A journey to the brink of madness!

Place to go in between surfs.

I got a lucky head shot on a feral rooster this morning. I usually aim for the lungs/heart, it’s an easier shot, and much more likely to put the thing down. Poultry doesn’t have a whole lot of sue for it’s brain.

But I accidentally spooked him, and he did a little duck and juke while he was running away and, somehow, my pellet gun just exploded the thing’s dome. There’s blood everywhere. Which isn’t ideal, the yard looks like a fucking abattoir.

I’ll admit, I may be taking the whole rooster extermination thing a bit far. I’m constantly peering through our blinds at the yard, snapping my head time a shadow moves in my peripheral vision, hiding in my makeshift blind in the backyard (which consists of a piece of plywood and our garbage can). I’ll admit, it’s kind of weird. Long term, it may be something that causes trouble.

Michelle thinks it’s hilarious, and she’s always urging me to write a story about some crazy guy and his feud with the neighborhood roosters. In her mind it’s a slapstick comedy, a distant crow derails my train of thought and I go charging sans shoes and shirt into the bushes with my pellet gun. “I don’t know why you even bother anymore, I haven’t heard a rooster crow in ages.”

Exactly!

She may not appreciate how far this has gone for me. If I were to turn the experience into fiction it wouldn’t be some hilarious farce. It’d be a Raymond Carver-esque slow burn, a wife playing witness to her husband’s journey to the brink of madness. ‘Cuz sometimes I worry I may be teetering.