Chicken

 *Eat the flesh."

"Chew the bone."

"Leave no remnants."

My peers cheered me on with the rules. Their enthusiasm was enough to rouse the dead. I pretty much was feeling like that...

after consuming three old layers.

It was my loud mouth that got me into this...always running off before I'd had a chance to process things.

Those of us in the village never gave the returnees from the city an inch.

Maybe because we felt threatened and a tiny bit envious of their clothes and shiny stuff (everything they owned was shiny) plus their uppity mannerisms and speech. Maybe we just wanted them to know we were already in charge before their arrival.

In any case, the war for supremacy never ceased.

Chuba was bragging about how they killed chicken every Sunday in their Lagos home. And how he always ate a lap, sometimes both.

I just knew it was not possible. Children our age got drumsticks. Any addition, would be the head minus the neck --- that belonged to mother.

I said, "Spin on, Yarn-Master. Is it only lap? What of wings? They give you pieces of premature broiler and you want to deafen us with noise. Come and try our old layers. Your mouth will be zipped."

"Bring it, let me show you."

I saw red. The brat was still boasting.

"I bet you," I retorted, "That you cannot finish one chicken."

"I can."

"You cannot."

"I said I can. Even two."

"Hei! Liar!"

"You are shouting because you can't. Nonsense!" He said it with the smug look of one who'd scored a point.

"I am sure that I can eat more chicken than you." I stated, not to be outdone.

My first cousin, who rears chicken, chose that moment to pass. He is a card-carrying patron of the Killjoy Society. If I'd seen him on time I'd have bailed or just kept mum. But he'd heard.

"Oh! It is hunger for chicken that now drives you. Ehn?

"Both of you follow me. I will help you showcase your prowess"

That was an an eon ago. Chuba is starting on his third. I just managed to finish number three. Thanks to my friends' egging me on.

I was wondering how to end this madness when I heard a loud thud.

Chuba was on the ground, out cold.

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