your presence still lingers here, and it won't leave me alone

gather round, people, for a spine-thrilling story of love and loss.

my neighbor (or the dude that owns the land next to ours) didnt live on his land. he hasnt built a house for himself there yet. i've never seen him. i had doubts that he even existed. so shocked i was when we came this year and saw that something had actually been built on the land. a house too small for a person to live in, a house that could mean only one thing: chickens. a handfull of chickens and a rooster had moved next door.

now, some people may have found the crowing of the rooster obnoxious, a nuisance in the quiet hours of the day and night. but to me, it was a comfort sound. some neighbor near my old house used to have a rooster, and i remember listening to it wile i was younger. so hearing this new rooster was like a blast from the past. we would go out and see the chickens parading down the street or resting under the shade of one of our trees. we would come home and see them sleeping in their coop. i was told someone was watching them, but they seemed free to do pretty much whatever they wanted. it was not hard to grow attached to these chicken neighbors, and attached we all grew.

then, on the fateful day of june 25, i heard the news. a mass murder. all of the chickens and the rooster were found hanging headless and bleeding on the empty lot, or so i heard. i couldnt go see for myself. it was too hard. it was not hard to find the culprit, there was only one person with the motivation. one person who knew the chickens but didnt really know them, couldnt have grown to love them as we did. our "neighbor", though murder is hardly a neighborly trait.

they were dead. the coop was empty. but were they really gone? i thought so until i started hearing the crowing of the rooster early in the morning. at first i thought, the neighbor got more chickens! but the coop remained empty. then i thought another neighbor may have gotten some, but that too was proved to be a wrong assumption. there was only one logical reason behind the crowing left. the ghost of the rooster was haunting the coop, crying out at the injustice of his death. either that or i'm going crazy.

i still hear it, that mournful wailing of a lost friend, though i have yet to see any ghost animals around. phantom rooster or signs of psychosis?? the world may never know...

*My Immortal - Evanescence