Husband Robs Henhouse Looking for Wife - Winner of the 2025 Damn Fine Fiction Award

Quiet nights end up the strangest in Sundale County. I know because I work the interstate to the swamp. My last quiet night ended when a man with a mop on his head tried to burn down his ex-girlfriend’s house with vegetable oil. It’s true, check the headlines, another Sundale County man. Half-moons here breed things stranger than werewolves. And on a silent night like this one, I can’t be surprised when I pull over a man for speeding, knock on the glass, shine my light, and see a frozen chicken buckled into the passenger’s seat.

“Sir, kill the engine.”

He’s sweating, breathing heavily, staring ahead.

“Kill the engine,” I say.

He grimaces, clenches his eyes shut, turns the key from the ignition.

“Any idea how fast you were going?”

He shakes his head.

“What about your passenger, does it know?”

He shakes his head again.

“Any reason why that chicken is wearing a seatbelt?”

“Because,” the man stutters, “she’s my wife.”

Quiet nights.

“Sir, have you been drinking? Taking any illegal substances?”

“She’s my wife! I rescued her! From a black house in the swamp! Look, Officer, I can prove it.”

He snatches his phone from the dashboard.

“Easy.”

“Look at my wife!”

Seriously, I’m not one for ogling over naked pictures. When phones are unlocked through evidence, and secret albums uncovered, I don’t join in the sharing. But I couldn’t help but stare as the man showed me his beautiful wife, arms stretched high, lifting her breasts, hips turned, the curve of her ass teasing itself. She’s posed in the shower with water beaded skin. Nothing about this gorgeous woman could be described as chicken-like. Not the draw of her mouth, the shape of her head, the color of her hair. I nearly reach out for the phone.

The husband’s finger stabs the screen.

“Look right there!”

I bend down and look very closely.

“Do you see that? The mark on her thigh. Look!” He unbuckles the frozen chicken and grabs it by the wing. He turns it over to show me a jagged brown mark similar to the mark on his wife’s thigh.

“Look here!”

He shows me how the line of moles on her collarbone matches a streak of dots on the chicken. Compares the spots of discoloration around her right nipple to the poultry’s blotchy pigment. And to remove all doubt, he points to a small, blue tattoo of a hummingbird above her bikini line, and shows me what looks like a blue stamp smeared on the chicken’s middle.

It’s not the strangest way a man has offered up his wife. I was once propositioned at a grave robbing. But I’m a professional.

“And why were you speeding?”

“I have to get to the witch doctor before she thaws! If I don’t get there in time, she’ll never make it back.”

What an excuse. Last month a man claimed a leaf convinced him to break into the University’s greenhouse.

I check his I.D.

Kyle Friedman.

“Why don’t you and I go see this witch doctor together, Mr. Friedman. This isn’t an arrest, it’s an escort. Like a pregnant woman going to the hospital. Your wife is starting to look rubbery.”

“We have to hurry,” he says, clutching his chicken. “It’s not far.”

I’m shaking my head as I press him down into the backseat of my patrol car. Suddenly, I’m conscious of his slimy hands.

“Try not to touch anything.”

After bouts of tuberculosis and hepatitis, the last thing the jail needs is an outbreak of salmonella.

Mr. Friedman gives excited directions, shouting our way to a dark swampy road that’s hardly a set of tire tracks hidden between the trees.

“It’s straight ahead,” he says.

I pull into the marshy lawn of a black moss house, lit by candles in the windowsills.

“No!” shouts Mr. Friedman. “Turn back! Reverse! Quick!”

“Mr. Friedman, this is a warning for you to calm down.”

“It’s her house, it’s the witch’s house!”

I step out to investigate while Mr. Friedman claws at a door that has no handle.

“Stop touching things!” I yell.

The front door opens before I knock. An elderly woman, wearing a black silk cloak which reflects candlelight, shouts at my patrol car, “There he is! He broke into my house and stole my holiday chicken!”

“He broke into your home?”

“Like a maniac.”

“Do you know this man?”

“Kyle? He’s been a trespasser his whole life. Glad to see the law finally do something about it.”

“He seems to think that chicken is his wife.”

“But Officer, how could that be his wife when she’s right over here?”

A beautiful figure, nude like her photos, struts toward the door. There’s candlelight caught in the beads of water on her wet skin, and she glistens as if she’s been defrosting by a fire.

Mad Mr. Friedman pounds on the patrol car’s window.

Meanwhile Mrs. Friedman is perfect down to the smallest dot. She leans against the door frame as ice falls from her breasts.

“When he showed you those photos, did you think his wife beautiful?” asks the elderly lady.

Ice shards dazzle like a dreamy kaleidoscope.

“I did.”

“Would you like to have her?”

“I would.”

“Then why don’t you come back some night, Officer. It gets lonely in the swamp.”

“I will.”

“Good. Bring me the chicken, and take Mr. Friedman to jail.”

“Okay.”

“It’s clear to you what happened.”

Mrs. Friedman blows me a kiss.

“It is.”

Caught salmonella-handed. It’s easy to wrestle the chicken from the suspect once he’s handcuffed. Jealous husband, jilted lover, trying to humiliate his beautiful wife by showing off her photos. Breaks into her safehouse to kidnap her and in his delusions runs off with a chicken.

I see the headline.

Husband Robs Henhouse Looking for Wife.

Just another night in Sundale County. Like usual, I’ll have to sanitize the car.