El Hombre de Pollo

[David Sanchez]

Make some sweet nuevo flamenco love to your ears while you read:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=KV2ixprDrK8

El Hombre de Pollo
(The Chicken-Man)

Ghost Stories
Sometime in the mid 1990’s – Mexico City, New Mexico

The senses are heightened immediately as the scene opens up to a melody of Spanish guitars playing Toque airoso styled instrumentals, with a hint of flamenco. The smell of burning firewood invades the nostrils, creating nostalgic thoughts of camping trips from times long forgotten, as the viewer begins to reminisce however another sense makes its presence felt. The sight of children, circled around a campfire dressed in matching scout uniforms. Expressions of whim and wonder are strewn across their faces universally as the adults seated amongst them continue to strum on their respective instruments, their music drifting upwards into the desert night sky. Sand makes up the floor and cacti decorates the background, nothing but sand and cacti for as far the eye can see is identified in either direction. This campsite is isolated, peaceful, a rite of passage to these children of eleven, perhaps twelve and their group leaders.

Four large tents are constructed a small distance away from where the circle has formed, an adequate amount of makeshift housing for the small number in attendance that can be no more than twelve children with three adults. Among them a particular face stands out, it is that of a young David Sanchez; his aquamarine eyes still full of childish innocence as he sways his head softly, letting the transition from Toque airoso into Toque virtuoso consume his body, the soft breeze flowing through his shoulder-length black hair. The guitarists slap at the frames of their instruments to create a drumming effect that send the children’s collective pulses racing as they wonder how these magicians can make a single instrument create so many different noises. Bowls of trail mix rest in front of each of their folded legs, except for the elders who in place have a single beer at their side, sipping from these occasionally in a relay of sorts so that the music never fully stops but merely loses a component from time to time in a way that actually seems to compliment the overall sound.

The fire crackles and pops, illuminating the scene in a soft orange glow that almost amplifies the calming force of nature itself. The children’s uniforms are all khaki in color, each decorated with a variety of badges, each badge representing a different skill that the child has mastered. From knot-tying to orienteering, from fire-building to foraging for food. The music fades gently out and the guitars are laid down onto the sand as the eldest of the adults gets to his feet and picks up a log from a near-by pile, placing it gently atop the blaze. He turns to the other two troop leaders with a big smile, hidden slightly by his thick, greying beard covering the majority of his face. His lips part and he speaks in a soft but stern voice.

“Gather closer kids, as close to the fire as you can get without burning yourselves”

The remaining two adults quickly assist in tightening the circle around the flames, ensuring that no child is risking becoming a burn victim. Satisfied with the restructuring of his group the troop master picks up his bottle of beer and takes a generous sip, allowing the cooling concoction of barley and hops to slide down his throat and nest comfortably in his stomach. With the two other adults now occupied by packing the guitars and bowls away he looks around the group of children, his eyes stopping on David and the child next to him who are seen to be daring one another to dart their hands in and out of the fire, laughing as the flames dance around their fingers but withdrawing them before any real heat can be felt.

“David, Marcelo. What did we learn about fire today?”

The two stop their actions immediately and stare up at the troop master with sincere regret in their eyes. Shouldering into each other slightly a few times, as if provoking the other to answer the question. It is David who finally speaks, his soft voice much so soothing in comparison to his monotonic, rambling drones of the present day.

“We learned that we shouldn’t play with fire master”

“And why don’t we play with fire David?”

“Because fire is dangerous master.”

“Correct, for an extra point. Who set out the principles for building and safe containing of a fire like ours here today?”

“Ernest Thompson Seton in The Birch Bark Roll of the Woodcraft Indians in 1902 master”

“Correct again David, well done! Marcelo, who was the first man to form a scouting group and what were they called?”

The boy named Marcelo with whom David had been rabble rousing looks nervous, he is thinking out loud to the point that ‘emming’ noises are heard creeping out of his mouth. The troop giggles at this slightly, having only been taught this knowledge the previous day. Succumbing to the fact that Marcelo does not know the answer to this, the master looks back at David who is practically trembling with excitement at the thought of receiving further praise.

“Daniel Carter Beard started the Sons of David Boone in 1905 master, but the first official group was created by Baden-Powell in 1907 master”

“Very good, Marcelo you could learn a thing or two from young David here. Remember kids, knowledge is power.”

Practically glowing with a healthy blush David’s ego gets the better of him as the master turns back to the rest of the group our would be Black Rose sticks his tongue out at his friend who returns the gesture by muttering a few words under his breath.”

“Know-it-all.”

Marcelo’s words do not even phase David slightly as he sits up straight and lets his small victory resonate. The Master has now been re-joined by his two delegates, both of whom stand behind him, flanking their commander from either side. The fire continues to crackle and the wind continues to compliment the atmosphere with a slight, yet soothing breeze. He beams down at the children, his voice deeper now than before, bringing character to the words he is saying.

“Okay children now before we turn in for the night, I’m going to tell you all a ghost story but I need you all to remember that you are all perfectly safe.”

The other two adults disappear into one of the tents at this instruction, leaving the children excited and full of optimism. Each of them begins to shout out suggestions of particular stories they’ve heard from older brothers and sisters in attempts to scare them. The master simply brushes these requests aside with a shake of his head and leans forward into the circle. Silence falls over the group as they wait in anticipation of a story that will give them the heightened adrenaline rush of fear.

“A long time ago not too far from here there lay a small village on the desert plains known only to the locals as El Paraíso Escondido. It was a quiet village famous for it’s poultry production though it was home to perhaps only thirty or forty inhabitants. The people were happy, self-sufficient and able to live off their own land with Little to no quarrels amongst them until the banditos came. It was just a few at first, stealing the chickens. After a while though they began to arrive in larger groups, terrorizing the town until there was not but one of these flightless birds remaining.”

The children in the group look around at one another, clearly not impressed with their master’s history lesson thus far the children begin to get restless. They had been promised a scary story and delivered an education on the geographical history of the local lands. David and Marcelo begin to stir first, craftily elbowing one another when the master’s gaze drifts across to the other side of the circle. Noticing that his audience is becoming distracted the elder motions with his hands for the children to quieten down and be patient.

“One day, not long after the bandits had raided their village, the townspeople assembled together and decided to take matters into their own hand, and so the story goes that the next time these banditos invaded their humble home, several of the villagers managed to isolate and capture one of these criminals. Now not much is known of what events led up to the brutality behind this man’s demise other than that he was taken into the chicken coop and hung for his crimes. A fitting place for his life to end, swaying limp above the one remaining chicken in El Paraíso Escondido.”

“Years passed and the raids had stopped, none of the thieves dared enter this community again after the mysterious disappearance of their friend. Of course they merely assumed he had turned traitor and sold them out to the law and knew not the tragedy of his demise. For two years the man’s body remained suspended, the chicken population now thriving again, pecking at his rotting flesh from time to time as he hung there, long-dead but far from peaceful. Until one day, the body was gone and so were the chickens who resided in this particular hatchery”

“Not but a few days later, the townsfolk started appearing dead, pecked to death in their beds at night while they slept, one each night for the thirty nights in the month of June. Nobody could explain these murders, and the pecks were far too big to have been from regular chickens, they were almost like bite marks of some sort. All that remained in the town was but a half dozen men and a dozen chickens, haunted by their own paranoia and the rumor of a man of six feet, covered head to talon in feathers with a beak sharp enough to cut through glass. After weeks had passed they came to call him El Hombre de Pollo; the Chicken Man.”

“Before too long the remaining residents separated off into near-by communities, plagued by thoughts of a human-sized poltroon that was hunting them for what they had done. Nothing has been seen of El Hombre de Pollo for forty years but the locals say that if you wait for a quiet, calm night not unlike this one you can still hear a faint clucking and pecking in the air.”

“CLUCK-CLUCK-BUCKAWWWW!”

“BUCKAWWWW!”

The master roars with laughter whilst the children scream with terror at the sight of his two helpers flapping their arms wildly, dressed in full chicken suits, after having crept undetected back towards the circle whilst the children were engrossed. The panic soon turns to laughter once they remove the head portion of their disguises, causing several of the smaller children gasp and grasp at their chest. A prank of excellent standards the adults concede to themselves as the young people catch their breath and begin telling one another that they didn’t really get a fright. David and Marcelo laugh wildly, the jokers of the group, despite having both jumped two feet out of their skin moments ago.

“Okay Children, time to get some sleep. We’ve got a busy day ahead of us tomorrow.”

With the panic evaporating and turning into disappointment at an allocated bedtime the faces of this group of scouting youths turn sour as they split off into their groups of six and move away from the fire. David, Marcelo and the four boys sharing their tent shuffle towards their makeshift bed for the night, unzip its fabric entrance and pile inside, each boy grabbing a sleeping back and opting not to go inside it but rather to lie atop, the heat of the fire still warming their little bodies too much to consider further insulation. David is last to enter, opting to sleep closest to the door as he was considered to be the bravest. As he steps inside and begins to zip the door closed, the last thing he sees is the beaming smile of their pack master looking back at him. The scene fades out with the faint whisper of children’s chatter.

“David, you don’t really think there’s a chicken-man do you?”

“Don’t be a chicken Marcelo.”

El Hombre de Pollo: La Segunda Venida
(The Chicken-Man: The Second Coming)

Present Day – Sha Tin District, Hong Kong, China

The scene opens up to show an ancient Chinese temple, its origin’s made clear by the giant statue of Che Kung who commanded the military of the Southern Song dynasty for quite some time between 1127 and 1279. In popular local folklore it was said that Che Kung suppressed many uprisings to several emperors and aided their escape to Sai Kung, in what is now called the New Territories where no harm would befall them. His achievements in his role as military commander eventually lead to the people of the time revering him as a god of sorts. The original temple was built over three-hundred years ago as a safe retreat from an epidemic that was spreading across the Sha Tin area. Although rumor has it that on the day construction was finished the epidemic began to subside. The temple we see here today however was constructed only in nineteen ninety-three to accommodate the increasing number of worshippers during Che Kung’s festival on the second day of Chinese New Year. The giant statue of Che Kung himself is flanked by a giant, bladed wheel of fortune which the locals believe that if spun three times will grant good luck, and on the other side? A particularly out of place man by the name of David Sanchez.

Dressed in a pair of black shorts, a white vest and sunglasses the man known as the Last True King of Wrestling stares awkwardly upwards at this forty-five foot stone statue of a man who’s entire bloodline died out before his had even found roots in this earth. He studies it carefully, allowing it’s magnificence to tower over him, shading him slightly from the rise of the morning sun. It could be perhaps only five or six in the morning, the swarms of worshippers and fortune-tellers which usually crowded this area were still asleep in their beds, safe in the knowledge that their chosen god was watching over them from his vantage point at the front of the temple which itself was high atop a flight of grey, concrete steps. This was a perfect time of year to visit this historical monument for David, he did not enjoy the hustle and bustle of people pushing past him. Crowded street markets, parades, festivals and theatrics were all he had seen since he stepped foot off the aeroplane. He missed Russia’s firm communist hold on its public, while China’s governing bodies could indeed be described in the same way, they were much more tolerant of everything except political reform.

“You are probably wondering why I’m standing here, taking in this glorious statue commemorating the life of this man, who I can only assume is the first host of the Chinese take on Wheel of Fortune.”

David stops for amount, pausing again to look up at the epic shrine of Che Kung which has stood for centuries, whilst the buildings themselves have been renovated every fifty or so years since the Ming Dynasty. The silent courtyard is now themed with a Japanese style, having last been refurbished twenty-two years ago in an architectural upheaval which seen the temple itself grow by eight times in square footage. White stone walls are propped up by red and gold pillars, inscribed with various characters laying out specific quotes in Chinese. Sanchez studies one of these for a moment, running his fingers across the golden indents in the wall as though expecting to miraculously learn braille. Giving up on this quest he turns back to the camera, lifts his sunglasses up onto his brow and begins to speak again, his cold, blue eyes shimmering slightly in the ever-rising sun.

“Believe it or not, I came out here this morning to talk about chicken.”

“I know right? It seems a long way to travel for some simple symbolism, why not just go into Kentucky Fried Chicken and state my thoughts over a fucking bucket and some gravy? Well that would be because everywhere in this god forsaken city is non-stop. There are people everywhere, all the time. It never ends. The only places I’ve been able to get five minutes to myself are temples, and even then there’s still the occasional patron in attendance, stroking the idols of their various deities or leaving offerings of cut flowers and antiques. I actually picked up a nice vase to take home for Samm yesterday, some stupid rice-eater just left it lying there; finders keepers. I digress though…”

Taking a moment to get his train of thought back on track David sits down at the feet of this statue, pushing aside various gold coins, cards, bunches of flowers and other offerings as he does so. The heat has already started to become too much to bear, even at this early hour of the morning. It seems hotter here through the lack of air alone, a thick invisible smog seems to choke the lungs slightly with each breath. Bells begin to ring in the temple behind him, causing Sanchez to shudder a little, clearly not impressed by the lack of peace and quiet he has been able to achieve on this tour, perhaps next time Seth would pick a less densely populated country with a singular belief system to tour he thought to himself, that would be swell.

“Imagine my horror today when I awoke in my pathetically small, paper-walled hotel room in a cold sweat at four in the morning. Unable to return to my usually comatose state of rest I lay on perhaps the most uncomfortable bed I have ever graced with my spine and let my mind drift back to something that happened almost twenty years ago. I was a scout at the time, yes, I know, I know. It was a long time ago; the world was my oyster and the future was bright. I’ll spare you the sales pitch and skip to the point though as I don’t have long before these vultures return to their carcass. Anyway, one particularly enjoyable evening we gathered around a campfire to hear the story of ‘El Hombre de Pollo’ or the Chicken-Man for those of you not in touch with your inner gardener.”

Laughing a little at his own joke of veiled racism David withdraws a cigarette from a packet in his pocket and presses it between his lips. He looks suspiciously from side to side, ensuring that he is alone before igniting it with a single click of his lighter and taking a long drag, unsure on the rules of smoking in these monuments. The smoke he exhales seem to evaporate into the air a lot quicker here than it does at home, the air pollution truly was something to be worried about in this part of the world.

“This story was told to us as a ghost story, a campfire tale to put us all in an alert state of mind on our first camping excursion and depicted a man with the physical features of a chicken murdering a village full of people for some reason, I tend to forget the finer points. Now until this very morning I have always thought back on this story as something of a satire, a joke… I mean a man-sized chicken running around New Mexico butchering people as they slept, it’s not exactly the most believable of bedtime stories. Today though I had a second thought on the subject, a thought that’s been swirling around in my grey matter since last Sunday. What if he told the story wrong? What if we were worried about this comical giant chicken when in reality we should have been worried about something similar and yet nothing alike. A man, with the body of a regular man and the personality traits of a chicken, a man who could pass as a functioning member of society through the day and skulk away at nights to peck at corn in fear of becoming a McNugget. I fear this creature more than the fabled version. Not out of personal fear but of socio-cultural dread. What if you gave this Chicken-Man a microphone? What if you gave him the elevated podium to reach audiences worldwide? What if the people listened to this abomination? It could be a global disaster.”

Extinguishing his cigarette in the golden offerings plate and tossing the butt amongst the flowers and coins he had previously moved in a quest to park his posterior David looks directly at the camera. His eyes fixate on the viewer at home and he speaks now in a harsh tone, mocking genuine fear.

“Ladies, gentlemen, kids of whatever culture… I have found El Hombre de Pollo!”

He straightens his back a little and folds his hands atop one another, the knuckles turning slightly white as thought of rage fill in his mind. This subject had been haunting him since last Monday, the day falling his loss on Slam to Teo Del Sol. He stands up now and begins to pace back and forward before stopping at the dead centre of focus, directly underneath Che Kung. As the god looks down upon him he draws the camera closer so that we can see the seriousness in his eyes and feel the harshness of his tone.

“Teo Del Sol, the real Chicken-Man. He flaps around pointlessly all day long, clucking and pecking at whatever he can without so much as contributing an egg to society. Then when night falls and times get tough he squawks back into the hen house and rests behind the metaphorical chicken-wire of our faithful farmer’s protection.”

“Teo, I speak directly to you now. Last week you were able to get lucky, you beat me by the medium of running away. It takes a special kind of pathetic to let a match end in that manner, but I’m not upset with you, infact I’m glad as it just brings further truth to my poultry theory. I’ve notice though Teddy, you don’t mind if I call you Teddy do you? That this isn’t the first time you’ve done this. School-boy pins, count-outs, relying on your partners in other matches. Not to mention the whole Mexico thing. I mean what? You couldn’t make it in Texas so you hopped on the train, donned some kind of cape, hid your face under a mask and started diving aimlessly around the ring like so many broken old luchadores before you? Great message to send the kids Teddy. Don’t worry how badly you screw up your life in America, you can still be a Mexican folk hero even if you are a complete failure.”

“This week is going to be different though my racially confused friend. Even though you went squawking to Seth and got me a little fine and a little restriction I’m guaranteeing you right here in front of… whoever this guy behind me is. You will not be leaving this province of your own accord."

Standing up again as a crowd of Asian worshippers begin to head towards the shrine with their various baskets of gifts and brightly colored robes David cuts himself short, beginning the long walk away from the Che Kung temple, descending the stairs back into the Sha Tin street district, the skyscraper filled horizon of Hong Kong glistening like a modern snow-globe in the background. Around halfway down the steps he looks into the camera once more and utters the following:

“I feel like chicken tonight Teddy, like chicken… tonight.”