Layla (Cheap Thrills #9)

Chapter 5

Chapter Five

Layla

F or some inane reason, my brother had allowed his wife and kids to get chickens and a rooster. Sounds great, right? And sure, they weren’t serial killers like Evie’s, but they were still psychos. In fact, it’s fair to say, every member of my family who owned poultry ended up with freaks. It didn’t help that one of my cousins’ wives named hers Bojangles and KFC, but could they even understand that?

Anyway, these chickens were cute until you walked past them, then they practically stalked you. That wasn’t so bad, but the fucking rooster , Gilbert, was the reincarnation of Steve McQueen in the Great Escape .

I don’t know how he managed it, but every now and then, he’d break out of the giant roost they had and would end up in the trees that bordered our property. Incidentally, my house was the closest to those trees, so when he decided to wake the world up at the ass crack of dawn, I heard it like he was in my house.

For a few of them, I could swear he was inside my home when he did it, then jumped out the window, and ran or flew up the tree afterward.

Ren and Maya’s kids had been screaming and crying the first time it happened, adamant he was going to fall and die, but after the second or third time, they just thought it was cool. So far, the highest he’d gone on a tree was roughly fifty feet off the ground—most likely when he jumped out of my house.

People could tell me he hadn’t broken in and then back out again until they were blue in the face, but they were wrong.

And this morning, the little bastard was doing it again, right next to my bedroom window.

I was going to cut all the trees down and make a trap like they did in the movies. I’d dig a pit, cover it with foliage, and when Gilbert walked over it, he’d fall into the hole and be stuck for…

Wait, I didn’t have any trees right outside my bedroom window. At the back, sure, but my bedroom? How was he so close to my room?

Hearing him crow again, I threw the covers back, tiptoed to the window, and peaked around the curtain. Sure as shit, the little asshole was right there on the ledge outside my bedroom window.

Glancing around the room for something to catch him in, I almost screamed when I couldn’t get my brain to help me figure out my sinister plan. That was until I stopped on my pillows and realized I could use one of the cases to catch him. They put snakes in them and then tied them up and carried them with those grabber things… it’d totally work on a cock.

Pulling the pillow out of the case, I moved back to the window, and as slowly as possible, I moved the curtain back. Instead of jumping off like I expected him to, Gilbert stayed where he was, his beady eyes on every move I made. Christ, he was freaky.

As slowly as I’d dealt with the curtains, I opened the opposite side of the window to where he was standing, relieved we’d put in the split panels instead of those all-in-one types. That probably wasn’t the right name for them, but they were what they were, and at one point in my life would I ever need to know the correct terminology for freaking windows?

“Hey, Gilbert,” I cooed, putting my hand out and making kissy noises. “Thank you for waking me up this morning. I really appreciate it when you do that.”

His head tilted from side to side as he stared at me, but he didn’t move his body.

“I’ve got a super comfortable pillow case for you to lie on, buddy. Why don’t you give it a try?”

I opened the case and nodded at it with my head.

“Give it a go.”

It was a test of wills for the next couple of minutes—Gilbert’s and mine. I wanted him in the pillowcase, and he just wanted to stay where he was.

To prove this, he puffed out his feathers and crowed loudly, only roughly one foot away from my face. See? Asshole.

As he went to do it again, I sat one of my butt cheeks on the sill, grabbed the case firmly, and launched my arms out to get it over his head and body, almost tipping myself out of the window and plummeting me to my death. Somehow I didn’t fall and die, and somehow I caught him.

Pulling him back in through the window and slamming it shut, I held it out in front of me while I looked at the lump of cock inside it.

“Huh, that was anti-climactic, Gilbert. I expected you to put up a fight or do some sort of escape move.”

That’s when shit went really wrong.

Forty minutes later…

I could tell when it was one of my nieces or nephews at my door by the pattern and the force they used when they knocked on it, and it usually made me smile. This wasn’t a regular morning, so I groaned and dragged my feet the whole way over to it.

Pulling it open, I froze when I saw a teary and distraught Crystal.

“Aunty Lala, we don’t have a Gilbert anymore,” she wailed, throwing herself at me and sobbing into my thighs.

Looking at my brother, I blushed when he saw all the scratches and scuffs on me.

“Did you get another cat?”

I missed my cat. I’d had a munchkin kitty until it died two years ago from breed-related problems. To be fair, I’d got it because I wanted to stop someone from ever breeding it in the first place, but still.

I’d gone to sleep one night with him wrapped around my head like he usually did, and I’d woken up the following day to find out he’d passed away in his sleep. I still felt sad when I thought about him.

I still had my house-trained Continental Giant rabbit, though. Skippy was fantastic and had the freedom to hop around the ground floor all day, every day, because he went potty in a litter tray. I’d consulted specialists online when I’d got him and had put entertainment down and made a special place for him to sleep in the pantry where he’d feel safe.

Now, he hopped around doing his own thing, and when he wanted attention, he let me know. He’d also grown up with my brothers' dogs and pets, so nothing fazed him, really. Well, so long as he had his own space to return to when he was done socializing.

Having an oversized bunny who pooped and peed in a litter tray had initially attracted a lot of attention from my family, with questions about my sanity and emotional state. But one brother had a tiny horse who slept on his lap, another had a pet turkey, and there was a micro pig was in the mix, too. A giant rabbit was nothing in comparison.

What I didn’t have was anything that’d scratch me up like I was now, so my brother’s question was valid.

Waving them in, I shut the door. “Nope, no kitty, I’m afraid. Would y’all like anything to drink? I was just about to make some co—”

The little feathered traitor did his crowing shit at that moment, letting them know where he was. That little narc!

“That’s Gilbert,” Crystal cried. “He’s in the tree again.”

Ren looked around the place with a frown. “It didn’t sound like it came from outside.”

A sudden idea hit me. “Why don’t you go and check upstairs? I told you he’s capable of breaking into my house. Maybe if you find him, you’ll believe me next time.”

Giving me an exasperated look, he took the stairs two at a time, and then he disappeared, leaving me with a relieved niece.

“You drink coffee yet?” I joked, pushing her hair off her forehead.

“No, silly. I’m too little,” she giggled.

“Huh. What about a beer?” Crystal shook her head, still laughing. “Wine?”

“Is it the pink stuff?”

Her question shocked me for a moment. “How do you know about pink wine?”

“Mommy drinks it. She says white’s too bitter and red gives her a sore head, so she drinks the pink one. Why’s the white one bitter? Do you get a headache, too?”

“Only when I drink too much. Now, how about some apple or orange juice?”

She looked at me like she was assessing me for something. “Why do you have lots of cuts?”

“Umm, I got new soap?” She was five, what did she know?

Except I was wrong. “Why would the soap cut you?”

I grasped at the first excuse that hit me. “Because it has stuff in it that takes off all the old skin. Beauty people call it exfoliant.”

The asshole—soon to be known as ‘Extra Crispy Recipe’—flew down the stairs, his wings flapping like he was fighting against a hurricane.

“Found him in your room,” Ren explained as he joined us and opened the door so Crispy could get back out. “Seems he managed to open the window and close it.”

“I told you he could do that,” I said, smiling smugly at him.

Crystal said a quick goodbye, then ran out and chased after Gilbert/Crispy, yelling at him to get home. Their house was right in front of mine, but we had a reasonable distance for privacy reasons between us, so we watched her as she did it.

“Funny thing—he took the pillow out of your pillowcase. He must have been in it at some point but managed to get out and do some damage.”

Shiiiit.

“I told you he was a Houdini. Maybe you should give him to a farm or something so he can live the rest of his life safely?”

Ren’s lowered his eyes to my arms, where the worst of my cuts were. “There was also blood on the pillowcase.”

“Maybe he cut himself and used it to stem the bleeding? You should take him on a talent show, you’d wow the American people with that party trick.”

My brother crossed his arms over his chest and stared at me. Avoiding eye contact, I fought against the impulse to rub over the stinging scratches that covered me from the middle of my thighs to my chin. That was one pissed chicken when he didn’t get his own way.

Finally, unable to put up with his staring, I shouted, “Okay, fine, I caught the little clucker. He was right outside my window, Ren, and I still swear blind he gets into my house and crows right next to my ear.”

Shaking his head slowly, he lowered his arms. “Clean those cuts up, and next time, just yell at him to go home.”

“I’ve tried that,” I ground out. “Crispy’s an asshole who—”

His laughter stopped my rant mid-sentence. “You nicknamed him Crispy?”

“Well, it’s technically Extra Crispy Recipe, but Crispy for short.”

Still laughing, he moved past me to the door. “It suits him, I like it. Now, go clean the cuts and get ready for work. I’ve got to check in on Cole and fill him in on what he did yesterday.”

A glance at my watch showed it was still really early. “Are you sure you should wake him up this early? It’s not even six o’clock yet.”

“After yesterday, I’m tempted to lock him in a room with Crispy for a whole week. Mom and Dad’s phone hasn’t stopped ringing.”

“How come?”

“Some of the people who were in the waiting room are slightly traumatized by what they saw. There have been complaints from people about the minister being quiet and not as talkative as normal, some of the kids have been drawing things that look like something out of the movie The Ring , and a couple of the older women want us to contact them the next time he has medication.”

“Gross!”

“Yeah, so he’s got some shit coming to him.” The smile on his face said he had something prepared.

“What did you do?” I asked suspiciously, pointing at his face. “You’ve got that evil big brother look.”

“Oh, nothing,” he said breezily as he walked out of my house. As he got to the bottom step of my porch, he shouted over his shoulder, “But he’s got some great texts waiting for him. The security at the hospital were nice and sent me a copy of the footage from their cameras. Can you believe one was pointing right at Cole when he bent over?” I gasped and covered my mouth.

“We also got some from the camera pointed at the junction where he hit the stop sign and made him into a gif.” At that, he turned and walked away from me, heading toward our brother’s house.

Better him than me. There are some things you’d never recover from, and that’d be one of them for me.

I’d just finished cleaning up after my final client before lunch when Jacinda came into the room.

“How’s Cole after yesterday?”

“They finally released him last night after the worst of it passed.”

Her lips twitched, but I couldn’t hold it against her. “Did he really bend over and show the hospital his ass hole? That’s the rumor, but there’s also one that he wrote his name with his ball sack on the glass window next to the waiting room.”

Sadly, that wasn’t an impossibility.

“No, he did that last year. This time, he was proving he could touch different parts of his body, and when he got to his knees and toes, it kind of went wrong because he didn’t have any underwear on.”

Jacinda choked on a chuckle that she tried to repress. Pressing her fist against her mouth, she breathed deeply. “I’m so sorry. I don’t want to sound like a bitch, so I’m doing my best not to laugh.”

“Go ahead. Unless you’re the new minister or one of the people traumatized by it, it’s kind of funny.”

She covered her face with her hands as her shoulders shook this time. “Stop! I heard the minister hardly slept last night, and he ordered more holy water.”

Amateur.

“He obviously hasn’t dealt with my brothers before, then. Holy water doesn’t make you feel any better, trust me. I once tried drinking it straight from the thing they use in the church to hold it.”

There was a pig-like snorting noise. “Shit.”

Picking up my purse, I moved past her to the door. “I’m going to go and get something to eat from the deli. Do you want anything?”

I was facing her as she listed some suggestions, and as I backed through the door, I didn’t see the person standing behind me. The first indication someone was there, in fact, was when I heard a deep voice curse as I bumped into them, followed by something icy spilling from the middle of my butt down to my feet, where it made a splashing noise on the tiled floor.

Jacinda’s eyes dropped and widened as she took in the mess, while I shuddered at the awful feeling of it soaking through my thin white pants and underwear. Hoping it was just water, I carefully looked down and tried to make sense of what I was seeing. Splashes of what looked like thick chocolate seemed to be everywhere, but the worst was the pool of it between my legs.

“Is that chocolate?”

“It’s the Three Musketeers milkshake you like from the diner,” a deep voice corrected. “There are even the tiny chunks of chocolate in it.”

“I guess it’s true what they say, you really shouldn’t wear white after Labor Day,” Jacinda murmured, watching as drops of the beverage slid off my ass and joined the quickly melting pool on the ground.

“Hey, guys, did yo— Oh, sweet shit, what the hell did you do?” a voice squeaked behind me, and I closed my eyes and groaned when I realized our friend Cyn had joined us.

“She had an accident,” Jacinda said, coughing at the end of it, and I just knew she was fighting not to laugh.

“Hey, no judging coming from me. Shit happens, although the saying isn’t usually this literal.” Cyn paused, “Or is it? Maybe it is, but I’ve just never had to use it this literally.”

“It’s not my shit,” I ground out, shuddering when I shifted and felt the milkshake covering my bottom half in new ways. God, it was awful.

“If you say so.” It wasn’t said sarcastically by Cyn. Her tone sounded more like she was distracted by something. Then again, if I were staring at what she was, I’d probably be distracted, too. “Hey, doesn’t it look like one of those drawings you did at school where you poured paint onto a piece of paper, folded it in half, and pressed down? I hated it when mine looked like a butterfly because everyone’s looked like that, but I did get a six-legged giraffe once.”

There was silence from all of us for a long moment after that. I couldn’t speak for Mark and Jacinda, but I was trying to picture what a six-legged giraffe would look like.

“Don’t they use those for psychological tests?” Jacinda finally asked. “I think I saw that once.”

“Six-legged giraffes?” Sadie questioned. “Hey, why does the brown stuff have tiny lumps in it? I want to say it’s a chocolate milkshake or cocoa, but the lumps are throwing me off.”

“It’s tiny pieces of Three Musketeers bar. Layla loves the milkshakes they do at the diner, and they came up with this one for her when we were kids,” Mark told her. “I’ll get some paper towels to clean this up with.”

Hearing the squeak of his boots on the tiles move away from us, I closed my eyes with frustration. How the hell shit like this happened, I didn’t know, but here I was, looking like I’d had a blowout or something.

There was a slightly louder noise which made me squeeze my eyes shut.

“Oh, there goes the straw,” Cyn pointed out. “I wondered when that little bugger would quit holding on and just give up the ghost. Hey, why didn’t they put a lid on the cup?”

“I think it’s under the shake,” Jacinda wheezed, and I dropped my head to look down at the rapidly melting puddle on the ground.

“Ah,” she muttered, “makes sense.”

“I was just coming to ask if Layla had time to come with us for lunch because she’s working back-to-back trying to do today’s customers and yesterday’s when this happened,” Jacinda explained, her eyes constantly dropping back down to the puddle.

“I don’t know how it’s getting worse, but I feel like the melting’s just making it look like you’ve got dysentery or something.”

“I’d spread your legs a bit farther apart,” Cyn advised. “It’s almost at your shoes now.”

I shot her a flabbergasted look over my shoulder. “Are you serious? It’s already on my shoes. What does it matter if more of it hits them?”

“You make a good point,” the Brit mused. “I think that was maybe my parent brain kicking in. The amount of times I’ve had to either lift Wick or tell him to adjust how he’s standing while I run and get something to wipe shit up with is insane.”

Jacinda made a gagging noise. “Like literal shit?”

With kids, it always paid to make sure.

“Sometimes,” Cyn admitted. “Very rarely now that he’s older, but when he was smaller, it wasn’t an unknown situation.”

This time, my full body shudder had less to do with the dripping sensation, although it wasn’t out of the running altogether.

“My brothers and cousins have had enough kids to keep the Townsend DNA going. I don’t think I want any,” I said seriously. “The great part about always being the aunt is that I get to pass them back when they cry, shit themselves, do something bad, or just smell in general. It’s a win-win.”

“Me, too,” Jacinda agreed. “I don’t even want to think about how you deal with a blowout or projectile vomit. And spreading puddles of poop on the floor? Nah, I wasn’t built for that shit. Literally.”

Cyn sighed. “Sorry, I’m just in a crappy mood today. I didn’t mean to talk so harshly to you guys.”

My head turned so quickly it snapped. “That’s you in a shitty mood?”

She rubbed at her forehead. “I know, it’s horrible, isn’t it? I hate it when I feel like this.”

“Wait,” Jacinda called, getting as close to us as she could. “You’re being serious? This is really you in a bad mood?”

Cyn blinked. “Well, yeah? Total bitch features, hey?”

I was speechless, but Jacinda wasn’t. “How’s that possible? You haven’t snapped or used anything other than your normal tone since you arrived. When I’m in a shitty mood, Canon runs or covers his balls, people avoid me, and even my psychotic cat retreats to safety.”

Cyn frowned. “Why don’t people ever believe me when I say I’m in a bad mood? Even I can hear the difference in my voice.”

I shook my head, the ability to speak finally returning. “Honey, you sound like you always do, that’s probably why. When people are pissed, they usually look it, sound it, and they snap or glare.”

“Unless they’re one of Layla’s clients, that is,” Jacinda added. “They pay her good money not to frown and glare. Hey, wait, it all makes sense now.”

Cyn looked over my shoulder at our friend. “Uh, no, I haven’t had any Botox. Not that I’d rule it out now or in the future, you never know what you’re going to want to do. But I haven’t got anything injected in my face.”

Then, turning to me, she pursed her lips. “Wait, do you think my upper lip could use some filler? It seems like it’s getting thinner.”

“It’s personal preference, Cyn. If you want to get it done, I’ll go through it with you to ascertain what kind of look you want. Personally, though, I don’t think you need anything done.”

She blew out a breath, looking slightly deflated. “Okay, then. I was planning on doing something different for my birthday. I don’t know why this one’s getting me down so much.”

“It’s your birthday?” we asked at the same time.

“Yeah, tomorrow. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to meet up with you guys, to see if you fancied going for a drink this weekend in Palmerstown. Nana’s taking Wick for the weekend so I don’t have to worry about my hangover.” She looked to the side and mumbled, “Not that I’ve had one of those since I gave birth.”

That shocked me. “You haven’t had a hangover since you had Wick?”

“Nope,” she shrugged. “I turned into a lightweight after I had him, so I can’t drink enough now to get a hangover the next morning.”

Movement next to me showed Jacinda hanging around the edge of the door frame, her feet still far away from the milkshake splatter, which resulted in her body being at an odd angle. “You can’t be serious.”

“By the time I finish glass number two of vino, I’m pissed. You know, before I had Wick, I used to be able to drink grown men under the table. I even won a competition in a pub in London. Now, I’m just a cheap date, but it means I don’t suffer the next morning, so there’s that, I guess.”

Mark’s return with a pack of two rolls of paper towels prevented Jacinda from asking Cyn any more questions. Bless her heart, Cyn took one of the rolls from him and began helping with the mess on the ground in a way I’d only ever seen a mom do—with an insane amount of competence. If I’d been doing it, I’d have ended up smearing it everywhere first before I managed to even see the pale tiles under it.

Did those skills turn on when you gave birth, or did you have to learn them when you were dealing with poop grenades?

I was so focused on what she was doing that I only vaguely heard Jacinda ask Mark something while she wiped up the splatters farther inside the room.

“Layla loves them so I figured I’d surprise her with one of them. Especially after yesterday.”

I couldn’t turn my neck far enough around to see him, so I bent and looked at him from between my legs, making Cyn giggle when she ended up only inches away from my face.

“Never thought I’d meet you between your legs,” she snickered.

“What do you mean, ‘especially after yesterday?’”

Mark looked up at my question where he was wiping up the splatters farthest away from where I was standing.

“I knew you’d want to deal with the clients you had to cancel yesterday—on top of the ones you already had booked in today.”

Shit, this guy knew me too well.

Biting my tongue, I straightened up and remained silent while they talked. I needed to think more about the advice Evie and Jacinda had given me yesterday, I knew that, and I needed to give him a chance to explain. I wasn’t too big to admit I’d left it way too long, but by the time I’d realized that I was well into finishing my degree and finding a career.

Was it fair of me to prioritize that over his feelings and resolving the issue? No. There was no other way to word it apart from ‘no.’

Feeling a tug on the bottom of my pants, I looked down to see Cyn grinning at me. “Welcome back, chick. We were just saying it’s going to be slightly uncomfortable walking through the salon and sitting in your car in those pants.”

My eyes almost popped out of my head at the prospect of doing just that.

“No way in hell am I doing that, especially after yesterday. People will think I sharted, and I leave rumors like that to my brothers.” I began to panic. “Oh, God, what am I going to do?”

Jacinda looked clueless, but Cyn jumped up and walked quickly to where our small kitchen was. “Wait a second. I’ve got an idea.”

It might not have been ‘a’ second,’ but she was back within ten of them, holding a trash bag.

“Have you got any scissors in there?” she called to Jacinda, who just turned and looked at my desk, still not saying a word.

“They’re in the top drawer on the right,” I told her, wondering what Cyn had up her sleeve.

Getting them, Jacinda passed them around the doorway and watched as Cyn cut through the bottom of the bag.

“Now, step into it, and we’ll use this yellow tie thing as a belt to keep it around your waist,” she explained, holding it out for me to do as she’d said.

Still unsure, I bit my lip and stepped into it, then shimmied it up my hips until it was around my waist.

“If I hold it in place, you can take the dirty pants off,” Jacinda murmured. “You can still see the bottom of the legs and the brown stains on them, even with the bag covering the worst of it on your ass.”

Carefully, I undid my fly and managed to get the material down my legs, regardless of how much it wanted to stick to the skin. After kicking off my shoes, I finally managed to free myself of the soiled material, but I still had a problem.

Somehow, Mark knew this.

“Your panties are bothering you, aren’t they?” he guessed.

“It’s like having a chocolate milkshake wedgie, while having some sort of milkshake and material pulp smeared over my butt cheeks.”

“Well, take ‘em off,” Cyn ordered. “You can’t see through the bag, and unless the wind blows and you do a Marilyn Monroe, no one’s going to be any wiser about your lack of undergarments.”

Sighing, I went to work on removing my panties, muttering, “You just had to go and jinx me, didn’t you. Haven’t you learned by now you don’t say anything like that to someone from my family because it’ll happen? I mean, you’re related to us now, you have to have heard enough stories for you to have figured that out.”

The damn underwear was more determined to stay on my body than my pants had been, so I had to work at getting them down my legs.

“I’ve heard a lot of stories,” Cyn admitted, “and initially, I thought they were bullshit. Sure, I’ve seen a lot of stuff I didn’t think happened outside of comedies to your family, but the backstories just seemed outlandish.”

“And now?” Mark asked as he reached around me to pick up my pants.

“Now, I believe every single word. I do have questions, though.”

I was still working on the underwear, so I figured we had time for me to answer at least one of them.

“Hit me with it.”

“Okay, when you and Sonya got kidnapped, and you were running through the woods without a t-shirt on—”

“That wasn’t by choice or design,” I pointed out.

“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.

Just as my brother was close enough for me to yell out and for him to hear it, the irritating sound of a rooster crowing filled the air, making both of us freeze.

“Did you get another one?” I gasped.

Ren turned slowly and stared up at the trees. “No, we didn’t.” Not seeing anything, he looked down at my foot, then tilted his head to the side. “Why are you wearing a to go cup of coffee and what looks like a blueberry muffin on your foot?”

Slowly and still bracing for the chicken slipper scenario, I followed where he was looking. Sure enough, there was a crushed paper cup under my foot, with the plastic lid thingy almost pancaked on top of it.

And like that wasn’t bad enough, my toes were stuck inside one of my favorite muffins from the deli. These were the primo muffins of muffins, the muffin-daddies. Soft—and I hated the word, but I could use it when it came to these things—moist and filled with blueberries and some sort of blueberry jam in the middle. They weren’t overly sweet, and they just melted in your mouth.

That was my slipper.

To prove how much of an asshole he was, Crispy appeared beside me and began pecking at it, adding salt to a very raw and deep wound.

Come to find out, I also had a wound on the bottom of my foot, thanks to the plastic lid.

But the note scrawled over the cup was kind of sweet.

Helping you start your day the perfect way.

Love, Mark xx