It was the band’s first show, at a house party up in the hills about a twenty-minute drive away from the city. It was a three-bedroom house being rented out by seven college kids. They were hosting the party and had asked the band to play. They’d talked to the bass player via text message, and he told them, in answer to the What kind of music do you play? question, that the band sounded like Nordic death metal. It was a nervous joke, for the bass player was nervous — as young people about to play their first show should be — but perhaps he assumed a Nordic death metal band would not be nervous. Perhaps he was trying to channel that strength. The hosts had put on a Ragnarokyrfcknface! album on repeat to warm up the crowd.

That might be why when the guitar player stepped up onto the homemade living room stage to practice some classical guitar scales a man had yelled What is this pussy shit? at him.

The classical scales were neither Nordic nor death metal enough for the man. The guitar player didn’t know what the bass player had told the hosts via text message. He didn’t know the man who was yelling at him. He knew that pussies are strong, that they can spit out a human being and return to normal. He knew that Nordic death metal players were also guitar nerds who practiced classical guitar scales.

The man stood in the front row of the homemade living room stage, a bead of sweat dripping down his forehead despite the snow outside. He’d been looking forward to some Nordic death metal. His energy levels had been high all day and his blood began to hum when he saw the guitar player step onto the homemade living room stage. He’d been waiting for the growl of distortion to shake the floor, to fill him with animal energy, like foreplay before the first few chords rang out. He wanted to forget that he was surrounded by college kids. He wanted to punch all of them at the same time with one very big fist and he wanted Nordic death metal as an excuse to do so.

The ghost in the room was a sad bowl of chicken wings, the only food present on the crowded table. One of the hosts had bought the wings on sale and cooked them earlier that day. The chicken in the fridge that had been bought on sale was about to go bad, one of many problems going on in a refrigerator owned by seven college kids. The guitarist had always felt bad for meat that was bought on sale, as if the chicken’s life wasn’t worth as much as the lives of other chickens. The man in the front row of the homemade living room stage had always thought of chicken as a vegetable.

Both men’s thoughts would confirm the chicken’s own insecurities. It had grown up — or “been raised,” as its human handlers would say — in an industrial setting, its beak shorn half off to prevent it from pecking the other chickens, its toes rudely removed so that it couldn’t claw its neighbors. It lived in a cage only slightly larger than itself for the entirety of its brief existence. One day its meat, its body, the only thing it could ever be said to have ownership of, was killed, processed, sold at a discounted price, and was about to go bad in an overcrowded fridge until some college kid threw it in the oven as an afterthought. Now its cooked body sat untouched on a crowded table and would either be eaten by drunks that night or thrown away in the morning.

The ghost could care less about the man or the guitarist. Go! it would say. Live! Life is short and you too may one day be looking down upon your cooked body as an angry man shouts biological improbabilities at a stunned-looking guitarist. The chicken could not have changed its fate, but these young men reinvented themselves every day. Anything could happen.

The host turned off the music. All eyes turned to the stage.

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