Old Dolly hangs out with the air

Josh woke up to Red 3’s call from afar. He was tired and felt lazy about the coming day, but Old Dolly had been coming every morning to pick up a meal. Josh had sent Old Dolly away when she was too old to work. But she was perhaps too accustomed to this place to even dare to learn to grab her morning meal elsewhere. He deeply thanked Red 3 for existing, and for singing every morning at sunrise. Not every rooster was as punctual and reliable, or sung his song as beautifully.

He slowly and tiredly got up from his bed and saw his ragged and dirty jacket hanging on the wall. Hygiene would come afterwards, he promised himself, and simply got dressed. His clothes were all sticky, and he could feel the pungent smell of farm and sweat clinging to them. Somehow this helped reinvigorate him, remind him of the malleable mud that swallowed his boots. He loved the fields, he thought, hearing Red 3 singing again. He grabbed a piece of bread and headed out to the barn.

After he bit into the bread, he noticed it was starting to get stale. He’d throw the others away when he came back to the house, he promised himself, and kept munching his unpleasant snack. Suddenly, a vision struck him that left his mouth hanging open, pieces of bread slowly falling out onto the ground, making a plop sound when hitting the flooded ground. There was a long rope tied to the wooden frame of the barn’s overhang. The rope hung downwards and then spiraled around Old Dolly’s slender legs, who dangled motionlessly like a morbid statue.

“Jesus H. Christ”, he said.

Who had the strength or the interest to carry an old, fat cow to the roof of the barn? Had to be aliens, he concluded, he hated the aliens, always doing strange stuff with the cows.