Mad Rooster Marketing

Chapter 27 (Claire) - The Mad Rooster

A happy smile makes Emily's face shine. She is sitting at our kitchen table with a teacup hanging tiredly from her right hand. A piece of banana cake is hiding inside the left.

'Did you have a good time with Harry last night, mom? I'm glad he enjoyed it enough to give you a day off.'

'Could you explain one more time what happened at school today?'

The sun shining through the window filters through her hair. She has dumped a whole can of glitter on them, and now it seems like her head is lost in a cloud of sparkles as she dreamily waves it from side to side while constructing her tale. The amount of magic increases significantly in this new version, but it's even more confusing than the first two. I have come to realise long ago that the more sophisticated an explanation becomes, the less truth is left in it. I could naturally call Mr Owens, but the official yarn will be highly sophisticated. I'm perfectly happy to wait for the official letter to arrive in due course.

'Emily, I'm so sorry, but you must have known that something like this could happen. Violence is never the answer.'

'Ha, ha, mom. Look who's talking! Sex and violence are what you're all about.'

Emily has never spoken to me this disrespectfully. Her internal compass has clearly completely broken down. Unfortunately, I have never been good at fixing things. It has always been more of Simon's job. He and Emily have always had a special connection.

Earlier today, I read some of the letters he had sent to Emily. He had drawn multiple sketches of the Overlord symbol next to mini-stories which probably are meant to tell about his life in prison. They are like fairy tales, like weird and distorted versions of the adventures of Winnie the Pooh that would only make sense for someone living in a dark and disturbing world, somewhere much darker than Legion's Court. In the stories, Simon is fighting against lunatics he calls 'rooster worshipers'.

The stories are filled with dark humour, and if I hadn't seen the symbol on Harry's computer screen, I would take the rooster to be just a metaphor for human greed and stupidity. Emily must like the stories. That must be why she drew the picture of it on top of the box. Maybe it somehow makes Simon's imprisonment feel less intimidating. A normal human being like him should stay safe because the rooster worshippers are too stupid to cobble together anything truly dangerous. One of the first stories tells what the worshippers must do when giving their life to the rooster. The grand finale of that story is the rooster eating their brains and filling their head with rotten eggs laid by zombie chicken.

It's good that Emily hasn't let me see these stories. I would have thought that Simon had lost his mind in prison. Emily must have felt something similar. They probably felt dark and forbidden to her thirteen-year-old mind, which likely is a big part of why she has been hiding them all these years.

I didn't know that she could be so secretive. It almost makes me wonder, what else has she not told me?

'I just don't want you to turn into a rooster worshipper.'

That makes Emily freeze. Simon's words are powerful. I really need him here.

'You have read my letters! Why are you reading my letters?'

'I... just... I miss your father too.'

'It certainly doesn't look like it!'

Emily cuts herself another slice of the banana cake. It's my grandmother's secret recipe. What you can't fix with a slice of banana cake is unfixable. There is more truth in that than I care to admit. When she kills for the first time, that's when the world breaks apart. It's what my new best friend, Mark, said, and today, Emily was at school waving Florence's kitchen knife.