lyde sidestepped left and his boot met the soft resistance of a chicken. The chicken clucked and squawked and bounced a foot or so in the air, a mass of ruffled feathers.

Better it than me, he thought, and looked behind to see noodles and ceramic smash against the far wall.

She picked up a spatula now, and came at him, no longer content with poorly aimed missiles.

Fuck. What have I got myself into?

He hadn't counted on such a reception. A quick in and out of this wretched woman's life and he maybe a television or so richer; she a host of sleepless nights with only a book and her chickens for company, wondering who had been in her apartment and would they come back?

"Hi Ma'am, yes, I'm here for the bugs Ma'am."

She squinted at him through bubbled toad eyes and Clyde's first thought was Any bugs need sprayin' it's this big girl right here. Finally she moved aside to let him through.

Fucking hell.

Several chickens hunted and pecked across green shag carpet, a dull, evil green, so colored to conceal and distract.

"Don't see why I need you. No bugs gonna set up camp here, not with my babies around." Her eyes opened wide for the first time and she looked down at one of the chickens, the pink tip of her tongue protruding out between pale dry lips. Lipstick covered her face, everywhere but her mouth.

"I gotta do the whole building, Ma'am. Bulovski's orders. Now if you want, I'll just go down and tell him you refuse."

"No, no. Bulovski's just waiting for an excuse to kick me and my babies out of our home. You go on ahead, but don't you spray any of that foul stuff on my birds."

Clyde nodded once, less said the better, and dragged his canister into the kitchen. The air was thick in his nose and he made an effort to breathe through his mouth. Three more chickens waddled across the linoleum. He cocked back to kick one of them, then caught her staring at him from the living room. He smiled and maneuvered around the chicken, unwinding his hose and peering under the baseboards for any signs of insect droppings, any indication of infestation. It was hard to tell. The floor was covered in chicken shit. His eyes found their corners and he saw her blurry figure hunch over to pick something from the ground, then walk off out of sight.

It was a lousy job, the pay absurdly low. He had to buy his own gear, his own transportation, which left very little at the end of each month. It was as if Sunset Exterminators knew that its employees only took the work as a cover in casing potential B&E's. He knew of at least one rapist who found his victims this way. But Clyde was not in it for the sex—just came by for the VCR, Ma'am, no time for the rest—the thought of it with any of the people whose houses he fumigated was sickening. He could pull off a hundred bucks easy on a given job, and that was a good fifty bucks an hour, including fence time, if he looked at it that way. Clyde took the exterminator work as research, and if he made a few bucks an hour on it, so much the better.

This place would be a cinch. The woman wore a hearing aid. She was obviously a little dotty, probably didn't see too well either.

Clyde reached back behind his denim jacket and pulled out the large black .45 that Freddy, his fence, had given him for a television, a loaner in lieu of cash. He'd never used it and was unsure if it was loaded or not. He hoped to God it wasn't. The spatula, a weapon which should have made him laugh, came at him in fierce slashes, like the dull blade of some lunatic threshing machine. She moved toward him with slow, deliberate steps. He pointed the gun at her but she didn't seem to see it.

"I've got a gun, lady." He shoved it repeatedly in her direction, making cautious backward steps toward the television. He had been lifting it when her silhouette had appeared in the kitchen doorway, reflected in its dull empty eye. Clyde did not intend to use the gun. He didn't know what he intended to do.

His back met the TV and the spatula came down on his arm. The gun went off. Clyde looked down to see an explosion of feathers. They floated orange and lazy about the room, some landing on furniture, lamps, on the head of the woman. There was no sign of the bird.

He looked at the woman and held his lips together, sputtering. She stood stunned and immobile; the spatula dropped to the floor. Her eyes were wide and sightless. Clyde knew that laughter was inappropriate and tried to hold it in; but he felt it start around his pelvis and move in waves to his head. A chicken came out from behind a yellowed sofa and looked up at him with bright chicken eyes, head tilted to one side. He took aim and shot it.

Clyde gripped the hose by the nozzle, like the head of a snake, and sprayed white venom slowly back and forth along the baseboard. He took careful and measured steps and was momentarily distracted from his view of the living room—and all its possible treasures—by the way the chicken droppings turned soft and bubbled under the chemical spray.

When he glanced back the woman was peering at him from the living room. A thinning mop of bluish hair and two bulbous eyes emerged parallel to the doorway. The tips of eight pink fingers framed her head as she clung to this peculiar vantage point. Clyde had the impression that she thought she was invisible here, that she could watch him but that he could not see her. It was childish. It annoyed him. He suppressed an urge to shoot the poison spray into her eyes.

It didn't matter. He had seen enough on his way in. The woman had shit, chicken shit to be precise. Nothing worth the energy of the four flights. But it didn't matter. She provoked him. He wanted to put fear into this woman's life. To make her wonder about strange figures lurking in the dark amongst her precious chickens. Maybe he would give her address to his friend the rapist.

Clyde wrote her name—Beatrice Sanford—and address in a large black binder he kept beneath a heating duct in his apartment. The book had a host of names and addresses, along with objects he had seen and their locations, descriptions of occupants, entrances and exits, and dates fumigated. He always waited at least several months before returning to an apartment. Next to her name he wrote, in jagged, childish script: get this woman.

The chicken flew back against the wall and burst into a mass of pulp and feathers. It fell to the ground, a formless thing, and left a stain on the yellow wallpaper, the shape of which suggested nothing of a chicken. Clyde could no longer control himself and his laughter came in fits and strangled bursts, the sound of a winch heaving on some great weight. The woman squatted on the carpet, legs crossed, arms at her sides, palms out and open. One eye bulged wide and sightless, the other hid. Her face glistened with cold cream. She moaned from somewhere deep inside and it was as an engine that moved her body back and forth in a repeating circle.

Clyde looked down at her as if for the first time. The gun fell to his side, a sudden, incongruous weight, and his laughter slowed to a periodic sputter. He felt the muscles in his body drop a notch, his shoulders slump. He sniffed and wiped his nose with one denim sleeve. Then the grey shape of a chicken appeared in the doorway and his gun came up and he shot it. An explosion of fluffy shadows silhouetted in the light from the kitchen. Clyde let out a low whoop and scanned the room for more prey.

He hunched down low and clucked in what he imagined to be—for a chicken—a seductive manner. His boot tipped a chair and a chicken scurried out from underneath. It went up to the woman and pecked at her open palm. Clyde walked over to it slowly. He slipped the tip of his boot beneath it and heaved up with his foot. The chicken protested with a loud squawk and a flurry which carried it higher into the air. Clyde raised the gun and fired, missing it, then fired again. Flame from the barrel and an exploding chicken lit the room. Clyde doubled up on the floor, holding the hot black metal against his aching stomach. Tears streamed from his eyes, mucous bubbled out his nose. He could do nothing but emit short gasps of air and hope to die.

Clyde heard a car scream outside, four flights below, then another. Doors slammed. A red light illuminated the room on and off in a quick, steady pulse that was as his heart. His laughter ebbed and eyes opened to the sound of heavy footsteps on stairs. Clyde pushed himself up and stood paralyzed for a moment. He looked down at the woman."Aw, c'mon Mrs. uh... Mrs. uh... Ma'am. You gotta admit it's one a the funniest things you ever seen—them chickens..."

She had slumped to the ground, one cheek flat against the shag, which stuck to her shiny face like a sparse green beard. Clyde stooped down to right her again, propped her up against a coffee table, but her head lolled to one side and she slumped back down to the floor under its momentum. A hen came up to inspect bits of possible food stuck to her face. It scratched at the carpet a few times and its head came down cocked eye to eye with the woman. It pecked at a piece of green shag attached to her nose, then again at her cheek, drawing blood. The woman did not so much as twitch and Clyde felt his heart tighten, then drop a foot or so into his stomach. The smile stayed on his face, but it was different now, as if planted there.

"Get away from her!" He kicked at the chicken and missed, took aim and shot at it and missed again, the bullet instead finding the woman's chest. The body moved under the impact, but no more than if he'd shot a large slab of beef. The sounds of booted feet were closer now.

Clyde turned around, his face burning red, skin bristling, and saw another chicken, making its way across the carpet to the kitchen. He raised his gun and pulled the trigger and clicked. The chicken stopped and looked up at him. He clicked repeatedly at the bird, emptying round after imaginary round into it. She cocked her head, then walked over in quick and hesitant chicken steps, intrigued. She looked up at the black clicking creature as if it spoke a dialect similar to her own.

Clyde slumped down on the couch, clear plastic vinyl squealing under his weight. The chicken came and hopped up to his lap, examined his plaid shirt with sharp, halting movements of her head. Clyde dropped the gun beside him and laid his hand on one wing. It was smooth and warm. He brought his hand up to her head and scratched behind where he thought must be her ears. He pursed his lips and made soft clucking noises at her, rubbed her chest, and paid no attention to the pounding on the door.

Copyright © 1997 by Augustus Rose. All rights reserved.