Joel Arnold - Fetal Bait Apocalypse - 3 Collections in 1

Kelly’s head turns slightly.

“Please,” I whimper.

I hear a click. A truck door opening. But it opens only an inch. I hear a loud groan, pitiful, awful, and at first I think it’s Bruce regaining consciousness. Kelly must hear it, too, because the truck door clicks again, and I realize Kelly’s shut herself back in. The groan grows louder, inhuman, and I stop as I realize it’s not coming from Bruce. It’s the ice.

With a sharp crack, the walls of the half-sunk shanty split and collapse. Its mass rises, shifts, then disappears from the surface. Kelly’s eyes shine briefly in the rearview mirror, two glistening pearls infinitely more perfect and pure than the thing in my pocket. She lifts her hand and waves to me, slowly. Then with a dull splintering noise I’ll never forget, a noise I still hear when everything else is silent, the truck jerks forward and down. Bruce rolls in after it and disappears.

I stop running, and when I scream, it doesn’t even sound like me. The blood in my veins feels like slivers of hot glass. I’m frozen in place. I have to help her. I can’t help her. That’s Kelly, that’s my sister. Oh God Kelly what did you do, what were you thinking, why did you drive out onto the ice?

Swim. Kelly, swim. Get out of the truck and swim.

Maybe she’s swimming to the surface. Maybe right now she’s swimming to the surface and she’s going to get out and she’s going to be okay. I can still see the faint glow of tail and brake lights beneath the surface. Maybe she’s—

I hear something, like birch-wood popping in a hot fire. I realize it’s the ice cracking beneath me. The entire surface swells as if the lake is breathing.

I don’t know what to do. What can I do?

Oh God, Kelly.

I find myself slowly backing up.

The taillights fade beneath the heaving ice.

I want to lie down. Curl up in a ball and suck my thumb. I fear my body will never stop trembling. My fingers are raw and stiff. What can I do?

I keep backing up. Why can’t I stop? Why can’t I force myself forward? Why can’t I save my sister? I keep backing up until the ice stops moving, until the black and gray horizon becomes still.

What can I do?

I slide the pearl out from the cold wet folds of my pocket. I kiss it. Hold it up against the hazy glow of an emerging moon. It’s almost a perfect match.

The rain stops. What can I do?

Sometimes we all need something pure and perfect within us.

So this is what I do.

I tilt back my head, open my mouth and let the pearl drop.

I try to hold onto the memory of Kelly’s rare smile and perfect jewel eyes as it slides easily down my throat.

The walls of the dimly lit garage swelled together, and the smell of oil and gas and the hanging buck’s inner smells were too much for Pearce. He opened the garage door to let the cool autumn breeze sweep out the old smells and replace them with the smell of fallen leaves and cold rain. He frowned.

Well, what—

He stood beneath the raised garage door, his thick hands dripping blood, and squinted at the red house across the street. Limp, white snakes of toilet paper hung from two massive oak trees and lay cluttered on the lawn in wet lumps. It dripped from the juniper bushes on either side of the front door. A bloated wad of it bulged from the mailbox.

Damn kids, why pick on an old lady?

Ms. Bolt.

Pearce had only seen her the few times she’d dragged her trash bin out to the street. She wore baggy clothes, a brown wig, painted on eyebrows. A little creepy, sure, but still no reason to harass her.

He went inside, stripped down, cleaned himself up. Took a paint-splattered aluminum ladder down from a pair of wooden pegs in the garage and grabbed a handful of trash bags. He crossed the street blinking away the rain and started picking up the soggy bits of tissue. He felt her darting eyes on him, but she never opened her door, never called out a thank you.

That was okay. It just felt good to be out in the rain.

Bob Davidson let Pearce hunt on his property ten miles out of town in exchange for a cooler full of venison. A fair exchange. Davidson was retired. Mrs. Davidson was buried out front under a large oak tree heavy with acorns and excited squirrels. The land was full of trees and creeks and whitetail deer. Good hunting land.

Today, the snow fell in flakes as large as moths, knee deep, and each step a struggle. Pearce trudged through it, only fifty feet from the road, when a semi roared by, flushing out an eight-point buck from a stand of old white pine. He lifted his rifle, aimed and fired, but the buck zigzagged through the snow. Pearce fired again. A piece of hide burst from the buck’s shoulder, but the animal didn’t go down. It leapt and sprinted, leaving a bright red trail of blood in the snow.

Pearce stumbled after it, lifting his knees high in the air. Jesus . Sweat ran down his face and soaked the collar of his coat. The blood trail turned the snow into a pink slush.

Pearce’s temples pounded. His vision blurred. He sucked in lungful of icy air. He wasn’t the man he used to be. Not since Mary died. But he wiped his eyes clear. Sharply breathed the cold air in through his nose.

There. A tan and white mass trembling over the snow.

The buck stood with its head low to the ground, looking at him. White mist poured from its nostrils and rose from the blood that trickled from its wound. Must’ve done a little more than nicked him, Pearce thought. The buck’s front legs buckled, but it remained standing. Pearce raised his rifle. Took a deep breath.

A wrecking ball slammed into his chest.

Pearce dropped to his knees in the deep, wet snow. His gun fell uselessly beside him. Heart attack. I’m having a -

The deer staggered into an island of tamarack and collapsed onto its side.

Pearce clutched at his collar. The pain stretched down his arms and up through his jaw. Rays of November sun bit at his eyes. I’m going to die. He heard the wheezing of the deer, even over the sound of blood pounding in his ears. He heard flakes of snow touch the earth, felt them melt on his skin. He waited for the harsh yellow of the sun to fill him and carry him away. It would be okay. If he could be with Mary again…

He waited. The deer’s wheezing stopped.

He waited. The silence was magical. His breathing slowed. The pain melted away. He blinked. Wiped away the sweat that dripped into his eyes.

Why aren’t I dead?

He struggled to stand. Used his rifle as a crutch and got to his feet. The world teetered, started to turn bright white, but he bit down hard on the tip of his tongue, and the forest became a crystal clear contrast of black tree trunks stitched into a background of thick, white snow.

“You could have died.” Dr. Leroy sat next to Pearce and pushed his glasses up off his nose. “Is bagging a deer worth your life?”

Pearce didn’t answer. How could he explain his reasons for staying with the dead deer, gutting and cleaning it there in the tamarack despite the trip-hammer of his own heart, the flutters of muscle up and down his arm? How could he explain dragging the buck’s remains through the deep snow a half-mile to his truck?

“If you would’ve come in right away, you’d have been right as rain in a few months. But since you waited a week before coming in, your heart is infarcted .” The doctor pronounced the last word with disgust. “You’ve got a dead spot on it the size of a quarter.”

Bigger than that, Pearce thought. Six months pregnant. Mary had been six months pregnant.

The doctor wrote a handful of prescriptions; beta-blockers, ace-inhibitors, cholesterol reducers, Nitroglycerin. Pearce winced at the list.