YNs— Chickens

2025

In his personal jet at night, nineteen-year-old Elvin Coor counted figures. Little lights illuminated the area around his aircraft. This Wilmington, Delaware airport created a space for him to consider, grasp, evaluate. The sound of the pilots discussing routes intermingled with a soft ringing. He, nevertheless, continued to use his iPhone to tabulate his earnings…and earnings potential. He saw his street team and sense of achievement ached its way through his lanky frame. Dressed in a three piece gray suit and a fuchsia shirt and matching pocket square, Coor’s medium brown skin complimented his attire.

As he jabbed at the phone, he felt the pangs of success. What it cost. The men and women who fell under his command. He carved their names into his flesh with a tattooist's needle. He looked outside at the other aircraft taxiing on the tarmac.

“Mr. Coor,” the pilot, Monroe Refton, a jet-black man with a stunner smile walked up to the man. had a slow but confident gait that could spark attention from anyone around him.

“We’re going to be taking flight in about an hour. My staff thank you for your patience and we do apologize for any inconvenience. Feel free to ask our chef for any entree that you’d like.”

“Thank you.”

“My pleasure, sir.” He ambled back to the cockpit and closed the door behind him. Coor looked at the numbers. The opioids popped. His team had sold $600,000 worth of product in a single day. Coor enjoyed the achievement, but wanted more. He wanted to be among the top earners in the dope game. A shining example of an entrepreneur maneuvering through the semi-capitalistic framework of the United States of America.

Then, he heard the click of heels. He looked up from his phone.

“I know I’m not supposed to be here…but I’m here.”

Coor grinned with that sly coolness he had made a reputation of displaying. He looked up again.

“Hayeka….”

Hayeka Ruiz’s eyes sparkled like emeralds. She was twenty-two-years-old. Her symmetric face could stop anyone and permit them to contemplate on her shapely figure and…that face. She was five feet ten inches tall and her red bottoms added a few extra inches. She carried a Birkin bag with a change of clothes.

“I don’t want to stop you from your work….”

“Please. Stop me,” He announced, folding his arms.

“Well, I know this connect. The Bahamanians don’t care about what the US does. They’re not worried. I know you’ve only Facetimed with them and sent some texts. They’re different in person.”

“Hmmm. Like how different?” he asked.

“Oh, well, he uh…he can make people he doesn’t like disappear. No trace, nothing, like the cannibals who ate the Rockefeller guy.” Her voice seemed serious but sweet and inviting even as she conveyed such grave information.

“I’m not worried about it. I’ve known that in this life, you’ve got to break through the soil and if you want to get at the fossils for fuel. That takes some doing, but it’s worth it in the end. If he doesn’t like me, he’ll have to deal with my shooters down there.”

Hayeka sighed. “You’ve got shooters everywhere….?”

“Just about. It’s a whole syndicate ready with the sticks just in case anyone tries to play me like a Playstation 5.”

Hayeka nodded slowly and crossed her legs. She had been sitting on a divan.

“How are sales?” she managed to change the subject.

“Sales are sales.”

She looked at him in a coy way and just uttered, “Okay.”

He looked at an encrypted site that showed marijuana, heroin, cocaine, and fentanyl in a pie chart. The fentanyl exploded from the chart with an astounding 73% of the pie.

“Why do people get high?” Hayeka wondered aloud, almost sounding like a college-aged school girl.

“It’s not my place to speculate.”

“I mean really. What makes a person want to put down their life and pick up a pipe? Inject? Ingest? Anything?”

Coor straightened his tie. “Again, it’s not for me to say.” He held up his right index finger. “I will say this, though. As long as people don’t have thought, work, and joy, they’ll always come scurrying for that next big fix.” He spoke matter-of-factly. He spoke with the tone of an heir to his own fortune. Like he knew enough about the game but felt he didn’t need to discuss further.

Again, Hayeka switched gears. “What is this?” she looked around and pinched the cushions to the divan.

“It’s a Gulfstream Five.”

“I guess with figures like you just showed me, you can afford these trips to the Southern parts of the Southeast Atlantic.”

“I do well.”

“Hmmph.” Hayeka managed.

“What? You want me to tell you about my business. First you screamed you loved me and then you fostered hate. Your signals are crossed.”

Hayeka’s mouth hung open slightly. “That was during a moment of passion. I could have said total gibberish and still gotten you vexed. That’s the power of a woman’s touch.”

Coor looked out the window and then at his watch. About twenty minutes until he would be in the sky. “Why did you come along? I know you have work….”

“Work can wait. I want to see some of my old friends. I know they’re just dying to see an old face. I know you’ve planned for this trip like you plan everything. I know you have a knowledge of how humid it can get down there.”

“Yes.”

“You’ll be fine in your suit. What was it? $11,000?”

“Fifteen.”

Her giggle sounded like happiness bursting through the monotony of waiting.

“I would expect you to be able to better understand the ramifications––”

“Ramif––do I not belong? Like I said, I know them. Grew up around them. They’ve been in the game for a long time. They’ve switched from their main product to the pills. I think it’s admirable of them to do so,” Hayeka chimed.

“I’m just trying to get my chickens….” Coor announced.

“Did you know that chickens outnumber Delawareans?”

“I’m talking about my money….” Coor replied.

“I know. I’m just injecting some facts for you.”

Coor didn’t say a word. He just kept jabbing at his phone. Hayeka continued.

“I know that you are all about that cash.”

“I am,” he mentioned.

“That’s why you’ve gotta pump more on the block.”

Coor looked at her. His eyes squinted some and then returned to his mobile device. “You know you’re going to have to do work like me.”

“Hell, I’m pulling in high six figures on my job. Being a senior-vice president of WSFS has its perks. I’m pushing an S-Class. I have my own house.”

“But you’re lonely and you didn’t speak a word about ethics and values,” Coor observed.

“I thought they were obvious….” Hayeka countered. “I mean I couldn’t be in my position without having some sense of morality.”

He looked at her. “You know it cost me sixty million dollars to get this plane? Yep. I had to use a lot of lieutenants to secure the bags on many occasions. No tension amongst the opps. Just good business.”

“No turf wars?”

“No—except for some Southbridge issues. But we cleared it up,” he chuckled lightly and looked out his window. “Twenty million.”

“So you must be worth that multiple times over….” she suggested.

“Yes, I am. I started out as a courier and just kept moving up the proverbial ranks.”

“When did you become leader?”

“About two years ago. I’m a CEO at nineteen. Who else can say they run a multimillion dollar company at that age?”

Hayeka shrugged. “You’re the boss.”

“You’re goddamn right I am.” Just then, he breathed deeply and shot a glance at his watch. He had not realized that the time had ticked to the moment where the plane would be off into the sky and he’d be a cloud hopper again. Hayeka crossed her legs and scrolled through her Instagram stories. A smile stretched across her face as the plane rocked violently.

They both looked up at each other. They raised from their seats. Crosswinds on the ground? he thought. Turbulence on the tarmac? That’s absurd, she ascertained.

“I’m going to sit here,” Coor announced. A jackhammer slammed against his heart, but he showed no evidence of being shaken.

Hayeka’s mind sped up but she broadcast no indication of being agitated.

“Yes, they’re probably just fixing some bugs,” she rationalized.

The darkness outside didn’t intimidate either of them. But it seemed like the lights all around became tracer rounds. Sparks of yellow, red, white, and green zoomed by but the jet did not move.

“Just keep your thoughts positive,” Coor added. He breathed. Hayeka started to stand. He motioned for her to remain seated.

With a burst of sound, Two giant orange men entered the cockpit and just locked the door, not touching the pilots. They ran past them into the cabin and saw Hayeka she screamed with the intensity of a newborn. She grabbed her bag and ran off the plane. Coor just looked up and forward. In his mind, he saw his earnings devoured and the long teeth of the orange beings headed towards him. He thought about how his capo would take over for the business. He brushed off his shoulders as he prepared to be devoured himself.

The first orangeman moved slowly towards him. He seemed to understand the phone ringing. He motioned for Coor to pick up the phone. His voice seemed to be devoid of all emotion.

“Yes?”

“Get out of there! They’re real!” Heyeka screeched.

“No.”

“But they’re going to eat you alive.”

“I’ve seen enough at this age like King Tut.”

The second orangeman walked around and checked to see if no one else had been alerted to their presence.

The first one unhinged his jaw. He opened it so wide, you could fit a thousand pills in it. He came down on Coor’s head. He swallowed up his body completely. After eating the body, the orange man looked to his partner and they exited the plane without making any more traces and disappeared into the night.

Police vans all came to the point where they had already prepared to take down Coor. Hayeka had become his only line of defense. On her phone she had typed out “5-0” and “Twelve.” It obviously didn’t matter. The orange men escaped and the cops didn’t believe her, still.

“I’m trying to tell you…the orange men…I didn’t think they were real…They went in there. This is what’s happening to us. It’s a menace!”

“We understand man,” Lieutenant Trustle mentioned with a dire tone. His brown skin contrasted with his brown uniform. He tapped on his pad with a straight face.

“I don’t know what happened to him. If he’s okay.”

“We’ve received similar reports over the years. No evidence beyond the mutilation…”

“Mutilation?!” Heyeka ran back towards the plane but Trustle stopped her.

“That’s a potential crime scene, ma’am.”

Her face looked like a shattered mirror. Tears sprang from her eyes. She kept struggling in the arms of the officers. In her mind, he was still alive. After resolving that she would be nothing without him, she experienced the twinge of knowing he helped her get her position at Wilmington Savings and Funds Society (WSFS). After her brief stint as one of his clients snorting the devil’s dandruff to get through college, she stopped altogether once she graduated. Coor put in a word for her to be placed as an executive after her placing fourth in her class at Delaware State University.

Now, she sat in the police cruiser. She sobbed. All of the work had been for naught, shecsaid in her mind. Already, she concocted a scholarship in Coor’s name. Everyone just thought he owned a few supermarkets and pharmacies in the Wilmington area and that’s how he made his millions. She knew better which caused her to laugh through the tears.

She cried but not just tears of joy through sorrow but with the knowledge she would uplift the Coor name.