Tastes Like Chicken Read online

  Hill pinched his lips together and slid his hand a little higher up Alyssa’s well-toned quads.

  The chamber music played on.

  It was a somber, sanctified moment, a tiny window of time slated to occur after the bride’s arrival at the altar, just before the vows. The sentiment was one of magical intensity and unmitigated love among family and close friends.

  Misty and Rick made eyes at each other, remembering their own recent nuptials. Dandre and Reesy stood close, side by side, the minute space between them tingling with the thrill of imminent merger.

  “Wow, what’s this?” a loud voice declared, piercing the staid atmosphere like a shark’s unexpected fin slicing through shallow water.

  It came from a slender woman wearing all black and a delicate black veil. She was sitting at the back of the room. She bent and reached under her pew and came up with a brown manila envelope. She made an elaborate display of tearing it open. A plump lady in an electric blue hat and dress sat beside her. She leaned in for a peek.

  Reesy turned, annoyed at the interruption. This euphoric and hallowed period of musical silence was the only other thing she’d requested, besides having all the women wear some form of white.

  “What’s going on?” she asked no one in particular as she glanced back at the crowd.

  “Oh…my…God,” the veiled woman screamed, as she dropped a glossy eight-by-ten photo from the envelope into her lap.

  The lady in the electric blue hat reached out with her plump little fingers and snatched the picture. She stared, her fat bottom lip hanging open as she turned the photo upside down, left-side-right, cocking her head like a dashboard pup.

  “Lawd hammercy,” she gasped, showing it to her husband, who was all teeth and grins at what he beheld. The plump lady in electric blue reached beneath her seat and came up with a manila envelope of her own, holding it aloft.

  “Does anyone else have one of these?” she shouted.

  Heads disappeared and popped up all around the church as everyone went in search of what the screaming woman had seen. Manila envelopes appeared in great number, and the vu gar sound of ripping paper clashed with the pristine melody the oblivious organist continued to play.

  Reesy’s heart went kerthunkety-plunk as she watched the brouhaha going on around her. She glanced at Dandre, her eyes full of question, but all she saw was confusion and a kind of primal, instinctive fear, something in his face that seemed to border on terror. The energy he gave off was, in an odd way, familiar; it was a feeling she faintly recalled having experienced before. Dandre was uncomfortable under her gaze. He turned to face the crowd behind him, in search of a clue as to what was going on around them.

  Tyrene bent with reluctance and felt under the seat, coming up with an envelope of her own. Her narrowed eyes were on Dandre as the well-manicured talon of her right forefinger slid under the flap and sliced it open with an effortless sweep. Dandre’s brow was beaded with sweat. He adjusted the tie that now seemed to grip his neck with the boldness of a noose. Tyrene inhaled deep, holding her breath as she removed the glossy photo.

  It was her future son-in-law—in full naked regalia—his wet face and eager red tongue preoccupied, pressed front and center between long cocoa brown legs spread an astonishing width, worthy of the best contortions Universoul Circus had to offer. The gaping legs were attached to a cocoa brown woman with big, meaty breasts and an ass so magnificent, so huge, it loomed beneath her like an unnatural bubble. Dandre’s penis was also busy, stuffed deep inside the mouth of a petite yellow girl with fiery-red locks and a raging thicket of black pubic hair.

  She dropped the photo with both hands in a grand gesture, as if it were a grenade, raising her palms to the heavens in horrified supplication. The organist froze, his fingers immobile above the keys. Reesy now knew for certain that what was happening was something dreadful. She raced from the altar over to her mother and scooped the picture up from the floor.

  “No, Reesy,” Dandre said, remaining in place. “Put it down.”

  Reesy knelt holding the photo, her pupils dilating. She couldn’t take her eyes off Dandre’s dick, deep, deep, deep in the redhead’s mouth. She noticed spit on the shaft and her stomach tilted. She was still kneeling when Tyrene, outraged, grabbed her in a hug, further causing her insides to simmer and churn. The place was abuzz with the sounds of raucous chatter as all eyes darted from Dandre to Reesy and back again.

  “All men are muthafuckas,” a voice proclaimed with ferocious disgust. It was Julian, the choreographer of Black Barry’s Pie. The show was due to open on Broadway in a few months with Dandre as the primary backer, but the pregnant Reesy wouldn’t be starring in it.

  Julian was so spellbound by the photos, he couldn’t look away. “Better to know he ain’t shit now, Miss Thang, than to have to find out about it later.”

  His lover Tonio sat beside him, nodding in agreement. He pried the pictures from Julian’s grip.

  Someone in the church was crying, wailing and howling like a dying dog.

  “This ain’t right,” whoever it was moaned. “God knows what this boy is doin’ in this pitcha with these gals shonuf ain’t right.”

  “It damn shole look like it feel good, though,” mumbled the husband of the lady with the electric blue hat. She jabbed him hard in the stomach with her solid, fleshy elbow.

  “Ooof,” he said with a cough. He was silent after that, the blow knocked the wind out of him for a good five minutes.

  “We can sue him, you know,” Tyrene whispered to Reesy. She seemed energized with the satisfaction of knowing, had she been in control, things would have been better, different. These were the moments she lived for, the chance to do self-righteous damage control. Her daughter had been publicly wronged and, dammit, there was going to be hell to pay.

  “He won’t get away with it,” she continued. “I told you all of us wearing white was bad luck. It was wrong to make a mockery of something as sacred as marriage.”

  Reesy glared at her mother.

  “Get off me, you bitch,” she said, pushing Tyrene out of the way. “You wanted this to happen.” Tyrene fell back on her bone-colored African-gowned butt, her bone heels clickety-clacking first on the floor, then kicking in the air. Reesy stumbled forward up the aisle, her stomach toiling and troubling as she headed for the door.

  Misty had been standing at the altar in shock. The sight of Reesy running rattled her from her daze. She rushed after her friend. Dandre made a move, but Rick grabbed him by the arm.

  “Just stay put, man,” he said, shaking his head. “This is a really bad scene. It can’t get no worse than this.”

  Dandre stopped, his cheek twitching as he looked at Rick’s hand on his arm.

  “What the fuck just happened?” he asked. “I don’t understand.”

  “This had to be one of your women, man,” Rick said. “I would have thought by now you had your house in order.”

  “I did,” Dandre said. “I thought I did.”

  “I’on know, this is some dumb shit. This is like some kind of urban myth that you hear about, but, you know, that kind of stuff doesn’t ever happen for real.”

  They heard a sick, shrill scream outside.

  Dandre broke away from Rick and ran out of the church into the brisk February air, followed by everyone else.

  They arrived to see Misty in an awkward squat at the top of the church’s front steps. Reesy lay at her feet in a heap of ivory chiffon, silk, and taffeta.

  “She fell on the steps,” Misty said, her faced streaked with mascara and tears. She looked up at Rick and Dandre. “Call 911. I can’t get her to come to.”

  Rick pulled his cell phone from the pocket of his tux and dialed.

  “How could you do this?” Misty asked Dandre in a pleading voice. “How could you do something like this to her…today?”

  Dandre dropped to his knees, cradling Reesy’s head in his arms.

  “Get away from my daughter,” Tyrone bellowed as he approached. “This
is all your fault.”

  “This isn’t my son’s fault,” a voice behind Tyrone answered.

  “This is the doing of some crazy bitch who doesn’t know how to let go. My son can’t control that. How the hell can you expect him to? These chickens are crazy nowadays.”

  “Oh, you’re a fine one to talk,” Tyrene said, getting in Hill’s face. “We’ve heard about you, you corrupt son of a—”

  “Tyrene.”

  Tyrone pulled his wife away, her heels clickety-clacking.

  Dandre ignored them as he rocked Reesy in his arms with gentle motions. He felt as if he were walking in a fog.

  “Lawd Jesus, my baby’s bleeding.”

  It was Grandma Tyler. She pointed at Reesy’s waist. The front of the ivory dress was stained with red flecks, and a small pool of blood was gathering beneath it.

  Dandre’s head was spinning. He could see the hemorrhaging, but it didn’t register enough to make sense. The din above him was overpowering as indecipherable words flew around his head, along with random blows and boxes to his ears delivered by anonymous assailants. In the midst of the pandemonium, all he could hear was the clickety-clack of Tyrene’s tiny bone shoes as she paced around him.

  He focused on her feet as they passed him again, but now they didn’t seem so very tiny. And the heels were black. Patent leather. Stiletto. With cocoa brown ankles sprouting out of them. He followed the legs all the way up as they passed.

  The woman with the delicate black veil, not Tyrene, was attached to the ankles. His eyes met hers for a brief moment as she looked down at him sitting on the steps, holding the head of his bleeding, unconscious fiancée. Dandre watched the veiled woman as she walked away.

  The swaying motion of her magnificent bubble ass was hypnotic.

  “Is that who I think it is?” Rick asked as he came up beside him.

  Dandre couldn’t hear him above the roaring in his head.

  UFO’s

  All was dark for the first few seconds. Reesy blinked a couple of times and the hue of things changed a little, fading up into a deep boggy gray.

  “Wha…?” she said with a struggle and a cough. She tried to lean forward and everything did an instant spin. She fell back, blinking again, looking around for Vanna and Pat. They must be near. She already knew where the wheel was.

  “Tweety?”

  The raspy voice was a familiar anchor that made her relax a little. The room was still spinning, but it was beginning to slow. Something warm touched her right arm.

  “Tweety, baby? We’re right here. You hear me? You’re gonna be okay.”

  Reesy blinked again and the bog began to lessen. She could make out a shape in the direction of the voice that spoke to her.

  It was real short, whatever it was. A midget. It was a gray midget. A gray midget was next to her, touching her arm and calling her Tweety.

  She recalled reading about something like this once, in a book by this writer, some guy, what was his name? Whitley something. She remembered the name of the book. Commu nion. This happened to him too. He woke up in the middle of the night and found gray things, midget things, touching him on the arm just like this. That’s what it was. An alien. An alien was standing beside her and, to throw her off, was calling her Tweety like Grandma Tyler did.

  Those damn aliens, she thought. That’s how they rolled, the deceptive little fuckers.

  She was relieved to know where she was, at least. She’d been abducted and this was the mothership, she supposed. That explained everything—the hazy room, her being groggy. She cleared her throat and coughed again.

  “I thought the Grays were tall with big slanty eyes and the Blues were short with jumpsuits,” she said to the midget.

  “Where’s your jumpsuit? What are you, defective?” She breathed deep, exhausted and frustrated. “That’s just my luck. I get abducted by some broke-down, B-team aliens. Just don’t stick one of them damn needles in my belly. I’m pregnant. Y’all need to back up off the experiments with me.”

  “Oh Lawd,” the raspy voice choked. “She done gon’ crazy, y’all. Somebody, anybody, Lawd Jesus, my lil’ Tweety done lost her mind.”

  A wail went up in the room and Reesy heard the sound of scurrying feet.

  “Stop it,” she said. “Stop trying to trick me like I’m not in outer space. I know how y’all get down. Quit pretending to be my grandma.”

  The shadowy midget grew taller and hovered close to Reesy’s face.

  “Tweety, baby, we ain’t no aliens,” the now-big midget rasped.

  “We’s your family. You in the hospital, baby. You fell down the stairs at the church and bumped your head real hard.” The big midget turned to something behind her. “I wonder if she done lost her mind. Y’all thank maybe she got a percussion or something?”

  “Wha…?” Reesy asked. “Fell at church? Bumped my head?

  How did…?” She blinked again and things began to come into clearer focus. The face above hers was yellow and, although a bit wizened, it wasn’t gray. The eyes, full of tears, were not slanted, but warm and familiar. At the sight of her grandmother, Reesy felt better. She leaned forward to hug her. A sudden pain in her abdomen stopped her midway.

  “No, Tweety,” Grandma Tyler said, giving her a gentle push back onto the pillows of the hospital bed. “Lay down. You need to give your body a rest.”

  Reesy looked into her grandmother’s face and saw something in it that roused a sense of panic.

  “My baby,” she said, grabbing Grandma Tyler’s arm. “Is my baby okay?”

  The sound of several scuffling feet came closer. Somewhere in the scuffle was the sound of clicking heels.

  A hand touched Reesy’s left arm and another familiar voice spoke to her.

  “Reesy, just lay back. The doctor wants you to rest. You had a bad fall, but you’re going to be fine.”

  Reesy looked up into Misty’s teary face. She wondered why everyone around her was crying in the midst of trying to reassure her that she was going to be okay.

  “I hope he burns in hell for this, doing this to my daughter,” a sharp voice uttered in the background. The sound of sharp heels made their way across the floor again.

  “Hope who burns in hell?” Reesy asked. “What happened? Is my baby okay?”

  She looked to Grandma Tyler for an answer, but the older woman just sank back into the chair she’d been sitting in next to the bed, still clasping her granddaughter’s hand.

  “Misty?” Reesy asked, turning to her left. “Is my baby okay? Did I have a miscarriage? Will you tell me?”

  Misty gazed into her friend’s eyes, knowing she would want to hear the truth if she were in her position.

  “You lost the baby, Reesy,” she said, clutching her hand with both of hers. “It was a pretty bad fall.”

  “Gotdammit,” Grandma Tyler said. “That fuckin’ boy needs his ass whooped good.”

  “Why’d you tell her?” Tyrene screeched.

  “Because she wanted to know,” Misty said. “You can’t hide it from her forever.”

  Reesy closed her eyes, pushing back salty water that squished out anyway. She took three deep breaths and opened them again. Misty waited for the sobs to commence, but they didn’t.

  “That bastard’s gonna pay for this,” Tyrene declared in the background, her hands flying about. “She could have died because of his nonsense. Pictures in the church, that woman in black with that big ol’ ass. And what about the girl with the red hair sucking on him? Everybody in there got a good look at his, his…his business.”

  “Big business,” Grandma Tyler muttered. “Hung like a horse, he was. Surprised he ain’t rip Tweety in half with that.”

  “Umph,” said Julian under his breath. “Rip me in half.”

  “Who you want to rip you in half?” asked a jealous Tonio. “I thought you said all men were muthafuckas.”

  “Stop it, all of you,” Misty said.

  “What kind of person would let himself be photographed doing those kind
s of ungodly things?” Tyrene inquired. “A pervert, that’s who. A psycho. He did us all a favor. Teresa could have been marrying a rapist, for all we know.”

  “He’s not a rapist,” Misty said.

  “How do you know?” Tyrene barked. “Family and friends are always the last to find out. I’ve seen plenty of supposed upstanding men with nasty habits hiding in their closets. Look at that fool you lived with that used to work at our firm. Sucking on your breasts and wetting the bed like a big ol’ overgrown baby. How long did it take you to find out that he had that in him? A good three years, if I remember, and you were right there in the house with him.”

  Misty’s jaw fell open and she glanced at Reesy, whose eyes were now closed again.

  “Yeah, I knew about it,” Tyrene said. “You think we’d want to keep a nut like that on our payroll? It’s a good thing he quit before we had a chance to fire him.”

  Reesy heard something that sounded like her father clearing his throat.

  “It’s a crazy world out there, Tyrone,” his wife continued.

  “You and I both know, as bad as this situation seems, our daughter was just saved from life with a lunatic-rapist-freaknastyorgymonger.”

  Reesy wondered where her mother learned the word “freak-nasty.”

  A door squeaked open.

  “Can I see her?” asked a voice that struck an immediate chord. “Is she awake? I just want to know if she’s okay.” Reesy’s skin bristled with an unnatural chill.

  “Get him out of here,” Tyrene screamed. The sound of her voice resonated throughout the otherwise quiet floor.

  A team of nurses rushed into the room to squash the ruckus. Everyone was told to leave. That many people shouldn’t have been in the room anyway, they were informed. It was a small space in the emergency section, and it wasn’t designed for clutter or a crowd. The doctor had promised Tyrene that Reesy would be moved to a larger room later in the day.

  One of the nurses, a buxom woman with intolerant eyes and a Jersey accent, lingered behind to make sure everyone left the room.

  “Can these two stay?” Reesy asked, straining to be heard.