The Incredible Cock: Fiction by A.A. Rufai

“Cook-ku-cook-koook!” The cock-a-doodle-doo with which the cock greeted the hen was meant to be the most sonorous in the world.
Startled, the hen jumped; her eyes fluttering as she saw the cock. “Oh Raaks, you scared me,” she squawked. “I’ve asked you several times before not to sneak up on me like that.”
The cock had spent a while just gazing at her. He observed the hen as a spectacle to behold. She had been busy grubbing for worms.
True, the hen was as pretty as a picture. She had a fine small crest; her plumage, a pearl-white. She was the bloom of attraction – the queen – at least considered so by a flock of cock-suitors in their village.
“Gimbi…Gimbi my love, my sweetie, my angel, my…” the cock crooned with a twang.
The hen expected him to apologize. But he didn’t. So she steadied her weight on one leg, gently raised the other towards her right earlobe, cloaking and shaking it vigorously with her fragile looking feet. Afterwards she went on minding her business, clawing the ground.
There was no doubt about it – Gimbi carried herself with magnificent grace. This was just the thing that dazzled the cock about her. “Come on, babe,” wooed Raaks, drawing closer. “You hurt me so each time you snob me like that.”
The hen sighed with exasperation. She stopped clawing. With measured dignity, she fiddled off the moist soil on her feet, one after the other, and then began, “Raaks, this relationship can’t work. Let me be. I’ve told you, I’ve told you, I’m committed elsewhere, please.”
The cock’s head suddenly vibrated before he replied somewhat impatiently, “Yeah, yeah.”
He bent his long and well feathered neck downwards; partially lifted one side of his large wings, then lowered his sharp beak to his underside and gently, very gently, began pecking at it.
He was murmuring into his wing, “That is the only song you hens in this village know how to sing: ‘I’m committed.’ But things happen.”
“You said what?”
In a flash the cock straightened up. He sort of gobbled like a turkey to clear his throat. “Oh princess, it’s nothing, really.”
“Better.”
Gimbi went on clawing and pecking the ground. Raaks gazed at her.
“But hey, Gimbi, seriously, don’t…don’t you think it’s about time you stopped playing hard-to-get with me?”
She swiftly raised her head and glared at him with only one side of her face. Looking at this broad bod rooster with yellowish skin and chestnut red plumage before her, pestering her like this, made her sick. She felt even more irritated each time she took account of his deep sawed comb, one she thought wore firmly on his head like a crown. The hen considered the cock was thrice her size. Raaks was famous as the most giant cock in the village. And Gimbi was convinced that, she would end up a cripple, if ever she allowed such a giant on her back, in the name of love or whatever it was he was proposing.
“Come on, virginal white,” he drawled, “don’t look at me like that.”
She eyed him yet, blinking.
He was fascinated by the sheer femininity with which the hen was fluttering her perfectly round eyes at him. “Is she giving me the come-on?” He thought the action more tempting than threatening. Her excessively white feathers fired a desire that surged through him.
“Okay, okay… I understand.” Raaks drew in a deep long breath. “But you see, Gimbi, it’s easy really, if you look at it my way.
“We…we can do this without any strings attached. You know, all I need from you is…you know…” he tilted his head to one side, beaming.
He winked at her before he uttered quite brazenly, “a quickie!”
“Kwaakwaakwaakwaaq,” the hen cackled, “over my dead body!” She abandoned her search for worms.
The hen tiptoed away from the fringes of the gutter that had formed into a sludge on the open ground, went past the grassy lush in the surrounding area, and on to dry sand. The image of this same cock Gimbi spotted, only yesterday, gliding after another hen and mounting her so forcefully like his life depended on it, was yet vivid in her mind. She did not stop legging it when she added rather nonchalantly, “Why don’t you go have the quickie with your mother?”
Stunned! The cock’s earlobes suddenly swelled with blood. His eye-balls bulged.
“You say such a despicable thing to me?” he said, having momentarily been speechless. “Y-o-u…y-o-u…you idiot!” he stammered. “You think you’re cute?” The cock’s plumage shook with rage like quaking leaves on an avocado tree. He cast a sinister glance at Gimbi. Before long, he was teetering towards her like a drunk. “You bitch!” he snarled. “You need to be taught a lesson.
“Cocorookuoo!”
Terrified, the hen took off as if it were judgement day. She went around in circles, sprinting, dodging, jumping, slipping and flapping her wings frantically in an attempt to even fly. “Help! Help!! Help!!!”
Raaks went after her down the street, gliding like a hawk, doing his super-cock cruise. He caught up with her. “Kwaqkwakwaaq,” squawked Gimbi when Raaks mounted his hybrid bulk on her. Hard as she struggled, there was no escape. She felt oppressed by his weight that pinned her to the rough ground. She was twisting her neck this way and that.
The cock masterly brought down his sharp beak with a hammering speed, nailing it on the crown of her head, steadying her.
“R-a-a-k-s!” thundered another cock.
Raaks ignored the outcry coming from behind. He pressed on with the urgent task of teaching Gimbi a lesson.
Having succeeded in exposing the hen’s rump to broad daylight, the cock was finally bracing himself to shove her his solo thrust when like a charging bull, a knight in shining armour, a white leghorn, blasted him off Gimbi into space.
“Thank God for you, Rima!” panted Gimbi. She managed to struggle up and limped behind her liberator. “This bully is trying to rape me.”
Raaks crashed back to earth. A cloud of dust shot up engulfing him.
“You behave like a he-goat, Raaks!” raged the knight. “How many times have I told you to keep away from my fiancée?” Rima’s wattle hung down from his throat like the long beard of a caveman. His feathers stood on ends.
Raaks was back on his feet, more upset from having been denied the opportunity to ravish Gimbi, than from the fall. He was already gearing for a fight. The quills that formed his rear spread out, seeming to emit hot exhaust of gas. The good feathering on his body leaped up like the sharp quills of a threatened porcupine. He kept bouncing like a prize fighter.
It was while the stage for the kick-boxing was being prepared that a cockerel in company of a black hefty hen, sauntered by, “Greetings pals,” began the cockerel. “You two should take it easy.”
“Please, what’s the problem here?” twittered the black hen.
Raaks scowled at the two, his robust breast heaving.
“Would you boneheads piss off?”
“Come on, Raaks,” began the black hen in quavering twitter. She lowered her gaze. “We’re only trying to-”
“Piss off!”
The black hen felt the blood-curdling resonance almost knocked out her eardrums. Seeing the red flames burning in Raaks’s baleful eyes, with his beak still set off hanging slack-jawed, her mind’s eyes showed her a graphic image of an incredible cock with an owl’s head. The hen felt a sudden rumbling in her abdomen. She clipped her wings tightly to her sides and scampered away.
A sudden cold descended on Gimbi. She was barely able to stand. And cackled with dismay on seeing the black hen fleeing.
“It’s alright, my love,” Rima turned his neck backwards to see Gimbi shivering. He needed to be sure the hen was still right behind him. “You’re safe now. But I thought we agreed you’re not to go out alone?”
Gimbi gestured to Rima with her head; she kept pointing her beak sideways to her left, “Let’s go,” she cooed.
She was not too keen on seeing Rima play chicken with an eagle; for that was what she thought Raaks had become.
She still felt the excruciating pricks he dug on her back with his claws. The claws she now saw, from the corners of her eyes, looking long, sharp, and curved. Those claws were no different in her eyes from the talons of an eagle.
Gimbi sighed in resignation, as it was clear to her that Rima was unwilling to heed her call.
“Raaks, you want to fight?” quizzed the cockerel. “Why don’t you take on a chicken your own size?”
His eyes flickering, Raaks retorted casting the cockerel a side-glance, “My size? And what chicken in this your famish-ridden village would be my size, Kaz?”
The challenger was a large fowl. His legs were steady and strong. He had a moderately deep full breast. He stretched out his wings with stupendous agility.
With plumage coloured in black and white stripes across the width, he flapped his long wings again and again, stuck out his neck towards Raaks, his red wattle dangling under his beak.
A macho-looking Raaks turned to look at the cockerel squarely in the eyes. “Hey, if you want to become a one-legged chicken, be my guest, else you better leave this instance before I really get mad at you.
“This is not your fight.”
“Yes, he is right, Kaz,” panted the black hen who had come running back. “This is not your fight,” she clucked.
The black hen was a medium heavy breed with full and rounded breasts. Apart from her nearly absent comb, everything about her was black in a beautiful way. Her feathers were tight, waxy and silky so that her black plumage became glossy whenever she was in the sun. The bagginess at her thighs formed a symmetrical shape.
She was pushing the cockerel away with one side of her huge thighs.
“Kaz, please leave,” advised Rima. “It is my honour that is being abused here. And as a cock from a proud breed, I will not have it.”
Gimbi cackled behind him in protest, flapping her wings. She still felt her head hurt.
“Raaks, on the day you make the mistake of coming to step on my toes,” Kaz sneered while the black hen was still busy egging him away, “if you fail to take my life, I won’t fail to take yours.”
Raaks scoffed, “We’ll see then.”
The black hen began gabbling to Kaz in hush tones.
“What were you thinking? Suicide? You think you are still single to indulge in this kind of rascality?
“We swore bonding to each other only seven days now and the slightest chance you get to make me a widow you jump at it?
“And you fool yourself to think Raaks is a chicken? When we all know, but won’t tell, that he is the cock who steals into our nests to break and suck the yoke of many of the eggs laid in this village? What sort of chicken would do that? Raaks’s an eagle, if you don’t know!” She kept scolding the cockerel as a mother hen would her chicks.
Kaz, by nature, was a docile type of chicken. He merely kept quiet all the way and tried to catch up with her gabby clucking.
Raaks and the knight were still positioned with their ruffled neck stuck out, glaring at each other.
“Who do you think you are, Raaks?” snapped Rima. “Since the day you were brought to this village, many chickens here have been living in fear.”
“Fear?” croaked Raaks, stretching his ruffled neck. “Ha! You wait until I show you what we do to naughty chickens in my homeland, then you’ll know fear.”
“Listen to yourself talk. Raaks, you’re too arrogant. How I wish humans could speak Chickinish,” sputtered Rima. “I would have had a small chat with Baban Talatu to have you slaughtered!”
Faafaafaafaa…a violent flapping of wings ensued as the combatants rose in the air, attacking each other, displaying the latest chicken kung fu.
“Deal with him, Rima, deal with him!” trilled Gimbi. The singing of his fiancé was a powerful spur; more than a thousand drums of war: Rima’s spirit was electrified.
He swung his right wing aiming to deal his opponent a knockout blow. Raaks ducked. The swing went over him and set Rima off balance in mid-air.
There was a great cloud of dust and feathers in the battlefield.
“Oh my God,” cried Gimbi as the dirty sky and tatters were settling down, “Raaks, you have killed him!”
Raaks stood militantly over his sprawled opponent. He had his hard beak pointing down at Rima, a gleam of triumph in his eyes.
A handsome chunk of white feathers had been clawed off the leghorn’s chest, leaving a deep wound.
Gimbi held her breath. Everything she had longed to share with the love of her life had been thwarted, before her now hollow eyes. She assumed a slouching posture and in no time began wailing miserably.
Raaks, having satisfied himself that Rima was dead, turned his back to the slain leghorn. He strutted about the place feeling cock-sure like a conqueror. No. He felt more. He felt he was the owner of the village. Yes. His mortal rival was now dead.
But lo! Rima opened an eye, squinting. Neither Raaks nor Gimbi noticed him. He gathered all that was left of his strength, sprang up and bolted from his angel of death.
Raaks swung round, upon hearing the commotion. For a while he just stood there, agape. He racked his brain: “So Rima is not dead?”
“Bullshit!” Raaks chased his foe, crowing in a bloodthirsty manner, “Come back here, you demon!”
Gimbi’s hope upon seeing Rima obviously alive quickly turned to despair and anger as he made his escape. “Oh no, oh no,” she clucked. “Rima, Rima! Where are you going? Stay, stay, please don’t leave me a-l-o-n-e!”
Rima was already miles away but his call came echoing, “Raaks! I’ll be back, Raaks!”
Raaks reckoned he could not capture his archenemy in the meantime. He cawed triumphantly. “Qooooook. . .you coward! You can run but you can’t hide!”
And so he negotiated a U-turn. But the acrobatics he displayed in negotiating the U-turn; the brilliance with which he accelerated his velocity; most chicken would have mistaken Raaks the cock for a bald eagle.
Gimbi saw Raaks spurting towards her, winging. “Oh dear mother, not again!” she wailed, racing off.
“You worm brain!” hurled Raaks. “So I’m the one you call a bully? Ha! I’m sure going to teach you a lesson today.
“Cocorookuoo!”
Raaks chased Gimbi round and round a mango tree; they ran past several mud buildings; ran past the cockerel and the black hen. The pair were pecking at some lucky find of grubs.
“Chickens of Kayarda, help! Help!! Help!!!” thus ran Gimbi’s distress call. “God, where are you!!!”
“Not even your God will save you from my claws today, you bitch!”
Kaz’s feathers were already ruffling just watching Raaks in pursuit of Gimbi like that.
“This is not your fight, remember?” The black hen tried to gobble down some food, her eyes fixed on Kaz. “I feel clucky already. I wish to lay my own eggs and hatch them, and give them a good breeding with the pappy of my chicks.
“So, please darling, don’t do anything stupid, okay?” She lifted her chin and glanced at him, then went on feeding. “I don’t want any trouble with that red cock. He makes my stomach rumble.” Her beak was stuffed with food.
“You know Raaks is quite intelligent and capable of doing so many things at once. He told us hens the other day that he sees all what is going on in our heads. He said there is no single chicken in this village whose thoughts escapes him.
“Well, I don’t know how he does it but I believe him. I know you are thinking ill of him right now. Please stop. He might come back this way and see what is going on in your head. And you know what he can do. I want to live a quiet life in this village, please.”
She stopped pecking and scratched the ground for more grubs. She was in luck again and so resumed her pecking and chattering.
“Look, just leave Gimbi to her fate – that hen’s beauty is her curse. I have always said it. She had it coming. She can’t have all the cocks in this village flocking around her and expect things to end well for her. After all, every self-respecting hen in this village knows that Gimbi is a cock-snatcher. She thinks she’s a goddess.
“If I had not really been proactive to get my claws into you, our bonding won’t have come to pass with your eyes set on Gimbi.
“And don’t take me for a fool. I’m very much aware that just after these seven days of bonding, you have been sneaking out with Gimbi. Otherwise, why would you want to risk your life to fight a hawk like Raaks for her? Would you have done the same for me?
“And I hear now you’re flirting with some of the pullets in this village. You cocks are no good. Is there anyone of you that is ever faithful? You all betray us after the first night. And go ahead to make it your business to mount every single hen you can find in your lifetime. You think. . ..”
The cockerel, his face sulky, half listened to all she was babbling. His eyes blazed while the runners disappeared behind a group of thatched huts.
* * *
A bare-footed girl came walking out from a nearby mud house. She had her wrapper tied inside-out across her flat chest. Half the side of the hair on her head was in plaits of fine cornrows. The other half was yet unmade and she was tugging at it in a rather carefree manner with a wooden comb. In her other hand she held a small calabash.
A few paces away from the house, the little girl looked to her left, saw some chickens in the short distance, then began mimicking the birds: “Ku-ku-ku-kuuu…”
Five chickens came racing towards the girl, bumping into one another in the process. In front was the cockerel, Kaz, closely followed by the black hen.
The girl stretched her arm forward, holding the calabash, as the chickens came close. She then poured down the content in the calabash on the ground.
The chickens were soon pecking away at the grains of millet at the girl’s feet. Soon close to two dozen chickens appeared from different corners to join in the feast. A mother hen, too, led her chicks to the jamboree. Even a one-legged chicken limped to the scene to help himself. Such was the occasional bliss the domestic chickens, owned by the girl’s father, Baban Talatu, looked forward to with all the flurry of excitement.
“Talatu!” called out a woman’s voice from inside the compound of the mud building.
“Na’am!” the girl answered.
“For Allah’s sake, how long would it take you to feed the chickens? Won’t you come back and sit here let me finish plaiting your hair!”
The girl then kicked aimlessly into the feeding flock. The chickens cackled while she giggled and threw her arms playfully in the air before she turned around and ran back into the house.
Some of the chickens were shoving others out of the way while the pecking lasted. “Watch it, don’t fall on top of my chicks!” warned the mother hen when the one-legged chicken limped close to them. “You good-for-nothing cock, I swear if you fall on top of my chicks I’ll finish off your remaining leg.”
The cock quietly limped away from the hen and her chicks. And for a while the feeding went well without incident.
“Help!”
The flock saw Raaks in pursuit of Gimbi. The runners headed directly into the partying birds. Like a shot a path opened right through the midst of the flock with each chicken aligning on either sides of the divide save for two – the one-legged chicken and the cockerel.
Gimbi flew past them. But the one-legged chicken almost crowed out his throat when he couldn’t limp fast enough to make way for Raaks. It was as if he saw death with red wings coming.
Raaks narrowly missed bumping him off his path by just a wind of the cock’s quills. But he stepped on the cockerel’s toes with his sharp claws as he sped off after Gimbi.
“That is my sister!” cried one white cock amidst the flock. He went after Raaks.
In the same breath the path snapped closed. The flock was fast pecking at the millet on the ground once more.
“Is this Raaks actually coming to step on my toes?” The thought bugged the cockerel’s mind with his beak ajar. The flock was surprised to see Kaz suddenly leap into the air from amidst them. He took wing in the direction of the runners.
The black hen rushed after him. “Come back, come back!” But her cries went unheeded.
Kaz was determined this time around to stamp his foot on the ground like a real cock and get this business with Raaks over and done with.
“I say stop . . . stop!”
The cockerel was already closing in on the white cock that had set after to rescue Gimbi. Kaz was speeding like a rocket and was sure to overtake the white cock and get hold of Raaks. He meant to die over this matter or see to it that Raaks stopped breathing.
“Kaz, I’m pregnant!”
The cockerel applied the brakes and skidded on the ground but the stamina of his outstanding legs and the flapping of his wings saved him from falling. He steadied himself and turned to look at her, his beak agape. The black hen came running and halted right in front of him. She swallowed hard and tried to catch her breath.
The cockerel actually heard the throbbing of her heart. She looked severely shaken from the run. But even in that state of alarm, Kaz thought she had never looked more beautiful. He saw her plumage radiate like never before in the heat of the midday sun. He counted himself lucky that this black beauty was his for the keeps. And to think that this glorious black hen in the sun was pregnant for him?
“But you never told me.”
“I just did,” she answered curtly, panting. “Please darling, don’t do this to me. You know I love you. And I hate cock-fights. If you get killed now, who will protect me from all those predators and find worms for me? My whole life would be miserable in this village without you.
“And do you want to make our chicks orphans even before they come into this world?”
“But you should have told me before now.”
“Yes. I’ve been trying to tell you in so many ways but you have not been listening.
“Please listen to me now, darling. You see, you’re a good cock. Honestly you are. Forget that talk about you sneaking and flirting around. You know how it is with the hens in this village – they gossip a lot.
“Anyway, I never really believed those lies peddled about you by those rumour-mongers. And really it was the hormones that got me talking to you the way I did.
“Please, darling, let’s just go home,” she was twittering while coming over to his side and nudging him with her right thigh. “You can see the sun is so hot overhead now.
“And you know what? Some chickens have told me that it is not healthy for a pregnant hen to stay under the sun for too long. They said it can cause the eggshells to form thinly. And this means the eggs can break at the point of laying.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, yes.”
“Okay then, let’s hurry home.”
“Oh thank you. Thank you, love. You see…”
The two walked gently into the shade and walked off and away.
But the white cock that had been in pursuit to rescue Gimbi never gave up. He was, however, much farther behind Raaks and his sister. And from the distance he saw Raaks capture her just as they turned round a mango tree.
“Oh God, oh God,” sobbed Gimbi just as Raaks climbed off her.
“Shut up! I’m your God now.”
She limped away with much difficulty and collapsed shortly on her legs weeping. “God, God! Why? Why me?”
“Because you’re a dish, bitch.”
The hen felt completely contaminated, as if gutter had been shoved into her abdomen. The bones of her ribcage were cracking. Her lower back hurt. And she felt hell in her vulva. She thought Raaks must have ripped a whacking hole on her skull with his sharp beak. Her head threatened to explode with a nagging headache.
This was the first time a cock ever touched her. Gimbi had fought all sorts of temptation, worked resolutely to keep her chastity, only for Raaks to come and defile her like this. For her this was the height of humiliation. She was disoriented and shame overwhelmed her.
The naked fact that stared in her face now was that there was nothing white about her “virginal white” feathers anymore. “How will the hens in this village look at me now? Those hens that say good morning to me but never meant me any good.”
Like a bolt from the blue she leaped to her feet and dashed to a nearby sandy spot. Quite like a robot she set her feet to task, swiftly clawing off the sand that went up into the air and showered down over her. Gimbi was so bitter she was determined to dig her own grave and bury herself alive.
Raaks was meanwhile on the other side of the mango tree relishing his good fortune. He stretched up his wings, made as if he was going to flap them but instead eased them to his sides.
“Wow.” The weakness in his giant muscles paled in significance to the thrill he felt. He reckoned at that instance that no hen in that village had been such a hard nut to crack as Gimbi had proved to be.
From his experience, anytime he felt the urge to mount a hen, all he needed to do was to go find some food. He had an eye for choice spots that held rich reserves of worms. When he collected enough worms or grubs, he will let out a loud egoistic crow inviting only the hens. Soon a flock would rush to gather around him. It was at such times he made his pick. It didn’t really matter whether any of the hens that caught his fancy said to him: “I’m committed”. He often employed the skills of a canary to sing them into hypnotism and have his way.
Only once did Gimbi show up at such rendezvous. And when she had realized that it was Raaks that was the celebrity who had called for the party, she had promptly turned the corner and disappeared.
Raaks had tried many tricks before simply to win Gimbi over, like when he had a secret deal with one brown rooster to ambush Gimbi near one guava tree. The two cocks, at the time, had been known in the village to share some sort of close affinity.
“Keep your claws to yourself. You need not touch a single feather on her,” Raaks had warned the cock. “Just scare the shit out of her. You go after her quite like you’re going to shack up with her. Then I’ll show. Okay?”
“OK, Rocks.”
“And be sure to make every bit of the action look real.” He had paused and turned his long neck on his broad back, pecking carefully into his feathers. “Hey buddy,” he had looked the cock in the eyes, “this mission is particularly strategic. No mistakes. Got it?”
“Yes, Rocks.”
Raaks had twisted his neck onto his back once more, pecking ever gently into the feathers therein.
“You know Rocks, I really miss those yummy feeds we used to be served back home. I used to think keeping a chicken in a cage all the days of his life was a crude thing. Now I know that good old Mr. George was really kind to us. At least he fed us our three-square meals; our water cans never ran empty and he calls in the vets regularly to check on us.
“It may look like we get to flex our legs about in this goddamn village but the reality is that this knife-wielding Baban Talatu has reduced us to common itinerant chickens. He sure isn’t anything like Mr George. He leaves us to have a tape worm in the stomach.
“I miss…”
“You miss what?” Raaks in one swift motion had straightened up. He had stood with his legs apart like a commander in a war front “Isn’t Mr. George the very damn motherfucker who threw us to the wolves over here? This no time to be singing such crap about that dude or the homeland.
“We’re talking a serious mission here – Gimbi!
“So buddy, are you in or out?”
“I’m in, boss.”
The duo had agreed that if the mission was successful, Raaks was to let the cock come his way with the hens when next he organized a pecking party.
The plan had been perfect; and had been executed almost perfectly. Save that Raaks over did it. Instead of the few light blows agreed on, Raaks had descended on the cock from the guava tree and gave him the beating of his life.
Gimbi, in truth, had turned out to be the cock’s saving grace. She begged Raaks then to let the poor chicken go. “Please forgive him, Raaks. The hot sun can take hold of any chicken like that. He was not really himself.”
Raaks indeed had let the rooster go. But the damage had already been done. Raaks had broken one of the cock’s legs from the knee; the girl, Talatu, had tried to care for him but ended up severing the leg completely. Raaks had hoped that this performance would endear him to the hen. It did not quite work out that way. At the end of it all, Gimbi bowed bashfully and thanked Raaks profusely then gracefully walked off.
Looking back, Raaks thought that all that effort was just a complete waste of time. He considered if he had earlier applied the iron-claw method with Gimbi, it would have since yielded him the desired result. But coming at the time it did, he reckoned this was a good last laugh for him.
The heat of the sun was still blazing and his throat had really gone dry. When Raaks looked up, he was startled to see the white cock with a flying kick; it was just too late for Raaks to do anything to stop him. He found himself tumbling on the ground. He rolled over, bumping on the tree roots.
“What have you done to my sister!”
Gimbi heard this mad but familiar crow. She stretched up her neck, her feathers full of sand, and was peeping out of her grave to see what was happening. She couldn’t believe her eyes. There lay Raaks, his back to the ground, sprawled out on his wings, his giant toes up in the air.
She saw the avenger, her own very brother, prancing towards Raaks. He glanced her way and their eyes locked. His beak was clenched and she saw something most terrible in his eyes. He looked away and she saw him plunge into the air. Raaks was nearly surprised a second time. He saw the leghorn almost pounce on him before he gathered himself to his feet and tried to duck. But the leghorn was fast enough to claw off some few feathers off the back of Raaks’s neck.
Both cocks plunged back into the air. They were flapping their wings with a vengeance to stay up as their feet stretched out in front of them in attack, clawing at each other. They bounced on the ground and simultaneously sprang back into the air. Raaks in a surprise kung fu twist shot out a death-bringing kick with his left leg. His talons went for the leghorn’s jugulars, cutting deep into his throat. Without stay of execution, Raaks squeezed in all the might in his claws and yanked out the carotid artery from the leghorn’s neck.
Gimbi let out a muffled cackle and almost jumped out from her grave.
Her avenger was lying on one side of his wings and frantically shoving his feet against the ground. Raaks once again stood militantly by his foe’s neck and watched the blood spurting out from the slit veins of the fallen chicken.
Gimbi, still peeping from her grave, saw Raaks scratch the ground twice with his left claw. He did so as if to stir up worms. The third time he smacked his talons into the cock’s bleeding neck. Like a scene from a blood tainted abattoir, Raaks, turned a butcher, dismembered the cock’s head from his body. Raaks was not about to let the mistake with Rima repeat itself.
The beheaded cock sprang up with a seeming new lease of life and hopped into the heavens. He bounced back on his feet. Gimbi shut her beak tightly, watching in agony and horror as her brother abruptly scuttled towards her with a headless body. He turned around quite abruptly again and raced past Raaks. There was a big stone in front of him. But it beats Gimbi’s imagination to watch the headless chicken hurdle over the stone as if he could still see.
He was sprinting off towards the direction he had come.
Gimbi quietly lowered her crest into her shallow grave. “Oh Zaki, oh Zaki,” she sobbed. “Oh Zaki, my only brother, is this how we are all going to die?
“Oh God, God, God,” she began pecking into the sand as silently as she could so as not to draw attention from Raaks.
Raaks in the meantime stood over the lifeless head, – staring down at it. “Damn,” he cursed under his breath.
The heat from the sun was becoming fiercer and he felt increasingly thirsty. It crossed his mind that he had the opportunity of quenching his thirst when the blood of his foe was gushing out to waste.
The fights he had engaged in for the day and more especially the energy he expended in having to ravish Gimbi had left him feeling tired. The thought of taking a long walk to search for water caused him some headache. He stood there dithering.
* * *