The Poultrification of Mrs. Dietrich

“Ahhhh!” yelled Mrs. Dietrich. It was time to start the day. Mrs. Dietrich was in her bathroom to brush her teeth. But when she looked into the mirror she saw a chicken head and said, “Nah. It’s a dream.” She knocked her head twice on the mirror. She looked at her clock and it was 1:20 in the morning so she went back to sleep, thinking that she’d better keep dreaming.

Now when she fell asleep this time she was dreaming about candy canes falling from the sky. The canes kept on bouncing on her head then crashing onto the ground with lots of sugar dust. But one candy cane fell off her head and she caught it. She opened her mouth and it popped right in there and she finished it whole. She just stood there when everyone was screaming for their lives running back home. She giggled and laughed, watching them running around the neighborhood.

At dawn, Mrs. Dietrich raised her hands, stretching. She went to the bathroom and took a whizz. She then looked into the mirror and screamed. She was Mrs. Dietrich but she had lots of feathers surrounding her head… but she thought to herself, oh I’m still dreaming, and slapped herself. No luck. She kept on banging and banging at her face, but nothing. She found that she was still exhausted.

Later, she woke up at her work table with one hand under her head. She squished her cheek and it felt weird but then her timer alarm started to ring for her meeting. She opened Zoom and joined her meeting. She joined with her face camera on. When she joined she heard everyone laughing. She didn’t know what was funny so she laughed with them. Then her boss said, “Hey Mrs. Dietrich, why are you laughing? We were laughing at you.” Then everyone went silent and muted their mics. She looked at her screen looking at herself then noticed that she had the head of a chicken. She pressed the red button with the old phone on it and left the meeting. She decided to not go back to the meeting and thought about quitting her job.

She lay in bed and fell asleep again.

Mrs. Dietrich woke up and brushed her teeth once more. She looked into the mirror and saw her normal wrinkled face with curly blond hair. She then touched all around her face, which felt normal. She splashed her face with water then suddenly she rose. She got up from her bed and she felt the beak again. Was this really happening again?

This time when she was brushing her teeth, her doorbell rang. So she went over to her front door and opened it. It was her friend Rosetta, who liked to drop in on her and gossip. First thing she saw Rosetta did was having a weird scrunched face looking straight at her.

“Why do you look like that?”
“Well, I’ll tell you a story when you come inside the house.”

So Rosetta walked in the house taking off her Nike Air Max. She then took off her blue vest and rested it on the railing. She walked on her couch, wanting to start the conversation again.

Mrs. Dietrich sighed and groaned.

Rosetta said, “Really honey, you have a beak now!” Rosetta was trembling. “I feel like you are going to peck me!”

“No, dear Rosetta, it truly is just me,” said Mrs. Dietrich. “I am the same old person inside, but I just…”. She began softly weeping.

Rosetta got up and grabbed a box of tissues and gingerly reached over and wiped a few human tears dripping off of her friend’s beak. “There, there,” she said, “please don’t cry. Does Mr. Dietrich know about this?”

“No thank God, Patrick is in Montana on a business trip. Yes I know, I’ve known this since 3:00 in the morning. I’ve been stressing about this ever since. So when I went into the Zoom meeting I heard a lot of people laughing and so then I thought they were laughing at something else so then I laughed with them. Then I got all sad.”

“Did that really happen? Are you okay?”

“Yeah I’m fine but I think that is a computer glitch because my boss almost never laughs at me even when something embarrassing is happening.”

“Well, I’m sorry to tell you this but, you are actually a chicken and you smell like one too. You are a chicken. You have the beak, the feathers all over the body and you even have a tail! So I don’t think that was a computer glitch.”

“Wait, really? So I’m not dreaming!? I stink? I don’t think I want to go out of my house anymore. What if everyone laughs at me? What if people don’t recognize me and shoo me away? What if… .”

“Stop with the what ifs. Only focus on the now and the positives. Take deep breaths. In and out. So, Mrs. Dietrich. I’m going to stay over to see if anything bad happens to you. Oh yeah, by the way, I’m going to work on my project over at your house.”

Later, Mrs. Dietrich asked Rosetta: “Hey Rosetta, can you get me a small glass of lemonade.” Rosetta didn’t hear a single word except the loud music coming from her headphones. “ROSETTA!”
Rosetta still hadn’t heard anything.

“ROSETTA!” screamed Mrs. Dietrich at the top of her lungs. “Y es?”

“CAN YOU GET ME A BOTTLE OF LEMONADE AT THE SUPERMARKET!” “Okay, chill out.”

Rosetta walked down the stairs then outside to her car. She drove 2 miles to Costco and bought a bottle of lemonade for 5 dollars and drove another 2 miles back to bring Mrs. Dietrich the lemonade.

She gave Mrs. Dietrich the lemonade. She grabbed it from her hand and drank right from the bottle. And all of a sudden her beak disappeared. This

was a first timer. She continued to drink and then the bottle was empty in under 1 minute. Then Rosetta looked at Mrs. Dietrich and saw she no longer had a beak nor legs of a chicken. She thought to herself: I’ve got to go back to Costco!

So then Rosetta went back to Costco thinking of what Mrs. Dietrich loves best. Then it came to her. She loves milk chocolate chip Oreos. When she arrived at Costco, she went straight to the cookie aisle and there was no sight of any type of Oreo. Uh oh! She then went up to an employee and asked if she knew where Oreos were. She said, go to aisle 17. Rosetta rushed to aisle 17 and there once again… no Oreos were to be seen! When she left the aisle she saw one milk chocolate Oreo misplaced where the grain cereal was.

She picked it up and went to check out and hurried back to Mrs. Dietrich’s house. She gave it to Mrs. Dietrich and she ate each Oreo whole. She then no longer had the body of a chicken.