Really? That’s the only thing you got out of that?”
“I’ve been wondering for a while.” Hilary bit her lip.
Giant sigh. “It’s Brooklyn. I thought everyone knew what a Brooklyn accent was. Now go buy a rotisserie chicken, pass it off as your work, and you get to retain your own dignity. Then I… well, I guess I’ll haunt her. ”
Hilary delicately shook one wing in the pan, smiling. “Deal.”
Joy Carletti is a writer, improviser, and actor in the SF Bay Area. Despite what amazon claims, her work can actually be found in Bare-Knuckled Lit: The Best of WRITE CLUB. Seriously, her piece starts on page 108. I’m not sure why you think she’s lying about this. If it’s an issue, tweet her at @laughatlantis.