C4 antho - Chamber Four

~26~ The Chamber Four Fiction Anthology
surface will finish on the rich side of amber, the girlie side of
brown. Though he’s added a few cherries for color, he knows
at the end of the line the stuff is going to come out brown.
The bowel end of the line. The brown end. Auto-chromatically.
Brown, brown, brown. And now he’s got the mini camera
to prove it. It’s regal, it’s pizzazz, the way it works, and
real spirit-fueling.
At the sound of a hiss in the oven, Malchicken begins to
fret. He knows the sound is telling him that liquid inside the
pastry is drilling its way outward and falling to a carbonized
hell. It’s a sign of shoddy workmanship. Working with previously
frozen chicken parts and dried beans, it’s hard to control
the moisture. The hissing may also be a wicked ploy
taunting Mal to open up the oven door―do it do it do it―a
reckless action that will release the heat trapped inside and
end in disaster. It’s a bread-knife-to-the-sternum type of experience,
the hissing, the wanting to know, the splintery edge
of sawed bone. His best bet is to leave the kitchen and let the
baking run its course, to retreat to his room’s darkness, disturbed
only by a lukewarm moon. Setting the egg timer,
which sounds out each painful second, on the sill, Mal pulls
open the curtains, spraying beads of condensation diagonally
across the glass. Mal takes a shy finger to the window, outlining
shapes and cross-hatching them in with fat little squiggles.
Freshly moistened dust tickles his nose. The bleating of
the egg is steady.
Malchicken takes his head to the pillow, unbuckling his
pants as he reclines. By the side of his bed there’s a wire he
can pull which causes a mobile hanging above his head to
spin. His body is a doughy exaggeration of an obese child.
Born without the well-sectioned Chicken neck, Mal’s headto-torso
slope makes him a true pyramid-shaped American,
according to FDA standards. Golden brown hair from his
long pin head graces the tops of his shoulders where the tips