THE CHICKENS
ALM 92, August 2026
SHORT STORIES
“You know, the fact that we’re off to our slaughter and that Veronica can’t groom-” clucked the mother hen. “Shows everything about her,” Gracie pleasantly pumped her wings, eager to show off her perfect grooming: neat white feathers and grey neck. As best as she could with her wings clipped, anyways. A Sussex chicken whose greatest goal was to be a Silkie, she often showed off her assets in peculiar ways and found merriment in gossip.
“You’re quite right,” said her companion, an orangish-brown Orpington chicken named Kaylie. She clucked a giggle, “Imagine that! Veronica! Oh, those dull black feathers all matted with dirt, oh, how could you die like that?”
Veronica, quite matted and filthy with dirt, said nothing but continued to cluck mournfully in their wired cage.
“She’s a Rhode Island Red, too,” sighed Gracie with an air of distaste. “All those crimson feathers, wasted.”
Kaylie, making sure to fold her own feathers in a styled formation, was quick to vouch agreement. “Wasted.”
The two birds laughed. Veronica sighed again. Gracie’s feathered face dotted with concern, just barely visible. “Oh, really, we didn’t get to you that badly, did we? A bit of pointless banter, is all.”
“Can’t even take a joke,” Kaylie said bitterly.
“‘S not you,” Veronica said, quite sulkily.
“Then what is?” demanded Kaylie.
“Nothing you’d understand.” Veronica stared forlornly out the cage at the sea of wire cages below and above them. They were packed in, cage and cage and floor and floor and cage and more floor and even the ceiling in a giant rumbling truck, the air thick with the chicken-scent of feces and feathers and fluid, all chickens around them poking at their feathers to make them fluff out or stay in shape, and, of course, clucks and chirps and the caws of chicken.
“You calling me dumb?”
“No. Said nothin’ ‘bout that,” Veronica stubbornly stayed pouting.
“Said I wouldn’t understand, you,” Kaylie plumped her feathers. “Not understandin’ tis dumb, you fool.”
“Not that.”
“Then what, you nincompoop!” demanded Kaylie.
“It’s, the thing!” shouted Veronica. “The elephant in the room!”
They, red, black, and white, looked about the dimly lit, squawking room. The green antechamber was filled with feathers and the faint stench, only hulking shadows of the other cages hovering above them.
“There’s no elephant,” Kaylie said, almost dumbly. “There’s only chickens.”
“What’s an elephant?” asked Gracie, having returned from a manicure-cleaning her talons.
“How’s I supposed to know?” demanded Veronica, ratty feathers fluffed in indignation.
“You brought it up,” Kaylie clucked.
“It’s a figure of speech,” sighed Veronica, “a phrase for what’s not been that’s used to describe something that is. Doesn’t mean there’s an actual elephant, those figures, they’re stand-ins, of a sort. Sort of some kind of way to tell people a thing without telling them a thing.”
“You understand her?” Gracie asked Kaylie, now trimming Kaylie’s feathers. Kaylie shook her head.
Veronica sighed. “It’s a comparison! A symbol, a way of saying something without saying it.”
“What’s the point of that?” asked Gracie. Kaylie had long given up on Veronica and returned her attention back to her grooming.
“To make things sound better, I guess.”
“Why? Words are words. Ain’t no sense in making them sound better. They’re just here for us to talk about,” Gracie shifted on the jarring wire that cut into the delicate skin of her chicken-feet.
“How’d you even know what that is?” Kaylie pecked at her feathers, arranging them into a combination of clean feathers in an order of orange to orange-brown to brown.
“Used to be a classroom science experiment of sorts,” Veronica said glumly. “Hatched us in a warm white little box and all. There was a tall man with curly hair who used all sorts of words like that. Like ‘birds of a feather’ and ‘see ya later alligator’” She slumped further into her depression of black feathers.
“Didn’t think ya were a storyteller,” Kaylie said, after straining under a long thought.
“What’s an alligator?” Gracie questioned. She received no response.
“Lots of tiny humans, too. Not like the rough ones who poke around for our eggs.” explained Veronica matter-of-factly, “but the ones that were small and had dumpy faces and soft thumbs. Kept coddling me and fed me grass, too.”
“Maybe that was a dream,” Gracie yawned. “But it’s a nice story.”
“Not a nice story,” Veronica insisted, her voice sharp and not quite so dreamy. “It was real. It was true. It happened.”
“But it doesn’t matter now. You’re here, now,” Gracie chirped as a way of comfort. It did little to defer Veronica’s mood. “Forget it.”
“Still haven’t told me why you called me a nincompoop,” demanded Kaylie, after having ruffled her head in her wings so that she resembled a dodo.
“I didn’t.” sighed Veronica. “Just said you wouldn’t understand.”
“Understand what?”
“Why I’m sighing.”
“I understand,” piped in Gracie, with a pointed look at Veronica’s ensemble of dirty brown caked crimsons and stubby tips “It’s ‘cause of your bad feathers and account of that no rooster is even gonna look at you.” She cawed into laughter, the sound echoing across the tinted green walls and even cutting through the stench.
“It’s not that.” Veronica groaned, again.
“Then quit being such a priss-” Kaylie hissed, losing her patience, “and tell us! What’s goin’ on, pray!”
“It’s the fact that we’re going to be killed!” Veronica burst. She stumbled across the rattling wire floor, beak raised. “We’re all gonna die!”
“We know that, you fool!” snapped Kaylie. “The threat there! Every harvest, every truck. Every time. Every time we get corralled, I take my feathers an’ hope that it's not us this time that’s done for, and now, we on the truck—we on death, on death’s door, the door itself—death just starin’ at us with them eyeballs. But what you gonna to do about it, huh? It’s what we been raised for—it’s what we been told that we need ta do, it’s what they have us ta do. We just chickens, and we no purpose other than this.”
Gracie burst into tears.
They all turned and stared.
“Don’t talk,” she wailed. “Don’t talk! It’s too horrible to think about! It’s all ‘cause we couldn’t lay any more eggs! That’s why I never said anythin’ about it! Can’t we pretend it won’t happen?”
“It happened,” Veronica said.
“Not my fault they work us to ‘ta bone.” Kaylie nipped. “Not our fault we ain’t useful enough ta be kept alive no more. Horrible, horrible, humans.”
“And what can we do?” Veronica pressed.
“We ignore it.” Kaylie snapped. “‘Cause there ain’t nothing we can do, ain’t it?”
“Ain’t nothing we can do.” Veronica glumly picked at the metal bars of her cage. “That why I, I’m…”
“Moping?” Kaylie clucked. Veronica did not respond, a sign of agreement at its finest.
”We’re helpless!” Gracie sobbed, and then collapsed into a heap of feathers. But a few moments later she perked up again, clinging to hope by her dull talons.
“I agree.” Kaylie tucked a stray feather back into her wing, still straining to achieve intelligence. “Ain’t there nothing to be done.”
“Maybe there is something to be done!” Gracie perked up, now understanding that her life was at risk. “If we got all together and-”
“What we gonna do, even if we could help ourselves?” Kaylie asked.
Gracie thought for a moment. There was a long, confused silence, the kind that needed to be dissected with a butter knife.
“Think your brain is as addled as your words.” Veronica sighed to Kaylie’s chuckles.
Gracie flailed. “I ain’t, my brain ain’t addled, see!” She let out a piercing shriek. “Hey, hey! Gather ‘round ye, fools! We gonna be killed, do something’!”
The other chickens momentarily paused their clucking to stare at her. Nothing but the sway, bump, swerve of the truck—you could hear a feather drop.
Dialogue continued on.
“Lost her mind, the poor dear.” Another hen muttered.
”Laid too many eggs.”
”Don’t mean she hafta bother the rest of us.”
“One of them types that care too much ‘bout their feathers and not enough ‘bout their brain.”
”She’s right, ya know.”
”She’s right. Them farmers just sittin’ up there in their farmhouse and not givin’ us a grain o’ corn extra-“
”Curse them farmers!”
“We’re doomed, that hen’s right-“
“She should groom more, though, she needs a nice rooster-”
”Dat kinda deli-shun-nail witch need some settling-”
The chatter rose, filling the walls of the putrid green container with the sound of chitter-chatter. For a bit there was the peppery taste of mutiny in the air, and the thick odor of disrespect. The wire cages creaked with the clucks of matriarchal hens, alike in sympathy, judgement, or confusion. There was a great chatter, a great agreement.
“Well, do summat then!” Someone yelled out from the crowd. But that hen was not paid any mind.
Gracie looked befuddled, straining for thought. “Why ain’t they doing nothing?”
”’Cause we useless and there ain’t nothin for us to do, you ninny!” Veronica sighed, ripping a streak of mud off her tattered feathers.
”You’re the ninny!” Kaylie snapped. “And shut up, dolt, ‘cause I talkin’!” In offense, a few feathers fell off. “And look what you did!”
”I did nothing.” Veronica huffed. “Who told you to get your feathers in a tizzy?”
”You, stupid, with all that talk about death!” Kaylie rounded on Veronica, her beady eyes circling the terribly groomed bird. “Ya didn’t hafta do that, ya know! Could’ve let us be happy groomin’ a lil’ while longer!”
“Yea. Groom for yer death,” Veronica mumbled.
“‘Cause ya oughta let us be happy a lil’ while longer!” Kaylie spat. “We chickens, Vi. We doomed ta suffer. Ain't no way outta this.”
Gracie tried to poke her head out of the bars of the cage.
“Look what ya did, ya lummox! Now Gracie’s lost what sense she had!”
“I ain’t done that,” Gracie hissed.
“Yeah, she didn’t have any,” Veronica said numbly.
“No—I went to listen to everyone else.” Gracie chirped, content again. “They said the same as we did—-that the farmers were a sorry lot, from the snippets I heard. A fat lot that gets rich off our eggs, our feathers. We’re gonna get strangled and our necks wrung, and all them farmers gonna care about is if they get rich. Hate them farmers.”
“What’s rich?” Veronica asked.
“It’s when ya have a lotta money.”
“What’s money?”
“Green paper. Maybe you eat it. I dunno.”
The three chickens stared at each other, having forgotten the very subject of their conversation.
“Anyways…” Gracie puffed up, a few more feathers escaping. “They do care! So it’s not that they don’ care, it’s that they don’ know what ta’ do!” The chicken looked rather proud of herself.
“And they’re right!” Veronica snapped, her beak clacking. “We can’ do nothing! What can we do? Peck through the metal? Cluck so loud that the driver’s ears bleed?”
Gracie perked up. “That a good idea!”
“Ears bleedin’ won’t stop a driver from drivin’.” hissed Veronica. “Go on an’ peck then! Peck!” She flapped a wing towards the metal.
“I see what ya mean.” Kaylie said, almost mournfully. Then, as if possessed, she started to peck at her orange feathers, arranging them in an intricate order again.
“And pray are ya doing now?” Gracie clucked distastefully. “We’re dying!”
Kaylie pecked around her feathers. “If we gonna get killed, then might as well make my feathers look nice. Catch a rooster.”
“You ain’t catching no rooster before your death.” muttered Veronica.
“And your feathers are still clumped. At least, if there was a rooster, I’d catch ‘im!” Kaylie let out a frustrated squawk and nipped closely at Veronica’s beak.
“They gonna stuff our feathers into pillows.” Gracie shuddered. She rubbed against the bars of her cage, her white feathers staining with blackness.
“And what are ya doin’?” Kaylie howled. “Have ya gone dog-gone mad, or what? Insane!”
“If they take my feathers I mess ‘em up.” Gracie rubbed further.
Years and years of careful primping found themselves drowned in charcoal blackness, coated with what was left of other birds’ mess, of what rolled around in the dirt with the farm’s two pigs in the pigpen that overlooked the sky. Mess covered white, turning it an unflattering shade of gray, while gray turned a greenish-brown.
“What the—”
“I gotta do something,” Gracie squawked. “I can’t let them win, now! I’m done ignoring and pretending that everything’s alright! I gotta try! Gotta… gotta… gotta…”
Veronica slumped against her corner of the cage. “‘Least you’re doing something.”
Kaylie squawked indignantly, shrinking away from Gracie as far as she could in the cramped cage. “Ya’ve lost yer mind! Ya, ya scoundrel! Y-y-y-y-y-ya little, how could ya-”
“It’s my feathers.”
“A-and it’s yers! Not theirs! You ain’t gonna destroy yourself for their happiness, not like this! Not like that! N-not, not like-”
“You shut up.” Gracie sniffed, and, in the blink of an eye, tore out a chunk.
The feathers fluttered to the floor, soft-ish white and gray, speckled with black dots. One landed on Veronica, who didn’t move. One landed on Kaylie’s foot, causing the chicken to shriek a chicken-pitched wail and move far, far, away.
Suddenly, the truck halted. The chickens were slammed into one another, like dominos in a crate. Kaylie into Gracie into Veronica, who laid there like a jolted sack of potatoes.
“My feathers!” Kaylie shrieked.
“What they feedin’ you? Get off me, ya louse!” Gracie shook Kaylie off, the chickens clucking and glaring, beaks poised.
Then, a glaring light flooded into the mustiness of the dark green holding chamber. The chickens, every chicken, squawked and turned back, rattling in their wire cages. From the outside, noises, human noises, sounded. Perhaps there were calls of feathers, of sisterhood, of grease. There were also laments, howls of childhood love, and maybe even an echo of apology. But a few hours later, the truck rattled itself back onto the road, hinges creaking, cages empty.
After the gas, the electrocution, the stripping—then the warm boiling bath—after what was left of their consciousness was cleaned up like leftover runny egg on a plate–
they were all in all, thoroughly, dead.
Or, as Costco called it: premium chicken breast, sold for 5.99 a pound.
YuQiao Shao is a writer and student living in California. She enjoys walks with her dog, collecting Hironos and reading just about anything. She is the winner of a Scholastic National Gold Medal.
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