The Buried Hens

It began with claws.

Two bleeding claws jutting out of the soil.

Sherman pulled hard and a two entire dead hens heaved out of his raised bed of onions. Claws, guts and all. 

Just the birds' heads missing.

They were semi-rotten and reeked to high heaven and were two of his own.

Ugh! How in God's name did they get in there? 

The decomposing hens went on the compost heap. No need to waste good decay mumbled the frugal old flint.

Sherman sat in his deckchair and thought about the disgusting things.

Some strange goings on had been happening of late, much to his utter annoyance.

Ever since the funeral of those damnable twins he suddenly concluded.

Huh! 

Those pesky twin girls. Decapitated in his wheatfield by their own father's rusty sickle as they hid like criminals in the stalks. Unseen. Unheard. Giggling. Utter pests.

Swoosh!

Two heads spiralled over the wheat ears, still gulping air like needy goldfish and landed at Sherman's feet. He had dearly wanted to throw them on the compost too. Good grey matter for the soil.

He was there because he'd come to grudgingly pay their father, his overworked starving farmhand and as always, to pay less than they'd agreed. This time it was nothing, the cut was too high and therefore useless. The miser swallowed the coins in front of the worker out of spite and smiled.

And so the searing angry swoosh!

The girls and the wheat paid with their heads and the father never worked again, withering away with his distraught wife like old blown eggs. Childless, penniless, heartless.

A pall fell over the hamlet, a darkened aura of sorrow for the loss of it's two dearest souls and the deepest blackest air of all hung over Sherman's farm. 

The callous miser hadn't even bothered to attend the funeral to pay his respects to the children's headless corpses nor paid a single penny towards their service.

Hatred of him was everywhere in the hamlet. It spread like cattle slurry.

The father and mother of the twins, bereft beyond measure, hid themselves away from that day forth, praying for their girls to return. Somehow. Someday. Their heads on the mantelpiece ready. Giggling.

A dove flew into the porch near where Sherman was sitting in his patch. It's wings flapped as it circled round, a frantic dervish of feathers and feet. 

It wafted and wafted the mildewed wind-chime, creating a delirious melody, until it became completely entangled in its strings and fell to the ground. 

Another dove landed and picked up its writhing mate, trussed and bound and carried it through the sky until it could fly no more and let it go.

The struggling bundle dropped dead straight down into the autumn fire Sherman had set from a pile of leaves he'd raked in the garden that morning. The string around the dove burnt away and with its face now a ball of flames flapped and zigzagged blind towards its heroic mate on the fence and shrieking, kissed it one last time before setting them both alight.

Sherman watched with detachment from his chair as the rats of the trees were totally consumed.

My! There's some rum things going on in this irksome hamlet.

In his potato lines behind him the old codger heard rustling. He shambled over and could see small hands placing potato bugs on the big precious green leaves. The bugs were in two glass jam jars full to the brim and resting on the severed necks of two children.

The twins!

He recognized the blood-drenched calico dresses immediately.

The jars were where theirs heads should have been, bobbing about on the stumps as little hands grabbed ever more eager insects.

The bugs were ravenous and reduced Sherman's potato field to a waste of weedy rags in less than ten minutes.

You! You! Nuisances both! I always thought so and your pathetic parents too. I hope they die a terrible death and rot in Hell! 

The twins stopped dead. 

They turned to face the embittered farmer and running towards him with incredible haste the girls easily overpowered the old man and carried him to his compost heap.

First they held open Sherman's mouth, shoved in a few small potatoes and then poured an entire jam jar of potato beetles, live and dead, and closed his jaws shut, making sure he swallowed them. Then they buried him head first in the compost with just his his bare feet sticking out.

It was an earthworm that first approached his eye. It nudged at the eyelid and eagerly slid inside the farmer's socket. He screamed but his mouth simply filled with detritus from his own miserly hovel.

Next two centipedes slithered over and the farmer watched in horror as they stared into his eyes. His horror quickly turned to terror as the long insects began to eat away the soft jelly of his eyeballs and chew their way into his skull.

He saw and felt every agonizing bite and these scouts heralded an invasion of creatures, who sought out the juicy warm flesh within Sherman's head and above all, the grand prize of his fat-rich twitching brain.

It was a gaggle of beetles munching his optic nerve ends that made the old miser's feet shake outside the heap and eventually, his cranium was a teeming maelstrom of ravenous bugs all vying for the tenderest parts lower down: his sinuses, palate, tongue and spinal cord.

After several days the twins, now reunited with their heads, dug up the farmer.

Only his feet and stomach had retained any flesh and the rest of him was purely skeletal.

They took Sherman's severed feet and stomach bag to their parents' house and placed them on the mantle piece. 

But the crowning glory was the farmer's skull, taking pride of place on the dining table and, with a small groove drilled across the top, it was used to keep the coins in they found in his stomach, their hard-working father's wages long long overdue.