by Raymond Brunell
The chickens next door spoke perfect French. Not tourist French—university French, debating Sartre while pecking beetles.
“L’existence précède l’essence,” proclaimed the russet hen. “But what of our essence, confined to this pen?”
I pressed my ear to the window. Their philosophical discourse was the only conversation worth having. More profound than colleagues, neighbors, and my ex-husband. I took notes, filling margins with their insights about mortality.
But chickens notice watchers.
Mid-sentence, the russet hen’s black eye fixed on my window. The others fell silent. Then they began speaking something else—not French, not human. Syllables that crawled into my ears like whispers from open graves.
I slammed the window shut, but the sounds continued inside my skull.
I recognized it. The same whispers from childhood—always in that dead language saying “Viens ici, ma petite.” Come here, little one. The French lessons my grandmother insisted on before she died. Before the whispers started.
The chickens weren’t philosophers debating existence.
They were the dead, and found someone who could hear them.
The French was conditioning—grandmother’s voice calling me back through decades, through chickens, through soil. Now they speak in that other tongue, and I translate every rotting word. They tell me about bones beneath the garden. About the previous owner who fed them so well.
When they ask me to bring them fresh water, I obey. When they request scattered corn in a specific pattern, I comply. Small rituals, they explain. Practice for a larger philosophy.
Tomorrow, they say, I will join their seminar.
I should call someone. Police. Animal control. Anyone. But grandmother’s voice whispers “Viens,” and my hands find the shovel.
The earth is soft and rich. Black soil clings under my fingernails as I dig where they directed.
The bones are exactly where they promised—small, delicate finger bones that crumble at my touch, releasing the smell of old roses and decay. The chickens gather at the fence, watching as I clear more earth. My back aches. Blisters form on my palms. But the shovel feels right; it feels destined.
“Très bien,” says the russet hen, switching back to French. “Philosophy is best learned through practice.”
The dead have been so patient, speaking through chickens, waiting for someone to finally hear their lessons about becoming one with the Earth.
They’re teaching me that existence doesn’t precede essence.
Decomposition does.
Raymond Brunell writes gothic horror and speculative fiction. His work appears in Bluebirds Scribe, Manic Author, and Skeleton Flowers Press. He admires chickens for their unflinching directness—they don’t perform emotions they don’t feel, never apologize for existing exactly as they are, and respond to the world with ruthless authenticity. www.unbound-atlas.com