by Owen Seth
Man can’t remember this happening but in his mind that is how the scene plays out. It’s the scene that haunts his dreams; the helplessness of love and the cruelness of nature’s envy. He looks at the cow and wonders whether she will remember this. After all, animals are intelligent creatures. He hopes she doesn’t.
After a couple of minutes the mother gives up, trots off to the comfort of the herd and Man walks over to Hound who is licking the calf’s blood. As Man closes in the dog growls. It is his prize. His kill.
Man steps forward and is met with blood-stained, yellowing teeth, protruding from the dog’s mouth. If a disturbed infant wasn’t strapped to his chest he would lunge at Hound, kick the dog hard with his Converse and pick the carcass up and take it to the barn.
‘Okay, boy,’ says Man, his hands held out in the same calming motion he offered to Daniel. ‘It’s yours. Well done. Good boy.’
Man eases off, steps back until the dog carries on licking blood. He moves to the nearest wall, unties Emma and eases her over the barbed wire, snagging the fabric briefly on a rusty barb, and onto the floor.
Using both hands he loosens a moss-riddled stone, feels the weight of it and walks back to Hound and the kill. The dog does not stir and the ferrous stench lingers in the air, reluctant to be moved by the wind. Man lifts the rock above his head, feels his muscles and tendons tighten like tensile wire, bionic levers designed for unspeakable things.
He looks up; above him, high in the sky, an eagle soars, its wingspan a curved black line in front of the sun. He looks around him, sees cows huddled together, lowing sadly. He sees the stone walls of the paddocks and the farmhouse. He sees a small mountain in the distance, snow covered and picturesque and wonders why he hasn’t noticed it before. Was it always there? Or is his mind bringing him to a place of peace and quiet in anticipation of his next action. He sees daisies dotted around like abandoned soldiers and the ominous darkness of the forest. He sees a distant landscape surrounding him, its valleys protecting him from an end he does not want.
And then she laughs.
A bittersweet laugh, so innocent, so pure that it takes the violence right out of him. Hound is being a dog, doing what his animal brain tells him to do. But Man, he has a choice.
The rock tumbles down with accelerated velocity, smashes against the calf’s head, shattering skull and popping the eyes from the sockets. Hound jumps back in shock, in excitement, in fear. The dog scrambles on all fours over to the wall and through the gap in the barbed wire. Man watches the dog run all the way to farmhouse where he cowers, belly down on the ground. Man knows Emma is safe for now. The dog fears him.
Man turns his attention to the mutilated calf, bends over and pushes the stone away. As it rolls, the pressure on the animal’s skull is alleviated and blackened blood gurgles through exposed brain matter. Man has the hunting knife in his waistband, the karambit in his pocket. Removing the head shouldn’t take too long.
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With Emma hanging from his chest, he hauls the headless calf onto the large, black meat hook that hangs from the girder in the barn. He dragged the body, making sure that no blood stained his newfound clothes.
In a jumbled pile in the corner of the barn are the tools he’ll need: butcher’s knife, filleting knife, bone saw, hammer, and chisel. When the girl is settled he’ll come back and tear the carcass into the bits he’ll take with him. By his count it’s approaching the two week mark and he knows that time is short. There were a hundred different routes out of the forest and he’s sure they’ll have tried them all. And they have the hounds. Man knows that it is blind luck that they haven’t turned up sooner. A gamble. That’s all it’s been. That’s all it ever is. Every day, even before the lights went out. Every moment, every second invested in life can take us in an infinite number of directions. Good or bad. He has become accustomed to being on the losing end of the big gamble. But this time, if he gets the timing just right, he’s quite sure that he’ll get away with it.
A shuffling sound at the barn’s side door catches his attention. He turns, the infant swinging wildly in the sheet and he sees Hound, skulking in an ignorant stupor, his black nose twitching with the smell of blood in the air. Man turns back to face the carcass, watches as the hypnotic dripping of blood slows to one drop every three or four seconds. The earth absorbs the blood easily, an act that it has been practicing since the dawn of all time.
‘Come in, boy,’ says Man, using a hand to coax the dog in. ‘You were a bad dog today. But everything has worked out. You caught our supper for the next few weeks. Silver linings and all that.’
He sees the beast creep along. Emma sneezes in her sheet and the dog jumps back, only to continue even slower.
Man walks to the pile of tools, grabs the filleting knife and returns to the carcass. He turns his torso so that Emma faces away from the gore, although he knows that she won’t understand any of it. In a quick flash of aged steel he cuts away part of the leg, leaving a sloppy, bloody triangle in the calf’s hide. He bites a small chunk of the flesh, chews it slowly, his mouth opening slightly to let the air in. He tastes the saltiness of blood, like a mild mouth of seawater and then the meatiness comes through, fresher and sharper than normal. To him it tastes delicious; it tastes of fresh life. A couple of legs will keep him for a while.
The warmth of dog breath passes over his knife hand. He knows that Hound is there next to him, eager for a taste of his kill. Man smiles, nods his head and offers the dog the rest of the meat.
The marbled and bloody chunk disappears immediately and Hound sits on his back legs, paw raised to beg for some more.
‘Not yet. We’ll put Emma to sleep and then come back, cut this calf up and you can have a little more. And the bones are yours, too.’
Hound cocks his head as though he’s confused at Man’s suggestion and then lies on his belly, his heavy breaths bending small, abstract blades of grass that creep up from the reddy ground.
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Man sits in a kitchen that is not his own. He eats food that is not his own. With a dog and a child that are not his own. And he smiles.
What for, exactly, he does not know. He has no mature company, no one to appease or trick into liking him. He has a baby and a dog, both of which do not understand the world of humans.
You see, Man knows that everything has a price. Every act of kindness, every act of evil, every act of survival. Everything has a price and these days, since the lights went out, life has the cheapest price tag.
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Man stares into her big, black eyes as he wipes lukewarm soup from her chin. An old and clean pair of Daniel’s underpants serve as a bib and already, parts of the soup have turned to crust.
Deep in his heart there is a vacant space, an emotional abyss that he thinks was born when the lights went out. It was the first time that he ever looked inwards, the first time that he evaluated his place in the world. And looking at the child, at the beautiful, curly haired little girl he fails to understand what has drawn him to her. A paternal nostalgia drives his protection of her, coupled with the belated burden of guilt. He removed her protection from the Earth and now, to preserve what little he has left inside, he must serve as that protection. A part of him knows that he will never love anyone or anything again and this minute certainty fills him with happiness. You see, Man knows how easily things can be taken away. Life was working on him since he was spat from the womb; challenge after challenge after challenge. Unlike those optimistic, church-going types that he saw before the New World began, Man knows first-hand how easy it is to lose and how much easier it is to take.
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Man sits at the kitchen table, Emma curled up in his arms as the fire roars in between brick work. The air reeks of baby shit and talcum powder. Hound sleeps underneath the window, his legs occasionally kicking out in a dream. Man found some black sheets and hung them over the curtain rails; excellent for blocking o
ut the fire light. Emma is snoring, at least, he thinks she is, nuzzled tightly into his chest. A glass of too-sweet beetroot wine stains his teeth and in his inebriated state he watches the fire dance in the hearth, a primordial gathering of elements. He watches the yellows and oranges mingle and reproduce at fantastic speeds, the blue flashes and sparks exploding from the logs and hitting the fire guard. He watches smoke bellow from the flames, thrown up into the chimney to mingle with night air.
Man sips the wine and sees before him the cycle of everything he knows, the culmination of his years of experience and understanding. Everything comes from something else. Everything needs something else to be what it is and do what it does; nothing is self-sufficient.
He smiles and laughs, wondering to himself why his brain goes to these random places. Maybe it's the boredom. Maybe it's because life is challenging in a different way to before and any contemplation outside of survival is a luxury. Most of the time when Man was outside, living day to day alongside an ornery dog, after he had left the settlement, he often thought that philosophy had no place in this new and infinitely crueller world; that thinking about anything other than the next meal was a sure-fire way to slip up. But now that he's had time to stop and regenerate, he understands the human need for something else. He knows that it boils down to our programming, our evolved sense of consciousness. We rationalise therefore we want to take rationale further and transcend the reality of our existence, contemplating a multitude of theories of why and how we came to be.
'Maybe it's time someone sat and worked out where we went wrong,' says Man as he sips more wine. He puts the mug down and strokes Emma's head with his spare hand. He smiles wildly and widely and takes comfort in knowing that while he can he's going to be at peace. He's going to enjoy the moments of nothing at all and have a crack at being human again.
That is, if life will let him.
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Men enjoys his coffee even though it's weak and tastes intestinally pungent and he has no milk or sugar. He enjoys it.
In between the index finger and middle finger of his spare hand sits a cigarette, the tip glowing brightly, even in the springtime sun. Man watches the smoke spiral up to the cloudless sky, feels the embers climb down towards his flesh with each drag. He found a pack of twenty Marlboros behind a sack of flour in the pantry and the sound he made when he opened the packet, found twenty of the white, intact sticks, was loud enough to make Emma cry.
The first drag sent him upstairs to the bucket as his bowels loosened with the now unfamiliar rush of nicotine. His lungs burned as they filled with the scorching smoke and his head lightened, limbs floating as if filled with helium. He's smoked three since he found that packet. And that was half an hour ago.
Hound lies next to him on the step, his patchy skin looking leathery in the sun. The dog's head is turned away from Man, as though he's disappointed in the smoking.
'Life is good today!' says Man as he puts the coffee down and strokes Hound. He has to force his hand not to recoil as it traverses the rough, furless skin. 'We can't stay long at all, you know. It's been too long already since we got here. Tomorrow, we'll have to leave. I don't know about you, but to say we are pushing our luck is an understatement. Your old friends will catch up to us. We'll end up like Emma's parents. Or maybe like that calf you killed.'
A sickening feeling rises inside Man, like a hand springing from a grave. It grabs his guts and squeezes, turns them so they're upside down. His eyes glaze over and all he can see is a shallow grave, two bodies embracing in dirt, white and bloated and decomposing as worms and other insects burrow through dead flesh. He sees their mouths stiffened, lips curled into everlasting smiles. The smiles mock him and his existence but also thank him for releasing them from the cruelness of life.
Man darts forward, falls to his knees and regurgitates, brown sputum trickling out of his mouth like burned syrup. Hound races to his side, eager to see what is happening and Man pushes the beast away.
Then his head begins to ache, his brain cavity filling up with darkness, as if some omniscient being is injecting a hardy dose of eternal despair in through his ear.
Man falls to the floor, sits cross-legged and watches as the dog goes in for another look. He closes his eyes and holds his head.
And laughs raucously as though someone has told him the funniest joke. Then he cries just as crazily; he's looking inside himself. He sees nothing but a swirling centrifuge of his inner cosmos, a vortex of emotions sucking in a dark cloud, spewing lightning bolts of guilt with precision and pain.
He shakes his head, slaps himself until it passes.
Two minutes pass and he’s calm. The storm has passed, the earthquake of his soul is over. He fully expects the aftershocks.
He opens his eyes to see Hound licking the sputum with enthusiasm, as if it's the best meal the dog has ever consumed. He knows not why this is still happening. That’s what the cutting is for. Each scar designed to purge him of his deeds. Pain for pain. Blood for blood.
Man struggles to his feet and wobbles towards the step. Sees the burned out cigarette lying on dry dirt. He sits down and sips the coffee to relive his mouth of the awful, coppery taste of vomit. He thinks back to when these synoptic thunderstorms were common place. Occurred on a weekly basis until his mother took him to the doctor and he was prescribed some pills. The little capsules controlled his outbursts and up until the lights went out he was free from the irksome toll that they took on his life.
It took a while for the first storm to hit him. A few months at least. And since, they’ve become more frequent, although he couldn’t say how frequent. If only he could remember the name of those pills. His mother would always throw away the packet. He was not an easy child. He knows this. He grew up quickly and soon disassociated himself with the comforting reliability of his parents. From an early age he sought independence, learning to cook for himself, bathing and dressing himself. As a result his mother and father grew further from him. It was around the time his father started to drink every day. But as soon as those outbursts began he was delivered quickly back into their control. Without them he would have no prescription, no pills. Without them he would succumb to the mind storms of pain. He and his mother grew close once again but in Man’s juvenile eyes, his alcoholic father could no longer redeem himself. No matter how hard he tried. His father was a relic of an earlier time, a period of Man’s life where although he pushed his parents away, he wanted nothing more than for them to pull him back in. It was a time that primed him for the harshness and chaos of the New World. A time that taught him when and where to decide who and what he would trust.
He just wishes that he could remember the name of those pills.
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Horses grunt and hounds bark in a fast paced dash across grassy fields. Men shout to each other, egg each other on as the beasts between their legs and at their sides move speedily, muscular statures, hair covered, glimmering with each stride.
The riders, eight of them in total, slow down as they approach a forest.
‘We should go around it,’ one of them says. ‘Too much vegetation. The horses will struggle.’
‘We should split up,’ says another. ‘Four in there, four out here.’
‘If he’s in there, I want you to flush him out,’ says the man who leads the band. ‘Chase him to the other side and we’ll be waiting.’
‘Why don’t we just kill him when we find him?’
‘Don’t even try it! He’s dangerous. He’s skilled.’
‘I can take him.’
‘No! No, you can’t! You four, go in on foot. Flush him out and we’ll catch him on the other side.’
Four riders dismount without any more protestation, hand the reigns of their horses to the other riders. Two of them have shotguns. One a pistol. The other, a crossbow. Failing these they have an assortment of knives, machetes and hatchets. They move slowly, together in a line, into the dark mass of wilderness. They’
ve three torches between them, six in total, but won’t use them unless they have to. Batteries are a rare commodity, not to be wasted.
As they crunch the growth beneath them they hear the clattering of hooves in the distance, smashing against brittle earth. Their leader, a man called Smith, is certain their target is nearby. He claims he can sense his presence. And if anyone has a right to such a claim, it is Smith. He and his target’s fates were intertwined by loss and death. Like it or not they are both bound by the laws of nature, the simple and ancient act of vengeance. They are bound together until one of them dies.
