Intermission #1

"General, General!"

The chair swiveled forward. "What is it this time. Willis," he gestured to his windbag of a supervising officer, "open the damn door."

Once opened, into the room rolled a wheeled cart, and on it two caged chickens. A goggled, balding man in a white lab coat stood next to it, along with two assistants.

"Dr. Cadipitous," the General began woodenly as the sound of squawks overlapped with his voice, "explain the purpose of presenting these two fowls to me with zero context, zero advance appointment, in this most technical of situations, and I will not strangle you."

"Sorry, sir," the doctor splatted, swinging his hands towards the beaked, wing flapping animals. "To explain..."

"We have found the subject's parents, sir," his female assistant finished for him.

Relegating quietly to the General's side, Willis had been trying to remain quiet. But at the grand assertion, he couldn't help dropping his stoicism. "Her? You found 'her' parents?" He swung his head side to side to center. "Where?"

"Riiight.... here!" Mister doctor opened his arms in a hammy display of showmanship. His two assistants opened the cages, and the chickens wobbled out. Willis, however, was still looking around. He was about to bend under the General's desk before he banged it again.

"What is the meaning of this, doctor?" the grizzled man barked. "Do you think you're some witty poptart? Do you find this a game? Do you want to know what being a headless chicken feels like, you fuck?"

"No, not at all, General!" A wave of hands hid the doctor's head as if from some invisible seething ****. His assistants gulped, looking at each other through soaking collars. "Through meticulous experiments and cross-genetic in vivo testing we have come to the conclusion that, in fact, the subject's parents are indeed these two clutch released beak biters we present before you!"

"But how?!" Willis managed.

"How do you think?" The doctor's tone was laced with equal parts intrigue and horrible awe. "The subject is no simple entity, after all."

"Gotdamn it," the General muttered to himself, burying his face in his hands.

"An intelligence report suggested that one Barbara Siphus lived with her two guardians, Reese Hawkes, maiden name Siphus, and Mildred Hawkes before they mysteriously disappeared some years ago," the female assistant explained.

"Through the gathered metadata and class-docced surveillance we were able to locate the current whereabouts of Mr. and Mrs. Hawkes. Our findings," the other assistant elaborated, "led us to a farm, nestled in the backwaters of Georgia."

"And thus," half-sung the doctor in dramatic recital, eyes directed to the faraway ceiling, "we brought them back here to the facility for further observation." One of the chickens hopped from the cart, landing on the General's desk as the doctor rambled. The General watched unamused through his half-down eyelids. "We had meant to notify you earlier, but... well. Your schedule was... booked."

"And then the management restructuring."

"And the incident."

"And the Halloween Party."

"And, well, it was just chaos," the doctor nodded.

Once he'd finished his sentence, the room and its occupants froze. The chicken had stopped before the General, head cocking from side to side. The General paused, eyes looking into the beads of the grounded bird's. A revelatory silence seemed to emerge, as a palpable electricity filled the air, and the lab associates looked at each other. Willis, meanwhile, stared at the General staring in turn at the chicken with a raspy stillness, ignoring the sweat trickling down his brow.

"Is he..."

"Is it..."

"They are...!"

peck!

"AGHHH," the General slapped his eye with a hand and rolled back on his chair, "the fucking shit pecked me!"

"Mr. Hawkes, you mean," frantically corrected one assistant.

"Actually, I believe that was Reese," the other admitted.

The General grabbed the chicken. It let out a squawk. The rest of the room backed away. "GET. OUT!"

In a swift motion, all visitors, and chickens included, were thrown out of the room. They hastily conducted themselves, only to yell out in panic as they evaded the hurling cart.