C4 antho - Chamber Four

Eupcaccia ~25~
mother shuts off the DVD player but forgets to power down the
TV. The screen turns gray, and the letters DVD appear in mainframe-green,
matching hue to tone. Malchicken doesn’t have to
be in the room to know it’s on. The two sounds together make
his skin feel like it’s being pulled off in sheets.
Recently, Marson’s Lube and Oil has installed a new
neon sign in which his French mouse, donning an apron and
smoking a thin cigarette, is clubbing poor Roget’s badger
with a rolling pin. The fall of the badger in lights is beautiful
to watch―a crumbling arc of green and brown dotted with
droplets of blood―but the real treat is watching the three
doughnut-shaped puffs of dirt rise as the body collapses on
the ground. Malchicken has heard that Marson originally
wanted the badger to fester into little shapes that curled into
croissants, but the sign company said it was too difficult.
Though Malchicken loves the new sign, he’s harboring the
hope Roget will fight back with something better, if not a little
quieter.
Using the same kind of rolling pin as the mouse, Mal has
created in the kitchen a miniature city made of puff-pastry
cylinders. As heat penetrates the structures, the layers of
dough will rise to towering heights with anally plumb walls,
barring any shortcomings in craftsmanship. The Chickens’
oven does not have a light and as the pastry swells, the glass
steams over, preventing even the faintest glimpse of how the
construction is going inside. On the bottom of the window is
etched the word PERMA-VIEW, and the glass is cracked from
top to bottom which produces a fragment the shape of New
Hampshire. Or Vermont. Mal can’t quite remember the ditty
he learned from Lernie the Online E-tutor at school about
how to tell the two states apart. Which one points up and
which one points down. Sealed tight inside the turrets of puff
pastry, Malchicken has installed a savory stew made of
chicken and beans. It’s wet-battered and egg-glazed so the