MONO ISSUE 1 PDF FLIPBOOK - Flipbook - Page 81
OBSERVATION BIAS
by Kurt Luchs
They had me in the observation ward, no doubt the better
to observe me. They had their reasons. In the previous week
my body had started to grow feathers, my hair had fallen out
and my newly bald head was sprouting something that looked
like a rooster’s comb. I was neither proud nor ashamed of these
developments. This was simply my new reality. Each morning,
noon and evening the doctors would poke me, prod me, take my
temperature, attach me to various electronic instruments and
record their findings on their tablets, clucking with consternation.
One day a doctor said that my beak was coming along just fine.
I started to say, “What beak?” but then touched my nose and
realised he was right. Instead I asked if he had any seed corn.
I reached through the bars of my cage—that’s what it was,
really—imploring him to find me some harder, more solid food.
He looked at me with revulsion and said, “Don’t you dare touch me,
you filthy creature!” Then he ordered me to move to the other end
of the cage, the one labeled “Observation Bias.” On a table outside
the cage were several painful and injurious but nonlethal weapons:
pea shooters, sling shots, an air rifle, and a professional-grade
baseball. First he shot me with each shooting weapon, and then
he threw a fastball right at my head. The baseball beaned me and
knocked me off my feet. “You’re out!” he said. “And let that be
a lesson to you.” Nor was the physical hurt the worst of it. I won’t
even repeat what he said about my place in the new pecking order.
I pretended to cower in a corner of the cage, fluttering and
squawking, but already I was beginning to compose my
Oscar-winning screenplay, Revenge of the Man-Chicken.
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