The Chickens have Landed - Part One

An all too familiar screech ricochets through the fabric of time and space. It is accompanied by muffled cursing of the more fruity variety.
SPLASH!
Why the space pod, a translucently silver capsule, always lands in the swimming pool is beyond anyone of human persuasion.
“It’s because the garden is too densely treed to allow a safe landing on the lawn!” squawks an indignant voice.
As if anyone would dare call the pilot’s navigational skills into question.
“You do understand that, don’t you?” It’s the kind of voice that has an insistence about it that cuts through the skull-bone and penetrate directly into a mind – which is exactly what it is doing.
Telepathically projected it feels like sherbet of the brain. And it itches.
“To the rescue!” crows another voice. It has a rasping quality which is edged with a sort of lunatic peal. “Let me at ‘em!”
Anyone who knows and hazards a glance at the evening sky will cringe realizing it is nearly full moon…
“Help me out of this damned thing!” snaps the second voice. “And make sure I don’t get my feathers wet!”
“Granny,” clucks the first voice, “stop being such a drama queen. Ouch!”
Oh yes, gentle reader, the Chickens have landed. Gird your loins for the going the might get rough. And bloody.
“I don’t know why you bothered to hide.” Atyllah the Hen’s voice reverberates down the passage with foghorn intensity. “You know I know exactly where to find you.”
“Anyone would think she’d be pleased to see us,” mutters Granny Were. “Did you pack the corncakes, I’m feeling a bit peckish.”
‘Oh Vanill-aaaaaahhhh!” The tone can not be described as dulcet.
“OUCH! OW! STOP PECKING ME!”
“How many times must I tell you – you can run but you can’t hide. And anyway what kind of greeting is this? You with your head under the bed and your backside pointing skywards like some flat-barreled missile? You haven’t been at the beans, have you?” Atyllah asks suspiciously.
“Your trouble is you’re incorrigible,” I mutter backing out from under the bed in what can best be described as an inelegant manner.
“Darlingggggg,” crows Granny Were wrapping her wings around me.
ATISHOO!
Bloody chicken feathers.
“What – sniff – are you doing here?”
“Your woes are our woes,” says Atyllah in magnanimous tones.
“Ah, you mean Granny felt up for a fight.” The moon’s full-bodied roundness, like a good, wooded Chardonnay, has not escaped my attention. “Couldn’t she have picked on the Draconians? Or is it just that it’s our turn again?”
“Really,” remarks Atyllah as she studies her well-manicured talons, “anyone else would be grateful. A being could be quite insulted by your cavalier idea of a welcome, you know.” She shoots me a beady glance.
I stare at her – and remember to shut my mouth.
“Of course I’m delighted to see you…”
“Oh pull-lease! You were never any good at lying.”
I notice from the corner of my eye that Granny Were is bopping and bouncing like a boxer on cricket juice. “Let me at ‘em, yeah. A peck here, a kick there, a bite to the jugular. Hmm-mmm…”
I groan. It’s my own fault of course. I’m the first to acknowledge my own shortcomings and I hold myself entirely responsible. It’s my own inability to control the anger I’ve felt over the past few weeks as one level of incompetence, selfishness, thoughtlessness and stupidity has leaped to another – and led to the Chickens’ arrival. Actually, if truth be told, I’m secretly rather glad they are here. Sometimes A Chicken With Attitude is just what a girl needs.
“Of course you are,” says Atyllah.
“Of course she is,” echoes Granny Were and smiles. It is a smile which spreads across her beak and can best be described as gruesome. I mean have you ever really, really seen a were-chicken smile?

TO BE CONTINUED… if I survive.