Backstory

Somewhere between the coop and the cornfield, a chicken found a knife. It did not find the knife. The knife found it — the way a tool finds its purpose, which is to say that both of them were looking for each other. The chicken picked it up, tested the edge on a fence post, nodded once, and became something the coop committee had no standing to regulate.

Not a metaphor. It has a knife and a mission. The mission is you. It does not care about the farm door, the grain silo, or your perfectly reasonable zoning complaints. It moves fast, it strikes hard, and it has the kind of single-minded focus that makes other chickens uncomfortable at parties. Its references check out; the references refuse to talk about it.

It works alone. It does not monologue. It does not leave notes, unless you count the one scratched into the gate that simply reads: YOU. If it ever learns to open doors, the farm is finished.