Sturm und Drang
The sky bore down heavily on the farm all day, threatening at every moment to unleash its fury on the animals and fields.
Peggy spent most of her day monitoring the barnyard, shooing animals into their pens, and keeping a watchful eye on the sky – there would be no time left to tend to the laundry and scrubbing and supper. In late afternoon as the air grew electric, she chased the chickens into their coop, gathered the last of the animals in the barn, then stepped down into the storm cellar and bolted herself inside.
A howling evil soon pressed angrily against the cellar door, shredding the earth above and tearing at the door before it ran off and disappeared into sudden silence.
Peggy opened the door and stepped up into the blinding sunlight, blinking her eyes hard against the sun’s brightness and her own amazement – their farm seemed untouched aside from the damaged chicken coop door.
“Well never mind,” she said as the chickens filed out stupidly and clucked their way across the yard, ignorant to the terror that had passed over them and to the end that awaited the unlucky soul Peggy grabbed as she headed toward the kitchen.
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This week’s cue is CHICKEN.
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Lisa A. Listwa is a self-employed writer with experience in education, publishing, and the martial arts. Believing there was more to life than punching someone else’s time clock and inspired by the words of Henry David Thoreau, she traded her life as a high school educator for a life as a writer and hasn’t looked back. She is mother to one glorious handful of a daughter, wife to the nicest guy on the planet, and reluctant but devoted owner of three Rotten Cats. You can find her adventures and thoughts on living life deliberately here on the blog.
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This appears to be a case of “out of the tornado and into the frying pan,” a nice twist on “out of the frying pan and into the fire”! 🙂 Poor chicken, escaped the storm only to end up as tonight’s dinner. That would probably be my luck too! Great story, wonderful build up!
I was kind of stuck on what to do with chicken, you know? And I may have been thinking about dinner. 😀
Nice surprise (but low-key and impossible to anticipate) ending.
The capricious nature of …well, nature. Don’t seem right, what with surviving a tornado and such, but, I suspect the clucked-up mythology in the coop would incorporate that event into a lesson to indoctrinate the young chicks into the way of the two-legged god who demands sacrifice in return for sparing the flock. or something)
good Six, yo
Impossible to anticipate – like nature, like life.
Haha! Yes, or something, Clark. I see where you’re going there.
OOH Lisa! I like this one a LOT. Tornados scare me although I can’t say we had many in Colorado where I grew up. There was one time though that I went outside and the sky was green. Like really GREEN. I was at work and we all hid in the freezer. It passed by and we were fine but I guess (according to the news, later) that it was right there. The whole holding onto the door above my head thing… and chicken? Awesome use.
When I was a little girl we had a tornado here – so rare – and like you said, the sky was a wicked ugly GREEN. Terrifying.
Chicken. That was from our Zoe. 😀
Great writing as usual–I had such a visual of the chickens headed to their destinies.
Thank you! Poor chickens…
Well told! Yes, even if a tornado just passed overhead, dinner will be wanted.
Always…life goes on.
Very good picture painted.
Thanks, Paul.
Nice telling and you got me at the end! So was not expecting that lol
Poor chicken….lucky to escape the tornado, but luck ran out when it was over! Too bad it wasn’t born a cat…so there would be 8 lives left! Enjoyed this. 🙂
This is so beautifully done ! Amazing 6 sentences.
Best wishes,
Moon
https://aslifehappens60.wordpress.com
Hello, Moon! And thank you for your lovely comment.
Haha – yes that would be helpful! Now if chickens had nine lives, we’d be all set for chicken dinners for a long time. 😀