4338.205 · July 24, 2018 AD
Not a Chicken Coop
Armed with Paul's credit card and a shopping list that makes no sense, Gladys hires a truck under someone else's name and begins collecting materials for a project she doesn't understand. Each transaction is a small lie, each receipt another step deeper into complicity. By the time the hardware employee laughs at her "chicken coop" story, she knows the truth: she's not helping a friend. She's enabling something she can't even name.
There's a moment in every bad decision where you can still turn back. That moment passes faster than you think.
For Gladys, it passes somewhere between lying to the truck rental clerk ("my boyfriend's finally moving in") and using a stranger's credit card for the third time that morning. She's not doing anything technically illegal—Luke gave permission, after all. Paul apparently knows. Cody encouraged it. Everyone says it's fine.
Except nothing about this feels fine.
The truck is too big. The list is too strange. The lies are multiplying faster than she can keep track of them—my boyfriend, my husband, the chicken coop we're definitely building. Each interaction with a stranger requires another performance, another careful dance around the truth she doesn't actually know.
When the hardware employee loads the last timber post and laughs—"Lady, you could build a whole chicken farm with this much stuff"—the facade cracks. This isn't about chickens. This isn't about birthday surprises. This is something else entirely, something Luke won't explain, something Cody pushed her towards, something that's turning her into an accomplice in a story she never agreed to be part of.
Standing in the carpark with a truck full of concrete and tools and secrets, Gladys confronts the sinking realisation: she's in too deep to ask the questions she should have asked hours ago.
Sometimes helping means crossing lines you didn't know existed until you're already on the other side.
