I've been trying for a little while to find a short story that I read about 15 years ago. It was in a book that I picked up off of my friend's shelf one day. Unfortunately, said friend has nearly a thousand books (and has read less than half of them) and has moved several times, so he's lost quite a few of them or given them away. I visited him recently and tried to find the book from among his piles of them, but no luck. He also doesn't remember a story like the one I am thinking of.
It's basically a supernatural / mild horror story.
- It takes place on a farm
- Some time prior the start of the story, all but one of the farmer's chickens are killed by a woman who had some kind of grudge against the farmer (she didn't kill them directly: she cast a spell or used some other kind of paranormal means)
- The one surviving chicken seemed to be okay, several years passed and it was healthy all the while
- The farmer was down on his luck and was forced to eat the chicken
- The same night that he ate it, it came back to life
- He thought it was a different chicken from another farm, but it wasn't
- He and the chicken have an actual conversation (yes, it speaks) about about the fact that the farmer ate it (something was said about the chicken being in two places at once, in the farmer's stomach and in front of the farmer speaking to him)
- The chicken basically tells the farmer that it will now haunt him until he dies
- The farmer then decapitates the chicken and buries the head
- That's most of the story, but I can't remember the exact conclusion
One last thing. I remember the line, "the farmer's belly rumbled like a screaming banshee" before he killed the chicken...for some reason that stuck with me.
Please let me know if any of you have read this before.