Evie Wyld - All the Birds, Singing

‘Get in here, girl, I want you to see how it’s done,’ shouts Otto, and I pretend I can’t hear him, because I can’t move. I see him shake his head and the sheep’s cries rattle my bones. He takes a wide-bladed knife from his bag and slices once across the white throat of the sheep and she is still alive and trying to bleat. Otto holds her firm between his thighs, and her back legs are going like crazy and the red comes out of her neck like a tap has been turned on. He cuts again and her voice fades out into a gurgle as he goes through the windpipe, and the stamp of her hooves weakens. There is a scream in me that wants to come out, but I won’t let it, I won’t look away.

Otto drops the ewe, who still moves, but softly, she is not going anywhere, and only now does Kelly start to bark, baring her teeth close to the sheep’s eye which is rolling back, showing the white; the dog lunges again and again at the sheep, not biting, just snapping at the air near her face. I hear my name shouted again and I follow, and inside the woolshed is the smell of new blood.

‘You need to learn how it’s done.’ He wipes his forearm under his nose to get rid of the sweat, and leaves a streak of brown blood on his face. He stares at me, an unbroken gaze that prickles the hair on my neck. There’s something about him in the blood fug that is natural. A bird squawks from on top of the shed. Otto shrugs and the tension breaks. ‘No matter, we’ll do another.’ My knees weaken.

The sheep is dead now, and Kelly drools over it; no longer concerned with scaring it, she’s waiting to be given a taste. Otto takes a smaller knife and cuts the tendons at the sheep’s back ankles before poking some hooks in and hoisting her off the floor with a pulley and rope. I see a bead of blood land in her open eye.

‘And that’s how them Muslims do it,’ he says, a smile of satisfaction on his face. He cuts off one of her front feet and gives it to Kelly, who accepts the hoof like it has always belonged to her. She stands, legs apart, and grinds her teeth into it.

‘Right,’ says Otto, ‘go and grab one then.’ I stand still. ‘Come on, get a move on.’

‘I can’t,’ I say.

‘I’ve seen you pick a sheep up. Come on,’ says Otto, ‘don’t be wet.’

‘I don’t want to.’

Otto looks at me through a narrowed eye. ‘Part of having animals, girl. I told Carole about this, an’ she didn’t listen either. Didn’t pick you out as being spooked by a bit of blood.’ There’s a small smile around his lips; he’s trying not to show it but he is amused, and he is enjoying seeing me scared.

I can feel my strong arms floating from my shoulders, as weak as feathers. I want to do something to make him understand that it is important that this doesn’t happen. I am sorry for my bad behaviour, I want to tell him, I want to say I won’t do it again, I promise. I will take the beating with a brush, but not this. But all I can make is the word ‘Please’.

He stomps out of the shed and comes back with a wild-eyed sheep, the one with black spots on her nose. Otto has a smile on his face, he’s let it out, doesn’t care what I know about him. He looks at me like I’m a kid who’s thrown a tantrum and he is going to teach me a lesson and then laugh about it afterwards. It is going to happen regardless of how much I don’t want it to happen, and I can see he has a hard-on through his shorts, and he is doing this because he likes me best when I’m small and like a child and he can tuck me into bed and feed me with a spoon and I see the horrible certainty of the challenge, and I will show him that I am stronger than he thinks, and the sheep with the black spots on her nose will be the sacrifice.

Somewhere a tarpaulin flaps in a breeze that doesn’t reach me. I reel it in just as the tears have filled my eyes, I blink them back inside, and take the knife from the boards, where it is still hot and red from the last sheep, and the ewe with the black spots is whipping about underneath Otto, and Kelly has stopped crunching her sheep’s foot and is watching, interested as I transfer the sheep between my legs and pull her head back to expose her throat. I clamp a hand over her black-spotted nose so she can’t make those terrible sounds any more, and in one motion I cut her throat, as deep and hard as I can, I want her to be dead before she knows about it, but she still writhes about under me as blood pours out of her, and as her strength goes, so does mine, but I hold her to me, I press my face into the wool at the back of her head. Kelly is barking again. Otto is silent and watching, and he glances at the knife I’m still holding, his smile gone.

Once Otto has taken off the ribs and shoulders, we dump the carcasses out in the paddock next to the house, and Kelly high-steps it next to us, animated and puppy-like. We don’t throw them far in, and she goes and bites and bites again at what is left. I wish he had taken the heads off. Kelly goes down on her shoulder and rolls on the remains. We have sex almost immediately as we get back in the house and I let him do what he wants with me, which is everything. Afterwards, when he’s gone, I drop to the floor and do push-ups until I see black dots.

In the morning, after my shower, I’m standing over the bathroom sink and my eyes fall on Otto’s eardrops. Without giving myself a chance to think, I take off the lid and pour them down my throat. Otto comes in to find me heaving into the toilet.

‘What’s the matter, pet?’

I feel crook, but I ham it up anyway.

‘I need to go to the hospital.’ Once I’m there I can slip away, or tell someone, a kind-looking nurse, that I have to get away from him, I picture her helping me into her car and driving me to the station, giving me money for a ticket to the coast. Otto feels my forehead as I’m spewing. I will it to be hot.

‘It hurts,’ I say, clutching my stomach. I want to give him the idea of a burst appendix. Otto runs his hand over his face.

‘Look,’ Otto says finally, ‘I’ll go into town and get you something to settle your stomach.’

‘I need to see a doctor.’

‘You’ll be right.’ He goes to leave.

‘I want to see a doctor, I’m really sick,’ I say, making my voice as weak as I can, but Otto has made up his mind, I can see it on his liver-spotted face.

‘I’ll get you some medicine. You’ve just had too much sun again,’ he says in a way that I know to be the final word.

I listen to Otto’s truck drive away without me. I’d imagined myself drinking a Coke and buying some more Holidays, smoking one in a gas station.

I’ve thrown up all the drops, but I keep thinking of the wax inside Otto’s ears; I know it was only the drops I swallowed, but it feels like his wax is coating me on the inside. I go to breathe some fresh air, but Kelly sits silently on the other side of the screen door, watching my movements. I flick her the bird but she is not impressed.

In Otto’s bedroom there’s a picture on the wall of a bunch of purple flowers in a pale yellow vase, but that is the only concession to decoration in the place. It’s from another person, Carole probably. I never come in here, not even to clean — he always comes to me in my room, and the smell of the place is like he keeps a bowl of stew under his bed.

In the wardrobe I find a moth-eaten suit with a yellow stiffness around the armpits, and four dresses that would have belonged to a tiny woman. Below them are three small lady’s shoes: two purple wedges and a single pink stiletto. All three have a deadly point that I can’t imagine getting a single toe into. I stare at the pink shoe on its own. Out the bedroom window I catch movement in the paddock, but it’s probably just a bandicoot or a rat. I hold my breath and watch, but nothing comes out of the tall dry grass.