But no light went on.

And the chickens cluck-clucked: We’re over here.

He grabbed one. It was easy, too easy. It was a lovely night; they were as clear there as they could have been, standing in a row, like a girl band, the Supremes. Shouldn’t they have been cooped up-was that the phrase? — and let out again in the morning? The city’s foxes were famous; everyone had seen one. He’d seen one himself, strolling down the street when he was walking home from the station a few months before.

He grabbed his hen, expected the protest, the pecks. But no, the hen settled into his arms like a fuckin’ kitten. The little head in one hand, the hard, scrawny legs in the other, he stretched it out like a rubber band and brought it up to his mouth. And he bit-kind of. There was no burst of blood or even a clean snap. The neck was still in his mouth. He could feel a pulse on his tongue. The hen was terrified; he could feel that in the legs. But he didn’t want to terrify the bird-he wasn’t a cruel man. He just wanted to bite its head off and hold his mouth under its headless neck. But he knew: he didn’t have it in him. He wasn’t a vampire or a werewolf. And he needed a filling-he could feel that. I was biting the head o£ a chicken, Doctor. He’d put the hen down now and get back over the wall.

But a light went on-and he bit. Downstairs, right in front of him-and the head came clean off. There was no blood, not really, just-well-bone, gristle, something wet. He wouldn’t vomit. They’d be staring out at him, the neighbours, him or her or him and her-Jim and Barbara. But he was quick, he was calm. He knew they couldn’t see him because the light was on in the kitchen and it was dark out here. Although, now that he thought of it-and he was thinking-they might have seen him before they turned on the light.