Or maybe in the ground with my mother.
The more I thought about it, the harder I walked forward, like I could trample the thoughts into the ground beneath my boots and run away from the weight they carried. My fingers brushed the rifle. The familiar weight was slung across my shoulder, and I breathed in a shaky breath. The chilly air didn’t help and only burned as it sliced through my lungs.
Focus, Anderson. Get a fucking kill and tell the bitch you’ll go to the stupid fucking wedding. Do it. Or use the gun on your own damn heart.
I crouched low to the ground, scanning the area.
Fresh prints, maybe an hour old.
A buck, based on the deep grooves. The tracks cut east, toward the thicker brush.
I followed, moving more slowly, steadying my breathing, and becoming one with the forest. Every one of my senses stretched tighter as the smell of damp bark thickened in my nose, and the faint rustle ahead alerted me.
I saw him.
Through a lattice of branches, a flash of movement caught my attention, and I zeroed in on the young buck. His antlers were sharp but not yet full. A soft dusting of snow coated his tawny hide, catching what little light filtered through the canopy of trees from the morning.
My pulse surged, and the forest seemed to narrow. Every sound faded but his breathing. Even the softer sounds like the twitch of his ears, or the lift of his head as he sniffed the air, were all I could hear.
I lifted the rifle slowly. The butt pressed into my shoulder like it belonged there, and I aligned the sight with the rhythm of my breath. I tracked him briefly, the world slowly shrinking to the space between the crosshairs.
For a moment, I froze.
His eyes, dark, wide, and unblinking, locked on me.
I saw myself reflected there…always on edge, waiting for the wrong sound to pull me under, the wrong move to turn the blade on myself, and the wrong hand on my shoulder to end everything in the blink of an eye.
I almost lowered the gun. The look on my face, glittering in his eyes, was too haunting to push through.
But then I thought of the wedding. Of her hand reaching for mine when I wanted to pull away. Of the lie stuck in my throat every time I said I was fine…and of him. The pain he caused with his fucking presence and even more with his absence.
I squeezed the trigger.
Bang!
The crack of the sound split the air, loud and final. Birds erupted from the surrounding trees, wings thrumming in panic as they retreated from my line of sight. The buck jolted, his legs folding beneath him, as he dropped hard to the ground with a pained cry.
For a second, I just stood there, watching the smoke curl from the barrel, and feeling the echo of the shot reverberating in my chest. The knife burned in my pocket, and I took it out, flipping it over and over in my hand.
Why does Care Bear have this silly thing with him all the time?
Upon closer inspection, I saw a groove lift from the plastic corner, and I picked it with my nail. The cover moved, and I unsheathed a true weapon underneath.
Of course. You are always hiding.
I approached the buck slowly, each step as muffled as the last, as if the sound of the gun jarred the forest. The buck’s chest rose and fell in shallow, uneven breaths as I came closer. The pitiful sounds it made normally would quell the beast in my mind, but even its struggles did nothing to dull the burn.
Not bothering to draw it out, I kneeled and used Carrington’s serrated knife on the animal’s throat. The thick pool of warm blood spilled onto my hands and thighs like a river, and its once bright eyes were glass now, staring past me into nothingness.
I pressed my palm against his flank, desperate to feel any form of relief from the evading darkness that still lingered. I was coated, every part of my skin was painted in the red of the beast—still nothing. Just the numbness I came here with. I held my hand there, needing to feel the last echo of life drain from him, but still never feeling even a stir of emotion.
It should have stilled me. It should have smoothed the jagged edges inside.
But all it did was remind me how easy it was to end something.
And how much harder it was to live with it after.
Ileft the deer where it fell.
