I'm standing on a hill of eternal sunrise, orange sand falls from my clothes as I get to my feet.

In my hands is a longsword glittering orange and purple in the morning light. There's a set of words inscribed on the hilt of the sword - the pen is mightier than the sword. I slowly turn the thing in my hands. There's a little black knob right at the end of the hilt. I press it in and the sword transforms into a pen.

'Neat.' I say, then click the pen back into a sword. It's light and the air has that beautiful coolness just before the day starts to get hot.

I take a deep breath and look around, a giant chicken is standing on the other end of the hill. Between us stands a small man with a large bald patch on the back of his head. He's dressed in a fine suit that puffs out his chest. In his right hand he holds a black box with a red button on it. He presses the red button and all around us the hill starts to rumble and shake. From the sides of it emerges a giant stadium complete with commentators, restrooms, and loud guys selling hot dogs.

I count my breaths, trying to maintain the serenity I'd had when it was just me and the golden sunrise. That's when I hear the noise of thousands of people yelling, laughing, and discussing some sort of upcoming match.

They pour through the gates and turnstiles while clones of Richard Balls stand at each gate taking $1 bills from every person that enters. The people are like water, they don’t stop flowing as the grandstands get more and more full and the Balls' piles of money get higher and higher and spill down the slopes of the hill in an avalanche of green and orange and wealth.

I spin around, and see the stadium is dominated by people wearing feathers, dressed as eggs, or holding signs saying KILL THE HILL. Then, from behind me, I heard a man calling out.

'Hey, mister! Hey, mister!' I turn, a couple of 17-year-olds, are carrying signs that say LET'S MAKE SOME CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE SOUL. Behind them is a group with the very subtle DOWN WITH THE CHICKEN written on the T-shirts.

I walk over to the teenagers. One guy hands me a pile of A4 sheets of paper wrapped in cardboard. 'What's this?' I ask.

The guy laughs, 'Your book, you should give it a read sometime.'

I find myself grinning as I flip open the cardboard cover which has a pastel drawing of a man in a cell on it. The first page I turn to has the chapter I wrote about meeting Astra.

'This is cool,' I said, 'This is damn cool.'

'It'd be even cooler if you signed it,' he said, and then patted his pockets. When he couldn't find what he was looking for he turned to his mate. 'Hey, Jess. You got a pen?'

I held up my sword and clicked the end of it, 'Where do you want me to sign?'

****

The stands are so full I’m worried about people getting crushed and Balls' pile of money is so high a couple of his clones are using it as a viewing platform, the Balls who is all dressed up in his suit, is standing in the centre of the arena with a microphone in hand.

‘Let the fight begin.'

It turns out the chicken I'd seen earlier is some sort of a mascot for the real chicken because that thing is running over to the side of the arena and getting its fans hyped while a patch of one of the walls on the opposite side of the arena falls open. Trumpet music flares. Kanye West dressed in a chicken costume comes out rapping, a marching band circles him and then finally the chicken emerges. It has feathers stained a metallic silver and two giant swords attached to its wings as well as throat-piercing claws on its feet. Each step rumbles the arena and I feel my throat dry up.

'You got this Eli.' I hear one of the guys behind me call out. I shake my head.

'I do not got this.'

I click my pen into a sword and started running towards the chicken. Kanye barely has time to get out of the way before the chicken and I collided in a flurry of metal crashing, of swords clashing, and feathers flying. The chicken has many advantages, size, weight, power, number of weapons.

Its claws look powerful enough to snap a leg, and I find myself rolling and ducking and weaving just to avoid them.

But for all its size and weapons the chicken doesn't have the same accuracy or speed as I do with the sword. I block its talons, duck underneath its wing and then stab upward, creating a tiny patch of blood underneath the wing. The chicken squawks and rushes me with its beak, not a good move.

I sliced at the chicken, putting a foot-long incision in the red comb on top of its head. It gives a blood-curling squawk and retreats a few paces. Licking my lips, I advance.

My crew of supporters are going nuts while the rest of the stadium has descended into a kind of awed silence. A few people even put down their chicken flags.

But then the chicken flips its comb back onto its head, plumps its feathers and then moves into a spinning arc towards me. I try to jab, but there is nowhere to jab. Its feathers spin in such a flurry that I find my sword ripped straight out of my hands.

With a ding, the sword flies across the arena and embeds itself into one of the walls below the audience.

I run, not for the sword, which would have been the smart move. I sort of just run in general throwing my arms out wide and screaming. Around the stadium, the audience resumes their initial roar, only this time it's accompanied with a few laughs as the chicken soars after me with its blade-like feathers sending up clouds of sand that sting my eyes and sandpaper my skin.

I’m tiring, the chicken is gaining on me. I realize that I have to do something semi-strategic so I run to the sword, tugging at it. Trying to remove it from the wall. The chicken is closing in on me, I can't get the thing to budge and that's when I see the guy with the copy of my book I signed. He’s pointing toward the book, toward my signature. I smash my fist down on the end of the sword and it instantly becomes a pen in my hand. With a grin, I click the pen again and block the chicken's slice. The chicken's other wing comes at me. I go to block its hit, but then click the sword back in at the last moment and the chicken's wing, which had been bracing for impact, soars right over top of me. The weight and power behind the blow keep it moving and suddenly the chicken is presenting me with its vulnerable underside. I slash upwards and the chicken gives a cry.

With its side towards me, I see that the swords on the chicken's wings are held on by leather harnesses. I cut through a harness, slicing a little into the wing. The chicken gives another cry. It swings at me and the harness and sword I'd been targeting fly off leaving the wing unable to chop my head off.

I duck under the wing and block six of the chicken's swings, then I started to swing back, slashing at the remaining wing over and over again. Finally, I prepare for a slash with all my power, bring the sword down and press the button at the end of the sword. I use all my momentum to carry me into a roll under the chicken's wing which continues in the arc where my sword had been.

I’m in the chicken's blind spot and two slashes are enough to liberate the chicken from its other sword harness. As it swings back towards me the weapon shoots off and embeds in the wall next to where my sword had been. I grin, aside from its feet, and beak, the chicken is basically defenceless, this is going to be my moment.

I walk toward the chicken which has started digging in the sand with its feet and its beak. I get right up to it, the chicken hardly notices me - its so focussed on its digging. I raise the sword above my head and turn it so the flat edge will come down on the chicken's head. I don't want to kill it but I sure as hell want it to be unconscious while I run away.

But as I bring the sword down, I see what the chicken has been digging for - a glass jar empty of water. The chicken's head bobs backwards and my sword slams useless into the ground. The chicken clasps the glass jar, between its wings, and swings it in a double arc that ends on the side of my head. Thousands of pieces of glass shoot into the air like fireworks or stars on a moonless night. The crowd cheers as confetti flies around them.

****

By the time I got out of hospital I had 12 stitches on the side of my head, a hate for the sitcoms that played on the Crusher Hospital TVs and a burning desire to eat some real food.

I guess it was fortunate that when the black limousine pulled up outside my house there were 300 writers waiting to welcome me back holding signs, champagne, and a massive table of food.

In the front line was Manuel, hair slicked back, a giant grin on his face, and hands that wouldn't stop patting me on the back. 'It's good to see you, man. It's really good. I was worried.'

'Yeah,' I nodded, 'You seemed real worried when you first found out about Lazy Cultivator. What did you say again?'

'Ahh, Eli mate, that was in the past.’ He winked, 'Tonight my man. We celebrate you. You're famous now.' He gestured out to the crowd 'Everyone around here heard about you making Lazy Cultivator loco.'

'And did they not like her or something?'

'No no, they love her but the fact you guys have so much beef just makes you an interesting person. Everyone wants a taste of Eli.'

'Because I got hit in the head with a glass jar?'

He shook his head. 'No, no no.'

'Oh... Because Lazy Cultivator hit me in the head with a glass jar?'

Manuel clicked his fingers. 'Exactly my man. You got it. She’s making you famous.'

And from then on, for the most part, life returned to normal. Sure. Everyone knew me now. I couldn't go into a coffee shop, without someone complimenting me on a new chapter, trying to buy me a drink, or threatening me with a water jug.

Every week I'd crank out more chapters and throw in a poem or two about how chickens can't write or how I was going to leap frog the chicken to 200 million reads.

I found competition was good for me. I found myself looking for new ways to write faster, better and for longer. I started zoning in on my health. Consuming a lot of alcohol and getting not much sleep weren’t a good combination for imagination so I upped my pill dosage and decreased my party nights to two a week. The benefit was almost instant, I was more alert as I wrote and I was able to sit in the chair for longer. Because I was going to bed earlier I was waking earlier and I started to run in my mornings.

And all that led me to food.

You see, food had become something normal to me once again, I no longer craved it or tried to hoard it the way I did when I came out of my first dorm. Still, there was something about relying on Crusher for food that I didn't like. I felt much safer now, but I still didn't put it past Alex or Balls to cut my rations. So I started ordering raw food; carrots, pumpkins potatoes, sweet potato, leeks, radishes, lettuce. Half of it I ate, the other half I planted.

I made a spade from an oven tray and the trunk of a small tree Manuel had knocked down when he rode his bike drunk over my front lawn.

Every morning after my run I'd spend 20 minutes to half an hour in the garden, planting rows and rows of potatoes, carrots, fresh greens and climbing beans. There's a kind of magic to getting your hands amongst the dirt that you don't get when you pull a carrot out of the plastic bag.

Life was good. The side of my head had started to heal and I was well and truly catching up to the chicken when it came to the reads battle.

A Victim of Online Fiction

The Chicken

Reads last 24 hours

500,000

300,000

Reads all time

5,500,000

58,000,000

It’s a pity things didn’t stay that way.