... to get to the other side. - #1

Finally an answer to the question, which will come last the Chicken or the Egg!

This is a brand new series… probably going to be 7 or 8 parts - It’s WIP (Work In Progress)… it might change… It will change if people comment, give me advice get involved. Thank you to everyone who has got involved. This is not ‘high art lit fiction’ - it’s fun, irreverent and an experiment. I wanted to create a protagonist whose interaction with the world was limited but who still generated compassion from the reader… I wanted to write something funny, with a buddy/ road trip vibe. I wanted to write about a place I knew and people I know - some names have been changed to protect the innocent, some were changed to implicate the guilty.

ARTWORK by

Shelby Alexander

- my muse, love of my love and fabulous creative.

Chapter 1

I’m sitting

I’m standing

I’m waiting for the man I’m head bobbing up and down checking left and right up and down left and right up and down no sign no sign I’m sitting on sunshine orange faded vinyl seat with blue ink child-drawn father-daughter blue ink waiting watching waiting.

“Buck!”

Dropped off.

Dropped in.

Dropped off. I’m standing. Is that him I think forget think again is that him I bob I bob why bob I bob foot scratch foot scratch no itch foot scratch foot tap on paper pad foot scratch I lean left and see face my sharp face in the mirror cracked mirror cracks my face my beady eye my-my beady eye.

The door slams.

He’s back!

“What the bleedin’!”

“BuCK BuCK BuCKARK!”

It drops!

“SHITE!”

Corporal Charlie Dawson, retired, left-hand snatches the mistaken bum grenade with PTSD-infused reflexes and tosses through the open taxi window. It arcs over tarmac trenches and lands in front of the boarded-up butchers, where the unborn future chicken explodes, dust cakes, and cooks on the street-wide tarmac hot plate in seconds.

Deep inside Charlie’s war-torn brain, a childhood memory stirs. He registers the pop and fizzle, connects the snap and breakfast crackle of the ‘crispy-bum-ball’- what the bleedin’ ‘ell was it called? A long-lost one-word memory clatters from his mind shelves, dust-covered, old, smelling of Mum!

“Egg?”

He eyes his passenger, then the steaming street-fried abortion, then back to the…

“Chick…hen?”

Chewing through the old word, long unsaid, his head whips left-right-left in an optokinetic duet with the…

“…Chicken!”

“Brorwck,” said Brorwck, using her informal name to keep the tone light.

“Bro-ork?”

“Brorwck,” confirmed Brorwck. It was close enough.

“That your name, is it? Well, blow me…!” Charlie was the most surprised he’d ever been, which is a surprise since the interior of a London cab has the highest probability of surprises per square foot in the world. He’d encountered many oddities over the last five years: ranting tinkers, stoned tailors, bleeding soldiers, and dead spies, all excreted from the high-class slums around Liverpool Street. But this was the first time an extinct animal had hailed a ride.

“Brorwck,” said the Chicken, hoping to bring Charlie back from his inner monologue.

“Ah yeah, sorry, I was a bit caught out for a mo! There I was knocking on the door an’ nobody came and then poof, here you are a bleedin’ chicken, if you excuse me French!

“Buurck?” She was pretty sure that wasn’t French. Charlie ran his hand over his head, sweeping aside hair long departed, and smiled.

“I was hoping to…” he stopped himself. The Chicken was his passenger and didn’t need to know about his personal troubles. He smiled his best professional smile. “So, where does a fine young chicken need to go today?”

Brorwck’s body bobbed up and down, her head held rock steady, whilst her foot scratched the envelope on the seat.

“Aha”, smiled Charlie “,…instructions! Well, ain’t that a relief? I’d ‘ate to guess where a chicken might wanna go on a Sunday… I mean, as far away as you can from anyone with a fire and a sharp knife! Eh!” laughed Charlie nervously. He was never sure if he read the room right when it came to humour.

Brorwck was also nervous. This being her first time outside, she expected the conversation to veer towards food, eventually. It was the way of things for chickens. It’s almost impossible for humans to look at one and not think about rubbing it with seven secret spices, dipping it in batter or buttermilk, or bathing it in good red wine and roasting it. That’s the way things are for the consumer and consumed. However, on this occasion, it was most imperative that Brorwck remain uneaten.

“Buck, buck, buckark..,” explained Brorwck. It wasn’t a perfect explanation. The language of chickens is more concerned with the quality of grain, grubs and water than the need for a secure ride across a desolate London to find a secret genetics laboratory to clone her and save what’s left of England’s humans from starvation.

Charlie’s eyes pored over her speckled black feathers, plump breasts, and large wings like gravy. As he licked his lips, Brorwck adopted the flying lotus fighting position she learnt for self-defence while preparing for the journey.

Although Charlie’s experience with chickens was limited to eating, he recognised the subtle, telltale shifts in body language that indicated a creature readying to fight. You never forget your Royal Marine’s training.

“Here, here, there’s no need for the posturing. You’re in my cab an’ that’s a safe space for anyone. Me name’s Charlie and I’ll get you where you need to go… as soon as we figure out where the bleedin’ ‘ell that is,” he said with the confidence of the last cabbie in London.

“Now, how about you give me a little hop, and I’ll ‘ave a shifty at that letter.” He slowly reached for the white envelope under Brorwck’s foot.

Brorwck considered the request. After years of isolation in a secret underground lab, being trained on a mix of Ted Talks, Mozart and the early albums of Limp Bizkit (there is no accounting for Biologists’ taste in music), Brorwck felt she was ready for anything this ravaged world could throw at her. The decision to move to another lab had been a hard one. They had tried to accumulate the equipment necessary for cloning her, but it had been too complex, and time was ticking. Brorwck was already three years old, and Sussex Chickens rarely lived past eight in captivity. Her biological clock was ticking, and she had advocated hard to attempt the journey. Her beloved biologist parents, Nina and Olga, who had grown her from a frozen fertilised egg discovered at the back of an industrial freezer, were too afraid to travel. They opted to spend their final days watching Nina’s centennial edition of “Friends,” complete with bonus features and behind-the-scenes footage. Brorwck, being an educated chicken, refused to go down with Phoebe Buffay, so they called a cab.

The cab.

The last cab in London.

This was her first interaction with a human not wearing a lab coat, her first male, and it would either be a defining moment in the history of humanity, or she would be a hungry cabbie’s last supper. Brorwck took the leap, and Charlie snatched the envelope from beneath her foot.

“Ain’t you a smart one!” smiled Charlie.

“Brorwck!” said Brorwck, keen to get on a first-name basis as soon as possible. She had learned from a Ted Talk that in hostage situations, a first-name basis with the captor increased your chances of survival significantly.

As her black-speckled feathers settled, Charlie reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and retrieved a pair of cracked pharmacy reading glasses. He would love to get new glasses, but all the opticians were dead, so he had to make do. Once fixed to his nose, he squinted at the words on the envelope.

“Dear Charlie ‘the cab’… Dawson..: he read slowly. He tore the message open and unfolded the paper.

“Let’s ‘ave a gander eh? Dear Charlie… that’s me, this is Brorwck… that’s you then… ‘ello Brorwck!”

“Brorwrck!” acknowledged Brorwrck, relieved her chances of survival had just doubled. Charlie winked as cabbies do and returned to the message.

“Says ‘ere you’re the last Chicken in the world… blimey, ain’t that a thing!” Charlie said, shifting his weight so he could sit more upright, as was befitting the serious nature of the message. “Please escort her to a secret laboratory near Windsor, where they will clone her to save humanity from starvation. Upon your arrival, you will receive payment equal to Brorwck’s weight in gold. So keep her well fed and happy, and you will be rich… Bleedin’ nora, if that isn’t the craziest thing. Surely the army would be more suited…”

Brorwck, keen for Charlie to get moving, pecked the message, indicating there was more on the reverse.

“What’s that… turn it over! Oh… there’s more, is there… hold on…” Charlie pushes the glasses back up his nose. It was more of an affectation than a reading aid, but Brorwck found it endearing. If she were any judge of men, she concluded Charlie was a reliable and kind man because of the way he handled his spectacles.

“What we got ‘ere then… Oh! Says they can’t trust the army because they’re hungry boys and a chicken would be too tempting, and the rules governing London cabbies should keep her safe… Kind regards… Nora and Olga…” Charlie paused briefly as he read the names, forcing a lump in his throat down before he continued. “Well, your mums certainly know their knowledge, eh? The third law of the Cabbie is “thou shalt not eat thy passengers”. So don’t worry, love, you’re in safe hands.”

Brorwck nodded and bobbed.

“So Windsor is it? That’s one ‘ell of a drive these days, love… we’d betta’ put yah belt on, clunk click ‘an all that” said Charlie slowly reaching over Brorwck’s delicate head to grab the seat belt.

“I wouldn’t normally let a passenger sit in the front, but since we ain’t expecting inspectors, cause… they’re all dead an’ that, I reckon I can let that slide today… don’t you?” smiling as he fumbled the buckle into the latch.

“Blimey, that’s stiff! S’not been used since…”

Charlie took a deep breath as a memory of Molly flooded in. Brorwck, who was surprisingly empathic, sensed his sadness and leaned in to brush his shaking hand. Charlie snatched it away, staring wide-eyed at Brorwck as she tilted her head left and right, smiling in that way Chickens do. She was the first living thing that had voluntarily touched Charlie's hand since his daughter slipped from his grasp when the floods hit.

Five years is a long time without touch.

Charlie shakily smiled back in the way veterans do. “Well… that’s fine…” followed by a quick “Let’s be avin’ you then, eh!” before flicking the on switch and driving the dusty black cab out of the imposing electric gates of the secret laboratory onto the desolate road deep in the heart of South London.

As the gates clanged shut behind them, Brorwck took one last look at her home. It was imposing, bomb-proof, secret and safe. She would miss the lab, Nina and Olga’s constant bickering, the early morning warm thermometers, and the long nights of reading, storytelling, and films. But watching Charlie navigate the rusting cars and expertly avoiding the ballooning black-bagged bodies… badumph…dumph!

“Oops…Sorry”

…most of the time. She felt sure that whatever trials and tribulations lay on the road to Windsor, they could handle together.

Sadly, for the first time that day, Brorwck was wrong.

-End of Chapter One -

Chapter 2 is coming in a few hours… be patient…order some KFC - kick back…