KingTouchstone

        "I'm here to take you to The Other Side," the chicken said, cocking its head toward the thin strip of road.        The man looked around himself, then blankly ahead at the road for a moment.  It looked newly paved, and mirages shimmered in the desert heat just above the hot blacktop of the highway, which disappeared out of sight in both directions.  To either side of it, the parched clay ground baked in the sun like a kiln. There was nothing all around, but this terracotta desert that peeled and cracked like a bad sunburn, and the road. And the chicken.        "Is this a joke?" the man said.        "No," said the chicken, "This