Chicken P.O.W.
Señor Raven and I pulled into Bates Motel 13.
The neon sign blinked:
NO VACANCY
Every room had its lights on.
As I looked closer, I realized every single room was occupied by mannequins.
Some watched television.
Some wigless ones stared out the windows.
We walked into the lobby.
The innkeeper never looked up. He just kept swiping right on his phone.
“Sorry,” he said. “No vacancy.”
Swipe.
Swipe.
Swipe.
I slammed both hands on the counter.
“Listen, you creepy Bates Motel 13 innkeeper. I know you’ve got one emergency room hidden somewhere, and we need it tonight.”
"Sorry."
Swipe.
"Can't help you."
Swipe.
“Then I’ll leave a zero-star review.” I said.
The innkeeper finally stopped swiping right.
“Oh, no.”
“I can’t allow that. I’ve received several one-star reviews, but never a zero-star review.”
“I didn’t even know those were possible.”
“They are,” I said. “You just don’t know how to manipulate the app.”
“How?”
“You log out. Uninstall it. Reinstall it. Log back in. Start the review again, but when it asks you to choose a star, you don’t touch anything.”
The innkeeper’s face went pale.
“And it submits?”
“Zero stars.”
He put his phone down.
“There may be one room available.”
“You know…” he said quietly. “There is one couple I’ve been thinking about evicting.”
“They’ve gone unusually quiet lately, and their same clinical poses are beginning to bore me.”
"I think tonight's the night."
He grabbed his master key.
"Follow me."
He knocked. "Housekeeping!" he yelled.
No answer.
He unlocked the door anyway and left it standing wide open.
Then…
An arm flew into the hallway.
A torso.
A blonde wig.
A pile of silky lingerie.
Finally an entire mannequin crashed onto the carpet.
“And don’t you ever come back!” the innkeeper shouted.
“I’ll send every one of you back to the retail display where you belong!”
We walked inside and immediately began caulking all the peepholes.
Exhausted, Señor Raven and I collapsed onto the bed.
That was when my phone buzzed with a text message.
YOUR CHICKEN IS MY P.O.W.
BUT LET'S DO A FAIR EXCHANGE.
YOUR HEART FOR THE CHICKEN.
AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.
AND MAKE SURE YOU ADD ME AS AN EXCEPTION TO "DO NOT DISTURB" SO YOU DON'T MISS MY MESSAGES.
“Señor Raven,” I said, “we forgot the chicken at that man’s house.”
He was probably still doing the “Monster Mash” when we left.
But I wasn’t going to lie there tossing and turning, wondering whether the man might eventually decide to cook him or force him into harsh labor, such as laying eggs.
“We’re rescuing him tonight.”
I anonymously sent the man an invitation to the Zucchinis in Bikinis Parade and requested an RSVP.
Forty seconds later, he accepted.
I began calculating how long it would take him to return home.
An hour and a half stuck in Los Angeles traffic.
Another thirty minutes looking for parking.
Ten minutes admiring the zucchinis in bikinis.
Then he would order a corn dog.
At some point, he would autograph a woman’s shirt without being asked.
Finally, he would drive home and spend another two hours trapped in traffic.
That gave us plenty of time to stop at the Hollywood Walk of Fame, take a few photos, and rescue the chicken.
The Uber driver dropped us off directly in front of the house and offered to serve as our getaway driver for an extra tip.
Señor Raven and I crept toward the window and peeked inside.
There he was.
The chicken was wearing a tiny bat-print robe, sitting in a velvet chair with his legs crossed while the bats were feeding the chicken caviar as though they were serving grapes to an ancient emperor.
Then “Monster Mash” started playing.
The bats formed two perfect lines and started to dance perfectly synchronized. The chicken jumped out of the chair and joined them.
Unfortunately, he had no sense of choreography.
The bats moved right.
He moved left.
They dipped.
He spun in a circle.
They raised their wings.
He started freestyling.
“He is completely out of sync,” Señor Raven said.
“He only knows freestyle. He refuses structure.”
We tapped on the window.
The chicken stopped dancing and looked directly at us.
I waved.
He stared for a moment.
Then he walked over and closed the curtain.
Señor Raven and I stood there in silence.
“He doesn’t want to be rescued,” Señor Raven said.
Señor Raven and I returned to our motel room completely defeated.
That was when my phone lit up with a long text message:
I'll meet you tomorrow at Brain Freeze Ice Cream at exactly 3:07 p.m.
Don’t be late. I have a dentist appointment afterward to remove any cavities caused by our sweet encounter.
I’ll be the one holding a bouquet of a dozen formaldehyde roses, so you’ll have no trouble spotting me or tracking me by smell.
The chicken will be tucked safely inside an Easter basket to avoid attracting unnecessary suspicion.
Please wear actual clothes underneath that cloak. It's going to be windy, and dramatic entrances are no excuse for catching pneumonia.
Most importantly, bring your heart already detached and packed neatly inside a suitcase.
If you arrive with it still attached, I'll have no choice but to toss you onto the ice cream table and perform emergency open-heart surgery using nothing but an ice cream scoop.
Let's try to avoid making a scene. The last thing we need is someone asking awkward questions.
A few hours later…
“Why didn’t you show up?” he asked.
“Me and the chicken waited for hours.”
“The chicken had seven scoops of ice cream, and I had five, so the employees wouldn’t think we were loitering.”
“Anyway, the chicken got sick afterward.”
“I panicked. I put a Band-Aid on him.”
“A Band-Aid?” I asked.
“I didn’t know what else to do!”
“But it didn’t help. He just kept looking miserable.”
“So what happened?”
“I stayed up all night with him watching medical dramas to see if that would make him feel better.”
“You know, this only proves that you’ve never taken care of anyone but yourself.”
“What?”
“The first time someone else needed you, you spent the entire night taking care of him.”
“It was a chicken.”
“Not even those bats have ever received that kind of sympathy from you. You trained them to lick their own wounds and Google their medical problems.”
"I don't know how you ever managed with this chicken,"
"I kept him outside." I said.
"Outside?"
"He's a free-range chicken."
"That's where he belongs."
“I’ve had him inside the house this entire time.”
“The bats have stopped their choreography. Martial arts training has been suspended indefinitely. They’ve been assigned to sanitation duty because the chicken keeps leaving salmonella everywhere.”
There was no response.
A few minutes passed.
He had stopped texting because he was carrying the chicken into the backyard.
“Go outside, you salmonella party chicken!” he yelled.
He came back inside and texted me.
“I hate you so much. I wish you were here so I could kiss you and show you how much I dislike you.”
“Oh, really? Well, I wish you were here with me in this condemned room at Bates Motel 13 so I could hug you so tightly that I’d squeeze all the air out of you and make you even more goth-pale.”