As a kid, his favorite dish was fried chicken.
The crunchiness of the outside followed by the tender juicy meat on the inside.

Then he set up his mind that when he grew up he’d raise chicken just to be able to eat them everyday.

On his 15th birthday, he got his first chicken.
It was a gift from his grandaddy, who made him promise he would not eat that one.
Ever.
He could eat her eggs if he liked (and he did like eggs!), but never her meat.
She’d have to live as long as she would last and then be buried in the backyard, next to the coop.

He made his promise and took the chicken home with him.

Three years later, after graduating from high school, he started his business. He bought himself a lots of chickens, build a coop and start raising them to eat and sell.

But the more he eat them, the more he wanted.

And that was what broke him. He stopped selling, so he would consume them all. But his hunger was insatiable, and he ate them faster than they were able to reproduce.

Eventually all was left was him, an almost empty coop and the aging first hen.

He made a promise to his granddaddy though.
So no, not her.
She was to die naturally and be buried.

Another month has passed and with no money and no other chickens, he started to starve. He still had some eggs from the hen, but they were not enough. He became feverish and delirious.

One night, he got up in the middle of the night, not completely awaken, but very determined on his goal. He left the house, went to the coop and took her. It was stronger than him. He worked all night in preparing her and, came morning, he had the best breakfast of his entire life.

It was also the last one.

Right after taking the last thread of the juicy meat, a wind blew around the house, bringing her feathers up. The feathers were swirling around the house, getting in and surrounding him. In his ecstasy he didn’t notice. Thought it was just a dream.
But the feathers kept coming. Much more than the ones he took out of his first pet hen. In all colors and shades and sizes and fluffiness. The feathers of all the chicken he killed and ate.

It was their turn now. They closed in, filling the entire house, spilling to the outside, until he was swallowed by them. Buried alive in a sea of feathers.

This post was written based on the prompt Feathers, from Writer Write’s October prompts.