Chapter Forty-Nine
Delilah
The boys have gym day today. Testosterone temple bonding time. Bro reps and dick-measuring in public.
I have shit to do. I set up a checklist. A real one. With stickers and everything. First on my list is make the boyfriends feel violently adored.
I have customized gym bags. Because nothing says I love you like glitter and mild sabotage.
Jett’s is hot pink with black skulls and angry eyes.
Punk rock Barbie realness. Benji’s is every color I could fit on one surface without triggering a migraine.
There’s a teddy bear patch hugging a protein shaker.
Rhys’s is metallic silver. I kissed it. Left a red lipstick print on the front pocket. Professional boundaries my left tit.
Each bag is fully curated: Towel? Yes. Soft and crime-scene red. Snacks? Obviously. Protein bars and peach rings. Glitter bombs? Naturally. Hidden. Like landmines of joy.
And the personal touches: Jett gets a new scrunchie.
His current one wrapped around his wrist like a fucking mating collar is fraying like my moral compass.
Rhys gets one of my pink diamond studs. First time I’ve ever taken it off.
I cleaned it in vodka because it felt like a communion ritual.
I’m still wearing the other one. Benji gets my heart-shaped sunglasses.
If he puts them on, I’ll collapse and die like a Victorian widow. And then haunt him lovingly.
I race to the gym like I’m on a government mission. Kevin’s at the desk, looking bored until he sees me.
“Kev,” I say, slamming the bags onto the counter. “I need your help and your silence.”
He glances at the bags. “Do I want to know?”
“No. Jett’s got two new gym bros. Very special clients.” I waggle my brows. “These need to appear in the locker room. After they shower. Not before. Very important. The element of surprise is crucial. This is love warfare.”
“You want me to sneak these into the locker room mid-shower?” His voice rises like I asked him to commit murder.
“Yes,” I whisper, conspiratorial. “While they’re wet and unsuspecting. Like gazelles.”
He stares. Puzzled. Horrified. A little turned on. Definitely onboard.
“You know,” he says, “they’re lucky bastards.”
I grin and kiss his cheek. “Or cursed.”
Sticker heart.
Task One: complete. The boys are booby-trapped with glitter and gym bags full of snacks and implied nudity.
Task Two: Kira.
I’m at the craft store, wedding isle, which is a mistake because everything is soft and pastel and smells like cinnamon-scented capitalism, and I’m having a full-body moral crisis in front of the gift bags.
Because what exactly do you buy a woman you metaphorically stabbed with a glitter knife?
Nothing. That’s what a sane person would say.
But I’m not sane, I’m polite.
So here I am, trying to assemble a combo wedding gift-slash-apology bundle that says: “Sorry I threatened you with glitter blood and tried to sabotage your modeling gig. I thought you were trying to fuck my therapist. My bad. Congrats on the whole wedding thing. Big fan.”
The wedding section is a massacre of ivory lace and pearl ribbon. I pick up a white bag with little embossed hearts and immediately put it back.
Too virginal. They were porn kissing. They’re not drinking tea and waiting for Jesus.
I try pink. Too murder Barbie.
Try white again. Too “I see you from the bushes.”
I stand there clutching both bags and realize I’m sweating. Actual decision fatigue in the gift bag aisle.
A child is watching me. I snarl and he flees.
Fine. Pink. It’s flirty. Festive. Slightly threatening.
Next: contents.
What says “Sorry I came at you like a feral magpie but yay marriage?”
I grab bubbles. Bubbles are weddingy. Innocent. No stabby implications. Champagne minis. Obviously. Fancy truffles. Heart-shaped, because I am nothing if not on-brand. A congrats card that is so aggressively bland it might as well say “I’m being supervised.”
I open it in the aisle and scrawl inside with a pink glitter pen: I didn’t mean the other shit. Congrats to you and Rachel.
Do I sign it? No. Keep it anonymous. Leave room for plausible deniability. Let them wonder if it’s a peace offering or a hex.
I’m about to check out when I remember the knife.
The actual knife I stabbed into her door, which means I do need to buy them something heartfelt and stabby.
Cake knife set. Silver. Engraved with his and hers. I swap the his out so now it’s a hers and hers set. I feel like that’s the emotional equivalent of court-ordered community service.
I cradle it like I am the raccoon who stole something shiny, felt guilty, and brought back a trinket from the trash as penance.
Perfect.
Goose girl and Susan are gonna love it.
Task still not complete. I’ve got to face chicken man to deliver it.
Goose Bitch HQ smells the same. Like dryer sheets and low-level psychic warfare.
Nostalgic, really. The buzzer gives its usual groan of reluctant submission and someone, still no questions asked, lets me in.
I ascend like the Ghost of Court Orders Past, heels clacking a little less murdery than usual. Character growth, baby.
The hallway is quiet.
Last time I was here, I left a sparkly blood trail and a message in lipstick like a slutty banshee. Today, I’m here with peace. Allegedly.
The bag swings innocently in my grip.
The hallway’s temperature drops five degrees and the ghosts of every rotisserie chicken screamed in unison.
I turn.
And there he is.
The Poultry Prophet. The Bluetooth-wearing, prophecy-whispering robe entity from beyond the meat aisle.
This time, he’s barefoot, one big toenail painted like a cracked eggshell, with tiny googly eyes glued on, and glistening, like he’s been baptized in poultry fat.
No mug. No robe. Just gym shorts, and a shirt that says “I WAS PLUCKED FOR THIS” in glitter-puff paint.
Either a homemade offering from a chicken cult kindergarten class, or a cursed Etsy purchase.
He stares. I stare.
We nod. Two soldiers who once shared a foxhole made of glitter and vague threats.
“You return with new offerings,” he says, voice low.
I hold up the bag. “No threats this time. Just vibes.”
He approaches. Sniffs the air, catching the scent of moral compromise and celebratory cocoa butter. “Someone has recently doubted capitalism,” he whispers. “And moisturized.”
I’m too stunned to confirm or deny.
Without warning, he takes a cake knife out of the gift bag.
Not a word. Just plucks it like it’s Excalibur from the tissue paper.
Then, without ceremony but with divine aim, he shanks it into Kira’s door. Like the door had sinned against the flock and this was judgment day.
Right through the pink ribbon handle of the bag. Clean. Centered. Buried to the hilt. The bag flutters, pierced. A ritual complete.
I take a second to reboot. “Holy shit. You just nailed the vibe and the door.”
He nods slowly, a prophet admiring a holy relic. “The hens accept this penance,” he says. “Forgiveness is the yolk spilled across the altar. Contrition smells of boiled egg and glitter glue. Judgment comes softly on clawed feet.” Then, softer, he says, “We rise on broken shells.”
“I... don’t know what that means, but I love that for us,” I whisper.
He squints at me like he’s reading my aura through a poultry veil. “You’ve molted,” he says. “Feathers of chaos now soften with meaning. The chaos molts with you. The coop sees. The coop forgives. Until next molt.”
I forget how to word.
He stares deep into my soul. “Less cock,” he intones, “More doodle doo. The dawn is coming. Be ready to crow.”
It feels like the highest praise I’ve ever received.
“I’m working on myself,” I say brightly. “Like, still unhinged, just not currently weaponizing glitter as emotional terrorism. I have plenty of cock still. But yes more doodle and doo to come.”
He considers. Then, faintly, like the ghost of a chicken’s laugh, he clucks once.
I fish a packet of trail mix and two Godiva truffles from my purse and offer them up. “For your flock,” I say.
“The protein pleases them,” he says, pocketing the goods with an avian nod. And then, just as silently, disappears back into his door, trailed by a faint squawk that could be a bird sound from his Bluetooth, or a hallucination.
I stare after him. The hallway is quiet again. The bag hangs from the knife. A peace treaty skewered for display.
“Okay,” I say to myself. “That was actually pretty mature. For me.”
I blow a kiss to the bag, whisper “Mazeltov, hens,” and strut back down the hallway like a reformed demon who just got her wings clipped but is still allowed to scream on weekends.