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Authors: Chris Brookmyre
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coated each blade of grass and contoured each barren rut like a sculpture.
She cast a glance across to the house, then walked back into the sunlight from where she lifted the chopping block and the bucket, carrying them back with her into the shadow. She placed the block amid the whitest patch of hoar, at the dead centre of the shade, and rested the cleaver against it, handle up.
Bracing herself for the smell, she opened the coop and stepped inside. It was one mercy of the colder weather: the reek was always that bit less volatile, fewer molecules excited by heat and borne into the air by convection currents. The place seemed quiet, just the sounds of pecking and scratching from its occupants, as though they were all too wrapped up in their own concerns of a Saturday morning to be bothered with squawking to their neighbours.
‘Maybe have a blether later, once I’ve got all this pecking and scratching out of the way,’ they were perhaps thinking. That’s what she was like, anyway. That’s why she was tending to this before going over to see to the horses. She always preferred to get chores out of the way before turning to pleasures; even with a list of duties, she would tend to them in ascending order of palatability. Her sister was the exact opposite, an arch-procrastinator who seemed unburdened no matter what was piling up on her plate. She wished she was the same, more able to live in the moment, but she knew herself well enough to understand that this was just how she was made. She couldn’t relax and enjoy anything while there were responsibilities still waiting to be met. In the short term, that meant killing a chicken for Mum before going to the stables, and in the long term it meant that for weeks, even months she had been unable to see past sitting her exams. So much so, in fact, that it was at her parents’ insistence that she was going out tonight when her instincts and conscience were angrily dictating that she could not afford to let up on her studies even for one evening.
She found the hood hanging by its strap on the hook where it was supposed to be. That was because it was her who did this last time; Lisa seldom took her turn, and when she didn’t manage to wriggle out of it she usually found some way of making everybody think it would be simpler in future just to do it themselves. ‘Losing’ the hood had been a case in point.
She chose a candidate with little deliberation and popped the hood over the hen’s head. It was a small thing, but it made the whole undertaking so much easier, a fact presumably not lost on Lisa when she failed to return the hood to its rightful place. It made the birds more placid, sometimes rooted them to the spot, sparing the time-consuming and temper-shredding (not to mention dignity-rending) farce of chasing the chookie around like Benny Hill. But perhaps more importantly, it spared her from looking it in the eye between that moment of choosing and the bird’s imminent end on the block.
That was why they hooded prisoners before the gallows, blindfolded men in front of the firing squad. People thought it was a courtesy to the condemned, so that they wouldn’t have to literally face their death, but it was actually for the benefit of the executioners. How could you shoot somebody while you looked into their eyes? How could you watch a person be hanged if you could see the agonies racking their face?
They should bring it back, people kept saying. People who had never killed anything, not even a chicken.
She took the bird outside briskly, entering an almost automatic process from the moment the hood was in place and her grip firm on the hen’s neck. There would be no dallying, no ponderance, only the swiftest of action. She was at the block in moments, where she held the bird by its legs and tail in her left hand, its neck straining back against its body as soon as it touched the wood. With her right hand she reached for the handle of the cleaver, always keeping her
She cast a glance across to the house, then walked back into the sunlight from where she lifted the chopping block and the bucket, carrying them back with her into the shadow. She placed the block amid the whitest patch of hoar, at the dead centre of the shade, and rested the cleaver against it, handle up.
Bracing herself for the smell, she opened the coop and stepped inside. It was one mercy of the colder weather: the reek was always that bit less volatile, fewer molecules excited by heat and borne into the air by convection currents. The place seemed quiet, just the sounds of pecking and scratching from its occupants, as though they were all too wrapped up in their own concerns of a Saturday morning to be bothered with squawking to their neighbours.
‘Maybe have a blether later, once I’ve got all this pecking and scratching out of the way,’ they were perhaps thinking. That’s what she was like, anyway. That’s why she was tending to this before going over to see to the horses. She always preferred to get chores out of the way before turning to pleasures; even with a list of duties, she would tend to them in ascending order of palatability. Her sister was the exact opposite, an arch-procrastinator who seemed unburdened no matter what was piling up on her plate. She wished she was the same, more able to live in the moment, but she knew herself well enough to understand that this was just how she was made. She couldn’t relax and enjoy anything while there were responsibilities still waiting to be met. In the short term, that meant killing a chicken for Mum before going to the stables, and in the long term it meant that for weeks, even months she had been unable to see past sitting her exams. So much so, in fact, that it was at her parents’ insistence that she was going out tonight when her instincts and conscience were angrily dictating that she could not afford to let up on her studies even for one evening.
She found the hood hanging by its strap on the hook where it was supposed to be. That was because it was her who did this last time; Lisa seldom took her turn, and when she didn’t manage to wriggle out of it she usually found some way of making everybody think it would be simpler in future just to do it themselves. ‘Losing’ the hood had been a case in point.
She chose a candidate with little deliberation and popped the hood over the hen’s head. It was a small thing, but it made the whole undertaking so much easier, a fact presumably not lost on Lisa when she failed to return the hood to its rightful place. It made the birds more placid, sometimes rooted them to the spot, sparing the time-consuming and temper-shredding (not to mention dignity-rending) farce of chasing the chookie around like Benny Hill. But perhaps more importantly, it spared her from looking it in the eye between that moment of choosing and the bird’s imminent end on the block.
That was why they hooded prisoners before the gallows, blindfolded men in front of the firing squad. People thought it was a courtesy to the condemned, so that they wouldn’t have to literally face their death, but it was actually for the benefit of the executioners. How could you shoot somebody while you looked into their eyes? How could you watch a person be hanged if you could see the agonies racking their face?
They should bring it back, people kept saying. People who had never killed anything, not even a chicken.
She took the bird outside briskly, entering an almost automatic process from the moment the hood was in place and her grip firm on the hen’s neck. There would be no dallying, no ponderance, only the swiftest of action. She was at the block in moments, where she held the bird by its legs and tail in her left hand, its neck straining back against its body as soon as it touched the wood. With her right hand she reached for the handle of the cleaver, always keeping her
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