An Eternal Treblinka

Everyday I eat chicken for lunch. The grocery store across the
street from where I work sells leg corners for two dollars a pop. A leg
corner is a drumstick and a thigh, in case you were wondering. Making
twelve dollars an hour, Im hesitant to spend a lot of money on lunch,
so spending four dollars on half a chicken is right up my alley, and I
love this chicken. I cant even eat any other chicken anymore,
because it tastes so dry. The grocery store precooked chicken corners
are dripping in oil and flavor, which I dont mind health-wise because I
am on a low carbohydrate, high fat diet.
Naturally, I regret this now, but I couldnt have known what
would have happened. How could anybody have known? After all,
wasnt reality supposed to make sense? Im an atheist, or at least, I
was an atheist. Now that Im dead and writing this, Ive been forced to
change my opinion, but how could I have known?
Everyday I would think about how I was eating a chicken that was
born, fed, and some how brought to me for less than 4 dollars.
Assuming two leg corners are half a chicken, that puts the value on
the chickens life at around eight dollars.
Isaac Beshevis Singer once said, For animals, it is an eternal
Treblinka. My father used to misquote that as for chickens, everyday
is Treblinka. Treblinka being a Polish Nazi death camp for Jews and
other mid-century undesirables. The holocaust never bothered me too
much, it was a historical event, even being Jewish, all those pictures,
those videos of the people who looked like skeletons, it looked far
away, as if in a different universe. In some ways, it was a different
universe, no European country would create death camps now.
While eating my chicken, I would always appreciate that this
used to be a life that I was consuming on such a constant basis. It was
a living being being sold to me, now dead. This didnt bother me so
much as much as it struck me as awe-inspiring. Here I was, able to
consume a life so casually, reveling in my position at the top of the
food chain. I suppose it was my awareness of the situation that caused
me to be chosen for this assignment, as well as my position as a copy
editor for an advertising firm. I guess whoever is in charge knew that I
knew how to sell things. This is of course, something that I do not
agree with as people just dont care about animals enough to stop
eating meat. I probably dont either still.
When I woke up on that Saturday, looking forward to my
weekend of sitting around my penthouse apartment, looking down at

the street and smoking cheap cigarettes, something was immediately

amiss. I was cold, very cold. When I went to get up, I found that I was
stuck behind metal bars. At first I thought the worst. Somehow, I had
relapsed and blackout so much that I forgot that I even took that first
drink. I dont know if thats possible or not, but it was the only
explanation I could think of. The small cage scared me, why was I so
tightly packed in? What had I done? Had I beaten someone? Robbed
someone or worse yet, killed someone? What had I done in this
blackout?
It wasnt until I went to the front of the cage that I knew that
something was terribly wrong. Chickens, what looked to be thousands,
upon thousands of chickens. It wasnt until then that I realized why I
felt so shitty. My arms couldnt move like they normally do because
they were now large, white wings. My feet were two little orange
sticks.
At this point, I realized that I was in a dream. Have you ever been
in a nightmare that you knew was a nightmare but you still couldnt
will yourself awake? Well here I was, trying to will myself awake. But I
knew I was awake. The thing about dreams is, if youre not sure if
youre asleep or awake, thats a sign that you are definitely awake.
You know when youre awake, and I knew that I was awake.
I tried yelling but all that came out of my mouth was an
obnoxious noise, and as chickens are lip-less, I couldnt form any
words with the worm-like tongue that was now occupying the space
behind my, not teeth, but beak.
It was then I felt an extreme pressure in my lower body that I had
never felt before. I stood up and rocked back and forth on my feet as
much as the cage allowed in order to try to relieve the pain that this
unknown pressure was causing. I looked across at the chickens in the
cage across from me and realized something. I had the top cage, or at
least I was in the top row of cages.
Penthouse, I tried muttering. Squehhhk, came out of my
mouth.
The full weight of what had happened had hit me. I began to cry,
at least I could still do that. When I tried to wipe my eyes, I wound that
my wings were not built in a manner that allowed them to touch my
face.
I heard a metal door clang open, and the scene became hectic.
The chickens all began squawking at the top of their lungs. The noise
was deafening. Who knew chickens had such sensitive hearing? Or
maybe the hearing wasnt very sensitive at all, and this loud noise

was just a side-effect of being utterly surrounded with creatures such

as myself, trapped in this box. Chicken jail. I tried to yell shut up, but
naturally my screech that came out just added to the chorus of poultry
mayhem.
A teenager in a New York Yankees baseball hat and a denim
jacket appeared in my corner of vision. This was my chance. He was
walking by me, I had to let him know somehow. I pressed my tongue
against my beak and tried to yell at him, Get me out of here! All that
came out was a miss-mash of nonsensical squeaks. He walked by me
to the other side of the modern barn, which seemed more like a
maximum security prison. There was no sign of dirt anywhere, nor was
there grass. Everything was metal on metal.
The boy picked up what looked to be an ax, and walked by me
back towards the door. Suddenly, a flash of insight came to me. If I
flicked my tongue from the bottom of my mouth...
Help! I screamed just as the boy passed me.
He stood and looked at me stunned. Help help help help, I
yelled. He shook his head and quickened his pace and bolted out of
the door.
Just then the pressure I was feeling came out of, well, no easy
way to put this, my vagina. My penis had been replaced with a chicken
vagina, and the egg coming out of it did not feel very nice. The pain
was indescribable, but luckily it only lasted a few seconds, and the
egg came out of me. I bent my neck as much as the cage would allow
to look at it, and I saw it fall through thin wires at the bottom of my
cage, onto what looked like a conveyor belt a few inches below the
hole.
This was just about all I could stand. I closed my eyes and went
to sleep.
I must have been out pretty thoroughly, because I woke up in
what could only be described as something from a Saw movie. I was
hanging upside-down from my legs, which were shackled to a moving
clothes line.
I wasnt squawking like the chickens next to me, because I knew
what was coming, I could feel what was going to happen to me. I
decided that I would meditate. I could feel the breeze on my face as
the conveyor line moved along at a few miles per hour. I tried being in
my body as much as I could.
Awareness of the feet.
Awareness of my legs.
My torso. My fingers...or wingtips I guess they were.

My head.
My head was the worst part, everyone has stood upside-down for
too long and felt the pressure of having too much blood rushing to
ones head. The face filling with blood, your veins telling you that
enough is enough as they struggle to pump blood to the rest of your
body.
The buzzing sound, I knew what the buzzing sound was, and I
came to realize that it must be a dream. Sure I thought I was awake,
but I simply could not be actually experiencing this. But when I was
the other chickens throat cut by the buzzsaw I began to panic. When it
was the chicken in front of me, all I can describe the feeling as is one
of the purest terror I have ever felt. The terror of a life about to be
ended. The blade cut through my throat. I screamed one last time.
This time it didnt come out as a squawk. It was my voice screaming in
terror, my full human adult voice screaming out at my impending
death.
Then it was black. The blackness lasted for a long time. I was
fully conscious. I figured a week went by, as I fell asleep 7 different
times. I had no body, but as a consciousness I could still sleep
apparently. When the light finally came, suddenly my body came back
to me. I was sitting on the back of a stone path that was over a vast
pit of nothingness. I was afraid to jump down, as I knew that if I did, I
might not ever get out of the darkness.
I walked on the path towards the bright white light. Heaven is not
what I found. Rather, I found an old dell computer from what looked
like 1999. It had one program on it, Microsoft Word. I clicked on it, and
it showed me one option for document type.
Create a new document relating to your four dollar body?