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Just as I’m about to make my peace with an eternity of being dragged – they arrive.

Dressed in matching b-boy outfits and in practised lines, a wall of my feathered saviours appear and create a cage of chicken around us. Sweet. I don’t know how to tell them Big Bird here will have them all for an entrée should we get close enough.

But then the music starts to take form and shape and I could swear⁠—

Is that DMHEX?

Bok, bok, bok bok bok bok.

I hear echoing from the corpse of a hollow tree ahead of us. The strobe lights shift and stop to fix on a singular fluffy hen. Fire in her eyes and a burning in her lungs, I just know this hen’s about to give Big Bird hell, and I’ve got a front row seat.

My flighty captor looks at me like he’s asking me if this is real.

I throw up my hands.

Bok, bok, bok bok bok bok. Bok bok bok bok bok.

The chickens have started closing in on all sides. There’s nowhere for Big Bird to run, he can’t lift off the ground while he’s got me, and if the grip I feel tensing around my ankle is anything to go by, he has no intentions of letting me go.

The chickens close in in time with the music. The rooster boys have reappeared with their switchblades. A big bitch we call Tiny cracks her neck and swings her wings in preparation.

There’s a second before the chaos starts that I’m allowed the opportunity to take them all in. I shed a tear. They’ve come such a long way.

BOKBOOOOK! A call to attack rings out in the forest and feathers go flying.

They work in such neatly coordinated violence, Big Bird is quickly overpowered.

I claw my way to freedom and make a break for it through the forest, but Big Bird isn’t one to take it lying down. The cretaceous cretin throws off his feathered assailants and is in hot pursuit. But Silkie steps into his path and stands there guarding me like she’s a brick shit house, and not the petite fluffy animal she is.

Big Bird squawks menacingly.

Silkie clucks in warning.

It’s a fowl faceoff.

One step.

That’s as far as Big Bird gets.

Silk lets out a feral battle cry and lands a fly kick to Big Bird’s chops, knocking loose a tooth that flies through the air in slow motion.

Damn. She really can do it all.

Bok! Run! I hear her squawk.

Run, I do.

My wrists ache from the force of pushing Walker’s beautifully chiselled, deceitful, conniving, stunningly sculpted chest.

‘You fucking asshole!’

Walker rubs his breast tenderly. ‘I deserved that.’

Standing in the clearing, the place is an absolute disaster zone. My dead body is still just lying there. Stars, that’s eerie. Not getting used to that one anytime soon.

‘Yes. You did.’ I spear him with my eyes. And then I huff and come to inspect the damage. He flinches. ‘Really?’

‘You’re very forceful.’