Charlie the Chicken

This was the last day before Charlie was off to college and he still hadn’t succeeded in changing himself. It wasn’t like he exactly tried very hard during the summer—there were a lot of “maybe laters” and “I’ll do it in the mornings”—but he’d made a promise to himself and he was going to keep it, even if it killed him.

Which it wouldn’t because Charlie was quite averse to danger. He called it being careful, but the kids at school had another word for it: chicken. 

And, like all children who had smelled blood in the unknowable waters that were the high school hallways, they had preyed on him at every opportunity. They popped up from recycling bins as he traversed between classes, threw toy bats at him as he ate in the lunchroom, and shoved live spiders into his backpack when he wasn’t looking. Last Halloween, one of them had the brilliant idea of tormenting him from outside his home in the suburban desert that was the Montreal West Island, biking back and forth in a Scream mask and a black robe, moaning loudly as if they were a ghost from a B-rate horror movie. 

Well, that had been Joe Cappelli, actually. Joe was an idiot that way.

At least he was consistent. That final summer day before Charlie was to set off on his journey to Ryerson University, as he was painstakingly picked out the clothes that were to be his new style—no more plaid, chinos, or dress shirts, thank you very much—he heard a yell from his bay window.

At first, he thought it was a dog that had gotten hit by yet another car in front of his house. Out of morbid curiosity, Charlie padded over to the window and looked out toward the road. Instead of a dead dog and a panicked motorist, a boy rode his mountain bike in circles. Charlie scoffed in disgust and cracked his window open.

“Joe!” Charlie snapped. “What do you want?”

Joe paused his circles and looked to Charlie. “Get down here, bro!”

Exasperated, Charlie quickly threw something on and headed outside from the garage, his own bike trailing next to him.

“Charlie the Chicken!” Joe greeted. Charlie rolled his eyes as he hopped onto his bike and rode to meet him in the middle of the road.

“Don’t call me that, man.”

“But it rolls off the tongue so well,” Joe laughed.

“Anyway,” Charlie sighed, “what were you shouting about?”

“You’re going off to Ryerson tomorrow, aren’t you?” said Joe. “We gotta do something before you go.”

Charlie preened. “I already have plans. I’m going to become a whole new person. No more Charlie the Chicken.”

“You’re going to college, dude,” Joe said. “No one’s gonna know who you are anyway.”

“Well, no,” Charlie sputtered, “but I need to have my rite of passage and go on a life-changing adventure. Or…something like that.”

“Oh, adventure?” Joe said, suddenly excited. “Like a party?”

“No,” said Charlie with a smirk he hoped was enigmatic. After a dramatic pause, he said, “I’m going to the mill.”

“The mill—oh.” Joe wrinkled his nose. “You gonna go in this time?”

“I have to,” Charlie said. He hopped onto his bike and strapped on his helmet before pedaling down the road. Joe pulled up next to him. “It’s where it all started.”

Joe already knew, so he didn’t ask. He knew that the reason Charlie had received the moniker “Charlie the Chicken” was because of his unfortunate blunder in seventh grade when he and a few boys, Joe included, ventured to the abandoned flour mill that stood on the precipice of town. It towered like a great husk of a building, a tin roof that gleamed in the light of the moon and was surrounded by chain-link fences that sagged in some places from all the boys who had come before to climb in. Charlie had made it to the fence with the others, climbed it with the finesse of a concussed squirrel, and made it to the red door on the eastern wall. It was when they had wrenched the door open, with some difficulty, that a flock of bats swooped out with squeaks of irritation.

And out from Charlie’s throat, before he could help it, was the most girlish cry he’d ever uttered before he turned tail and sprinted off. The laughter of the boys nipped at his heels, so shocked were they by the sound of his scream. 

Inevitably, the next day, everyone at school knew of the incident which had effectively haunted him up to the day of prom, when he had to take his older cousin as a date because no girl could fathom being the date of Charlie the Chicken. Even Lucy, who was best known for eating glue until grade ten, said no to him. 

On the cusp of his youthful dependence, Charlie had to take a leap that would prove to no one but himself that he was brave enough to take the next step into independence. The mill had become a blockage for his self-esteem, so what better than to conquer his fear and validate himself?

For the first time in five years, Charlie pulled up with Joe at the chain-link fence and was immediately attacked by the smell of…ham. Right next to the flour mill was a butcher that seemed rather out of place in this suburban outlier that was the industrial sector, oversaturated with factories and mills where trucks bustled in and out of their lots.

Joe scaled the fence with ease because he was part of the soccer team and made a point of keeping fit. Charlie, on the other hand, had spent a lot of his high school career eating hot Cheetos and getting chip dust all over his Xbox One controller, so he was hardly what anyone would describe as “in shape”. He still made it over, albeit with a lot of huffing and wheezing.

Then came the red door that so tormented his waking nightmares, the same one that, when opened, kicked off the worst attack he could receive against his burgeoning high school reputation. It seemed smaller than when he’d first approached it years ago, but that could be because he was a full foot shorter back then. He braced himself against the door and paused when Joe said, “Hey, you sure, man? We don’t gotta go in. We could just tell everyone we did.”

Even before Joe could finish what he was saying, Charlie shook his head. “No. I have to do this.”

“You know the guys won’t even care if you do this, right?”

“Doesn’t matter.” With that, Charlie shoved with a grunt and the door responded with a groan, then swung open. Then, just as he practiced, he threw himself on the floor and waited for the scores of bats to emerge. Only, not a sound was made except for the footfalls of Joe who stepped over him to wander inside.

“It’s daytime, dingbat,” Joe laughed when Charlie looked up in palpable confusion. “The bats are asleep. They’re not gonna attack.”

“Oh…right,” said Charlie as he scurried to his feet and dusted off the front of his t-shirt and shorts. “I was just worried about, like…birds or whatever.”

He fished out his pocket flashlight and, after a couple of false starts, it cut through the stuffy darkness of the old mill. Joe made shadow puppets in the spot of light, first of a dog, then a bird, then a cat, only they all looked the same.

For all its hulking might on the outside, the interior was so cramped that it appeared much smaller. Myriads of steel pipes running along the walls and funneling into white terminals were rusted from lack of use. Brown burlap sacks that made Charlie itch just looking at them were strewn across the floor amid stains of wet flour and brown water that had dripped from the pipes. The occasional needle glinted from the sweep of Charlie’s flashlight. Joe stepped on one by accident and ended up shattering it under his sneakers.

“Crap,” muttered Joe, though his voice echoed through the empty air. Nothing could be heard within those walls; it was like finding an enclave to escape the madness of daily life. Even though it stunk and it was filthy and potentially questionable things happened here late in the night, Charlie couldn’t help but think of how…not-scary it was, five years later, to have wandered into the mill that had plagued him since he was a child.

He walked through the aisles of machine terminals which were a dulled white, with gears fixed to their sides to control the flow of flour back when they were in operation. Joe trailed behind and sometimes kicked away needles and sacks and the random cans of Coors Light for the fun of it.

“Soooo, we done here?” Joe whined. “There’s nothin’ to see. It's just like last time.”

“Don’t rush me,” Charlie snapped. He pivoted to look around only to see more machines, more pipes. He finally turned to Joe and said, “Fine, let’s get out of here.”

Or, he would have, had it not been for the corpulent shadow that had shifted in the corner of the hall. At first, Charlie had passed his flashlight over it and automatically assumed that it was nothing but sacks of flour, forgotten and left to rot. Only, it wasn’t common for a pile of flour to shift and moan when Charlie focused his flashlight on it.

Charlie squeaked. Joe looked over and cried out before smashing against the machine nearest him to grab hold of something solid. Shaking, palms moist with sweat, and heart beating in his throat, Charlie felt himself freeze in the face of something that was, objectively, far more terrifying than a couple of flying rats. His legs twitched with the urge to run, but he only shuffled, then anchored himself to the floor.

“Hey!” Charlie yelled in his manliest voice. It cracked a bit at the end. The mound of fabric shifted a little more and raised—an arm? It shielded its face and made a grumbling noise.

“What the hell…” There was more muttering, followed by, “Get that thing outta my face.”

After a shaky minute, Charlie lowered his flashlight to the folded legs of the unknown boogeyman. He was drowning in his layers of clothes, despite it being at least thirty degrees Celsius outside.

From under a cap with a broken beak, a pair of eyes glimmered in the darkness.

“I was sleeping,” said the mound of clothes.

“Sorry,” said Charlie, even though he didn’t know what he was apologizing for.

The eyes studied Charlie, pierced his heart and peered into his soul.

“You got cigarettes?” he asked.

“Not…really…”

More disgruntled mumbling interspersed with expletives. Then, the eyes fell shut and, after a tense couple of minutes, a snort cut through the air. The man had fallen back asleep and was snoring loud enough to shake the rafters overhead.

And from then on, the boys were changed forever. Well, not exactly. Charlie felt more like he had indigestion than anything by time he got home. Joe returned home as well, shaken and pale, but otherwise alright. After that day, they’d rarely see each other again, except for the odd visit home to see their folks. 

Joe had gone to study abroad in Italy where he started a social media account and dropped out of school to take beautiful pictures of sights he’d seen around the world. Charlie went to Ryerson and majored in archaeology where he made a living of crawling into unknown spaces and taking note of their geographical and historical importance. 

With the days that carried him further and further away from that moment in the mill, the memory of it faded to his subconscious, then to a blip that occasionally bobbed its head up in those quiet gaps in the day, when he stumbled into the liminalities of everyday life and was free to revisit his fears and subsequent conquests.