The Lady of Feathers

Original artwork by Garrett Lamarck

By Garrett Lamarck

The lady adjusts her coat, her kaleidescopic coat of feathers, before resuming her ineffectual quest. Down the border she goes again, all along the border of her cell, lurching into a turn just before running into the adjoining wall at the corner. She continues down this other wall as well, as she does all four of them that make up the miserable square, day after day, waiting. She can feel that there are other beings nearby; can hear their desperate cries echoing her own, but they are not much more than a dim presence, haunting the only unoccupied areas of her conscience.

The lady shakes herself, repositioning the delicate coat upon her tense shoulders, her beady eyes ravenously scanning her immediate surroundings. She is hungry. The food, the promised food, has not come. Why has it not come? It was always provided; had always been provided before, but no longer.

Her breath is coming in alarmed puffs at this point, her steps getting quicker. Before she even consciously chooses to, she is running, still waiting until the last opportunity to make the turns, sometimes waiting too long and crashing against the metal bars, the feathers from her coat flying off into her whirlwind of motion. She is screaming now, a shrill sound, her eyes darting this way and that as she hugs the perimeter of her cage. Her stomach feels as though it is folding over on itself. Why is there no food?

In a moment, her body is being thrown by her own manic will against the front wall, the one with the gateway, her feathers coating the ground now. Her screams are hoarse and raw and clearly painful – guttural professions of her anguish. She can hardly stand the hunger; cannot even begin to rationalize her behavior beyond the pain.

She is reaching through the bars now, grabbing at something invisible, rattling and shaking the metal. Her vocal cords have all but failed on her. And then it happens – in an instant, her arm is caught between the interlacing bars, and she’s screaming with a newfound volume, pulling and twisting but to no avail, and the feathers are being ripped from her in clumps now, and then she’s free from the bars and gasping for air and staggering away from the opening gate.

A stout, wrinkled man is standing on the other side of the opening, peering into the little crate at the small, frantic hen with her bleeding foot and scattered feathers. He tosses in a handful of corn, taking a moment to watch in apathy as she dives toward the pile, her speed fast despite her limp. He has no empathy or thought for her at all. He slams the gate shut as he’s already turning to leave, heading down the row of identical crates in their little wooden compartments, a shiny sea of thin metal bars stretching out before him. Feathers have drifted out to coat the ground at his feet. This artificial snow belongs to objects of commodity. They are nothing more, and nothing less.

The hen can barely process her surroundings as the food she’s been craving appears at her feet. She sifts through the straw like an excavator with her pointed beak, choking a little on the dust as she feeds. Dimly she hears the gate slam shut. Never once did she consider making an escape. Her only thought is, was, and always would be food. She continues to consume, ravenously, thoughtlessly, only able to be distracted from her desperate consumption by the occasional urge to peck at her wound. She can hear the tinny sound of the others near her doing the same, but she pays no mind to them. They are a dim presence – nothing more, nothing less.  Dust wedges its way into her nostrils again. She does not react. With her yellow eyes still wild and her fragile chest still heaving, her blood continues to trickle onto the dusty straw at her feet.

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