Patiently, the chicken waited until the metal boxes on wheels were nowhere to be seen. Then, he stepped out onto the road, keeping one eye forward, intently listening out for the humans.

In the middle of the road, Henrietta lay spluttering violently, with half of her chest missing, her intestines spilling out.

One of her eyes looked up at me.

"Seba...Seb...astian." The wind really had been knocked out of her. "Wh...what are you doing here?"

"Finally I found you. It's your weekend to look after the kids, bitch." I looked over at the way I had come. Three terrified, shaking yellow chicks, looking completely uncertain about why they were here stood on side of the road.

The promised land was spoken of in legends for generations, a place where chickens would be spared the guillotine which was their inevitable collective fate, and where the beds were large and full of the type of soft hay that they could only dream of. It lay beyond the great tall wire fence to the north, a barrier that none had ever crossed, and no bird dared, for the ancient stories also told of a terrible fate for those who left the coop, a sudden and explosive death unmatched by the guillotine or any other.

Henrietta stared at that fence often, dreaming of a life that wasn't the repetitive laying of an egg each day followed by the ceaseless chasing after the trickle of food that came in through the gate. The drama in the coop was far too much to bear, oh the fighting that ensued over the remaining morsels, the hens pecking each other in desperate attempts to be the winner. Couldn't we all live in a place where there was enough for everyone, where we didn't need to have such endless conflict over a pittance?

Looking back, it was hard to tell the moment she finally became fed up and decided that she would risk her life for liberty, that it would be better to die than live in chains. Perhaps it was that she had barely anything to eat for the third day, and the strain of pushing out the egg was painful. Or maybe it was the farmer, who came by screaming for days on end about how the coop needed to do better. Likely, it was just the weight of it all crushing down on her, making her realize that if she was to live a better life, she'd have to take a stand for it.

Deep in the night, after the other birds had fallen asleep, and the farmer was sure to be nowhere around, she started to claw the earth on the side of the coop with ferocity, soon creating a hole big enough for her to pass through. Happiness surged within her when she emerged freely into the open air. Looking upward, she saw trillions of stars twinkling at her as if affirming her very destiny to reach beyond her confines.

What she failed to anticipate was the fox, who spotted her when she was no more than a few meters from the fence. Slick with a red coat and matching eyes, it waved its bushy tail once as it locked its gaze on her. Seeing the expression on its face, she knew right away that she was in deep trouble and had to run at once. With the house to the left of her, the coop behind her, and the fox in front of her, that left her no choice but the road to her right.

The fox immediately gave chase, darting at her so fast that she thought for a moment that she was most assuredly dead. As it pounced, she rolled to the side, landing face-up on the yellow stripe in the road. The fox backtracked and looked down at her. Her short life passed before her eyes, and for a brief moment, she thought she had made the wrong decision, that this had been entirely stupid. Now she was going to die for no reason, none at all.

Yet, she remembered that she had been willing to die, and if this is her fate, then so be it. One thing was for certain though, she wasn't going to go out without a fight. She looked to the left and right, suddenly spotting great lights moving in their direction. Seeing that the fox was dead set on its prey, and paying no attention at all, she waited until the lights were within striking distance and quickly rolled out of the path of the tires. There was a loud thud as the fox met an untimely fate.

She picked herself up and scurried to the other side of the road nearby. Here there were farmlands for as far as the eye could see. She decided to head north, thinking that perhaps this could be a good way to get around the tall fence and finally make it to the promised land.

However, what she saw when she got there disappointed her - for there was another coop much like the one she had come from, equally as dirty and probably full of the same drama. It turned out that the promised land wasn't real at all. What was real was the other side of the road - uninterrupted freedom.

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