Neverchangeable | Chapter 2

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I look to you, slumped in the corner, as if awaiting your approval. My one remaining eye has adjusted more now. I can see more than just your rubbery skin, neon with death in front of me, and the single, shiny eye of the camera. I can make out the moose head I know is there, the overstuffed loveseat, the long, leather sofa under Auntie Rachel’s watercolour paintings. The ones she made when she got brain cancer. I can see the radiation on those paintings, green and luminescent, sparkling like the snowy landscapes they depict. The radiation poured from her pupils as she transferred the images from her mind to the coarse paper. Snowy hills, like clean, fresh starts, the radiation underneath only visible to me. Like two weeks from now, when the tourism season will officially be over, when winter will come, and here you and I will be. The two of us, alone, at last. Like it should have always been.

My finger scratches at the dried blood on the floor. The pain dulled a long time ago. Now, there’s only boredom. Waiting for the end. Waiting for forever. There’s no rush to tell you this story. Nowhere to go, nowhere to be.

The disapproval crawls in schools of maggots out from the sockets in your head, each rice-like bug moving on top of the other, quivering together so slightly, their backs shiny, like rolling eyes. Your eyes used to be black. Like coal. Like the dark room we’re in.

Your maggot eyes roll towards the wooden wall paneling near the front door. I can’t make out yet the thing you want me to look at, but like Farley’s moose head above the loveseat, I know it’s there.

Do you remember when Farley and I would come running through that door, shouting for you or Dad to come look at whatever rabbit or squirrel we’d killed? You’d get so mad about our boots, covered in mud, all stamped across the kitchen. We were too excited to care. Didn’t even realize the game entrails dragging behind us on the floor, or the blood all over our coverall stomachs. You cleaned it up anyways. Always cleaning up after us. Always thinking we never noticed. Farley started using the side door eventually, started being more careful about his game. Started using proper traps instead of knives we found in Dad’s coat pockets. It wasn’t long before Farley didn’t have entrails falling out behind him, just forest prayers over the bodies. Farley didn’t keep the blood soaking into his stomach anymore. I was too excited by the kill to think of much else.

I liked the warm blood seeping through my clothes, the stickiness, like cherry pie filling between my fingers. My heart raced when I saw the sudden change from life in a creature’s eyes to dumb blankness.

Dad always said it, though. Farley appreciated the hunt. He always knew how to honor an animal after he caught it. I, though, liked the kill. Liked it so much, I would go blind with liking.

Not so much honor in good Farley now. Running away like that, huh?

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