DAY SIX: Six Geese a-Laying

The first sign was the smell.

A sharp, swampy odour crept up the porch before the doorbell even rang. It smelled of ponds, panic, and something that might once have been straw. Stephen had been mid–Teams call, trying to look competent while nudging a partridge away from his keyboard, when Jane called from the hallway:

“Stephen. Whatever you ordered—it’s leaking.”

Her voice carried the weary authority of a woman who had already sketched two wrong answers in her head.

He muted himself (“…if everyone could just align—”) and hurried out, nearly tripping over Roo, who was stretched across the living-room rug with carefree abandon.

Roo, sunbathing belly-up, had declared a public holiday in honour of tummy tickles.

Perfect calm. Zero contribution.

Jane paused long enough to look down at Roo and mutter, “Glad someone in this house is coping well,” before stepping back toward the crates.

Outside, six enormous crates dripped steadily onto the paving stones. Each box bore a cheerful snowflake logo and the warning HANDLE WITH CARE—EGGS IN TRANSIT. Below that, in smaller print: LIVE GEESE—LIVELY.

Jane stood beside them, arms folded, pencil still tucked behind her ear from a morning spent sketching. “You said ‘simple.’”

“I thought it would be eggs,” Stephen whispered. “Symbolic fertility? Breakfast?”

Jane pried open the nearest crate. Six long necks rose like suspicious periscopes. Yellow beaks. Eyes brimming with ancient vendettas. The leader hissed. The rest formed a discordant chorus.

The partridge—who had followed Stephen to the door out of morbid curiosity—took one look, made a low gargling noise of disgust, and retreated immediately.

Jane closed the lid halfway. “Absolutely not.”

“We can’t return them,” Stephen said.

“They’ll just… lay.”

“They’ll ruin,” she corrected.

By afternoon, ruin had gone professional.

The geese had overtaken the kitchen in a soggy coup d’état. Water everywhere. Feathers drifting like regretful snow. They honked with the volume and emotional commitment of brass instruments possessed by malicious spirits.

One commandeered the fruit bowl to build a nest of questionable stability. Another waddled across Jane’s open sketchbook, leaving avant-garde footprints she stared at with the face of an artist processing trauma. The partridge hid atop the wardrobe. The French hens perched on the curtain rail like horrified critics. The pigeons had sealed themselves in the bathroom entirely.

From the bedroom, Jane called, “Stephen, I have a livestream author Q&A in fifteen minutes. I cannot talk about my adorable woodland characters while it sounds like a goose uprising out here.”

There was a waver in her voice — the tight, brittle kind she usually reserved for printer malfunctions and last-minute cover art changes. “I cannot do this with birds staging a coup in my kitchen.”

“They’ll quiet down,” Stephen said, though he was ankle-deep in feathers and actively losing a staring contest with a goose.

One particularly assertive bird lunged for his tea mug. He surrendered instantly.

Jane appeared in the doorway holding her laptop like a makeshift riot shield. “Please. People have paid to hear me talk about illustration, not to witness a live reenactment of a feathery apocalypse.”

She shut the door behind her.

The geese began a strategy meeting. One waddled to the bedroom and tapped the door with its beak—slow, bureaucratic, deeply unsettling. Another confronted its reflection in the toaster. A third tried to annex the rubbish bin.

A wave of guilt pricked at him — not just about the geese, but about the growing pile of “Stephen Decisions” Jane had been patiently absorbing all week.

Stephen inhaled deeply, opened every window, and muttered, “Right. Let’s think strategically.”

The birds ignored him.

He grabbed the only bargaining chip left: a bag of frozen peas. Using them as bribes, distractions, and holy offerings, he lured the geese down the hallway. They slipped, honked, protested, but greed triumphed over rebellion.

One by one, he ushered them into the bathroom. The last goose flapped through the door. Stephen slammed it shut and leaned back, heart racing.

Victory smelled like bleach, pondwater, and the terror of a man who knew this was temporary.

An hour later, the bedroom door opened. Jane emerged, exhausted but glowing. “I did it. The Q&A went brilliantly. Someone even asked if the honking was part of the book’s soundtrack.”

Stephen grinned, feathers still in his hair. “See? Total success.”

She eyed the bathroom. “The geese are in there, aren’t they?”

“Yes.”

“And alive?”

“Disturbingly.”

She sighed, took his hand, and rested her forehead briefly against his shoulder. “You know… you’re getting better at containing your own disasters.”

“Iteration,” he said.

She laughed softly. “Stephen?”

“Yes?”

“Please stop ordering livestock.”

He kissed her temple. “After Christmas.”

She gave him a look containing equal parts warning and affection. “We’re going to need a bigger bathtub.”

“Or a smaller holiday.”

The bungalow slipped into an exhausted truce. Roo snored on her back, dreaming of infinite belly rubs. The hens muttered judgment from the curtain rail. The geese murmured behind the bathroom door like a distant, aquatic jury. From inside the sealed bathroom, the pigeons cooed a single, defeated syllable — the sound of hostages resigning themselves to fate.

Jane curled beside Stephen on the sofa, the smell of pond lingering like a badge of survival.

After a quiet moment, she reached for her sketchbook. “I need to draw this,” she murmured. “Otherwise my brain will pretend it didn’t happen.”

She flipped to a clean page and began sketching the auditor-goose tapping on the door. Sharp eyes. Long neck. Bureaucratic menace.

Stephen watched the lines take shape. Somehow, as the goose emerged on the page, the chaos of the day softened into something warm and shared.

“It’s for the secret book,” she said. “The one that Amazon will never see.”

“What’s it called?”

She smiled. “Career-Minded Couple Attempt Christmas. Geese Object.”

He laughed, settled beside her, and listened to the quiet hum of the street outside—a bus passing, puddles shifting, Day Seven gathering itself somewhere out there — stretching, limbering up, and preparing to unleash its next impossible demand.