Phyllis McNaughton
Blogs
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I live in a rural area of Boquete called Alto Jaramillo and I like to drive its back roads. On mostly dirt or gravel roads, I pass modest homes, colorful flowers and majestic trees.
I almost always encounter chickens. Hordes of chicken, some of which are roosters, some are hens guarding their baby chicks. There are lots of chickens who are crossing the proverbial road. What is weird is that so many of these chickens are apparently suicidal.
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They stand in the middle of the road, literally playing chicken, as I try to pass them. They scurry to the side of the road, and then quickly double-back again, as I begin to accelerate, stopping inches away from my tires. They do mad dances, zig-zagging here and there like chickens with their heads cut off, although all heads remain intact.
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Once, when I was driving down the dirt road to my home, I came upon thirty or so chickens bobbing their bodies and dancing to some music only they could hear (although it was to the same beat as We will, We will, Rock you.) When I honked my horn, some scattered to the side of the road, but many defiantly stood their ground in front of my car, as if my ruining their party was the last straw, and suicide by hurling themselves under my tires, was the only viable option.
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I can't help them. Only they can find a deeper meaning to their lives than chicken soup, and decide to live grateful, happy lives,. Chicken suicide is not the answer.
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Boquete’s Suicidal Chickens
The Reckoning
The light that pulled him here has diminished and Joshua is now in some sort of receiving area. At least that is what it feels like. There are small groups of others there, but he is alone. He can feel energy emanating from the groups, and one unit of energy is somehow familiar to him, but not in a comforting way. In a disturbing way, in a way that makes him feel sad and somehow ashamed.
An energy form approaches him (it is an undulating bright blue) and it pulls him in, then pushes him out and he sees it, what he did that brought him here: A young Black woman with braided hair that falls a little short of her chin, and he is holding a gun to her, confident that there is no danger because it is a liquor store in what his mother would call a good neighborhood and the Black girl is so lovely, and she is clearly frightened when he tells her to clean out the cash register. Hearing a noise behind him, he turns for an instance so he doesn’t see that she has pulled out her own gun from under the counter. He hears the shot before he feels anything. And he turns and shoots her back and sees her fall a few seconds before he does.
Then there was the light and the tunnel.
Then this place and he knows, although he can’t say how he knows, he just does, that the disturbing feeling coming from the one group is the Black girl, and he realizes that he has been wrong for a long time. He was so sure that because there is so much evil, betrayal and hatred in the world that there couldn’t possibly be a God or an afterlife. But he was wrong.
Because he is alive, although dead, and he knows there will be a reckoning.
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