Talons on our Tail

Watching Steve get turned into an 80 foot chicken, or at least 80 foot chicken legs supporting a barn, was about as weird as it gets. I only saw it from the rear view mirror. I couldn’t get away fast enough. The dad guy said he thought the barn would be moving north, so I wanted to put as much distance between us as possible. We sped down 169 in a direction that said south.

After driving for about half an hour, I pulled my car to a stop outside a 24 hour gas station.

“You think we’re far enough away?” I asked, trembling.

“No idea,” dad guy said. “By the way, my name’s Clint. You okay?”

“Not remotely. I’m Melinda,” I stammered. “How about you?”

“That was amazing cake,” he said.

I looked at him, as he was smiling at a rather obnoxious beer ad and I couldn’t figure out why.

I gave him the “explain yourself” look I had perfected while at Harvard.

He just giggled like a little boy.

“I’m just so happy to be myself again,” he continued. “I’m happy that I’m me and not whatever your former boyfriend is now. Although, from what you told me in the parking lot, it sounds like he totally deserved it.”

“Don’t forget Ronia,” I added, sort of nodding. “Although I shudder to think what she’ll do now that she’s Baba Yaga.”

“Except she isn’t, not exclusively anyway,” he explained. “From what I remember of that experience, she is only one of many, and they constantly have discussions within that which is Baba Yaga. When she was destroyed, her essence remained. That essence merely found a new host,” he continued. “Baba Yaga just continues on within that host. Or at least that’s how I understand it.”

“I get it,” I gave just one drawn out nod, not intentionally.

Next thing I knew he was tapping my shoulder to wake me up out of sleep. I almost punched him as I flailed my arms. I noticed the full moon about halfway up the night sky.

“Hey, it’s late,” he said, giving me the sweetest smile. “Do you need to sleep?”

“I didn’t think so,” I tried to conceal a yawn and failed. “But maybe I do.”

“Do you have a couch?” he asked. “We haven’t driven very far. We could go back to your place and crash. I’ll take the couch, if you have one.”

I sat up then and looked at him hard.

“I’m at your mercy here,” he locked eyes with me, adding a little touch of pleading. “When she restored me to my normal self, she didn’t bother to give me a phone, car keys, or any identification. All she gave me were the clothes I have on now.”

He paused then, and looked away, as if he was remembering something. He startled, shaking the car a little.

“She also gave me a kiss,” he recalled, slowly turning his head to look at me. “It was…euphoric. I was completely at her whim. She could have done anything she wanted to me after that kiss.”

“Until I broke the spell with this,” I said, feeling very proud of myself while demonstrating the Matterhorn eyebrow.

He cringed, “Doesn’t that…hurt? It looks like it hurts.”

I laughed, and then I demonstrated it with both eyes.

“It did wonders in mock trial competitions,” I explained. “Left my opponents stuttering. It even works at a distance.”

“Huh,” he said, reaching out to touch it.

I slapped his hand away. He shrunk back to his side of the car, mock cowering.

“I’m awake now,” I started the car again and then I pointed at his wedding band. “I imagine you want to call your wife?”

“That would really help me.”

“Unfortunately I left my phone at the diner. Do you think it’s safe? To go back, I mean?” I asked, turning the car back the way we came.

“It should be by now,” he said, sitting up and adjusting his seat belt. “Do you think you’ll get in trouble with your boss, the owner?”

I sped up to the speed limit.

“It was my first day as a waitress,” I turned to glance at him briefly. “I think it’s safe to say it’ll be my only day as a waitress. I had only intended to work there until I passed the bar exam. I also think the fact that there were many witnesses to tonight’s events gives my recent actions some latitude.”

“It’s hard to argue against that,” he replied. “I think you’ll still have a job if you ask nice. I mean, if you still want it.”

“I can take it or leave it,“ I said, after I thought about it more. “I’ve got enough money to scrape by until I pass the bar exam.”

“Plus, you had most of my cake,” he grinned.

I again gave him the Matterhorn, and it succeeded in making his grin falter, a bit.

About five miles outside Hibbing, we started seeing the cows, and a bull. While all the cows were eating grass on the side of the road, there was a single bull bellowing in the middle of the road. The gates and most of the fencing of a dairy farm, and the barn accompanying it, had been demolished. I hit the brakes hard to avoiding slamming the bull, swerving around it just enough to almost end up in a ditch.

The bull scampered to go bellow somewhere else.

“Are you all right?” Clint asked me, breathing heavy.

I nodded, “You?”

I smelled the perspiration dripping from both of us. Clint got out of the car and checked along the fencing. I watched him, perplexed.

“What are you looking for?” I got out of the car and yelled at him.

He went from fence post to fence post, then took a step back and pointed at the ground, “That.”

I walked over to where he was standing by the side of the road. There was at least an 8 foot wide footprint in the dirt, loosely covered with broken barbed wire. About 15 feet away, I saw another one, and another.

“She didn’t head north,” he sighed. “She’s looking for me.”

The bull bellowed from the branches of a flipped tree as Clint squatted down by the edge of the footprint.

“Why did she let me go?” he turned his head and asked me. “Why did she kiss me?”

We both felt the tremor before we heard the crackling of the trees.

“Car! Car! Car!” I screeched, grabbing him by the collar and dragging him back to the car.

He came semi-willingly. At least he didn’t try to fight me at all as I shoved him in the car and slammed his door.

“Why won’t she die, or at least leave us alone?” I asked the moon, now almost directly overhead.

I dashed over to my side and stole a look towards where we heard the crackling. The bull started charging me from that direction. I dove into the car and had barely shut my door when the bull stormed past and kept going, catching my side mirror with one of its horns. The side mirror broke off completely and I heard the mirror itself crack and what seemed like each sliver and shard of glass hit the pavement.

The bull was still running away when I started the car. Where before we were surrounded by cows, all of the cows were gone. I was wondering where they all went when I felt a much stronger tremor, right before I heard the pavement crack behind me.

I checked the rearview mirror as I sped away, seeing a giant chicken talon, bleeding with barbed wire embedded in its scales, puncture the blacktop where I’d been a second before.

We continued into Hibbing, with talons on our tail.