Ashes to Ashes

The paw prints disappeared into the snow. They were buried beneath the falling flakes faster than she could chase them. Her own prints faded, too, as she left them behind. She'd taken off so quickly she hadn't thought to grab gloves, or a hat, or anything more than her coat. The tip of her nose tingled now as it went numb with cold.

She couldn't find the fox. 

She trudged through the open fields of snow towards the neighbors’ land. There weren't many places to hide in these fields. Not a tree on the dusky horizon, no accepting arms or warm embraces. She was blanketed in the type of silence only snow could bring, and the screaming had stopped. 

God, she hoped it wasn’t the fox that screamed. She couldn’t lose it again.

Her daughter's body had been ashes for mere days when the fox appeared. The family came back from the memorial to find it lounging in the front yard, ears twitching. The creature looked like Lee with its silky hair and clever expression. The light behind its eyes was somehow darker than the irises themselves. Dark thoughts, dark dreams. Lee had been haunted by all of it, and now that fox was her ghost haunting the family, too.

The fox snuck inside with them that day, and her heart wouldn’t let her shoo it away. Her husband had insisted she get rid of it, but the air of grief was so heavy in that house that it was too hard for them to fight over it. Her husband went to bed instead, and the fox followed her into the kitchen. Lee’s pictures smiled from the refrigerator door. Her senior pictures, taken only a few months ago. Lee’s first real picture.

She pulled raw stew meat out of the fridge and dumped it in a bowl. She plunked the bowl on the linoleum floor for the fox. It devoured all but a chunk of the meal. Then it pattered off on little paws, that last bit of meat gripped in its teeth.

When it disappeared upstairs, she followed. Droplets of meat juice glistened in a path towards Lee’s bedroom door. The fox couldn’t have gone in there, yet she took a deep breath and opened the door anyway.

Inside, it was mausoleum cold and mausoleum quiet. She found more watery juice puddled by the closet door, small scraps of chewed meat in it. When she opened the closet, Lee’s clothes were on the floor, tugged off the hangers. Her favorite dress was ripped by fox teeth, the bodice shredded by fox claws. One breast pad sat forlorn in the wreckage. 

A few days later, the real trouble started.

Not at home, though. The trouble stayed in town. The drug store got ransacked. They found cosmetics scattered on the floor, deodorant and tampons knocked off shelves. The school was vandalized, bathroom mirrors shattered, and the stall locks broken.

The nearest neighbors came to her home and scratched their heads because their chickens were slaughtered. Her own chickens were alive and well in their roosts. Keep a look out for coyotes or foxes, the neighbors said. She tried to close the door on them because she hated them, but they stopped her. They looked at her with sad and pitying eyes.

They thought she could have stopped it. That’s what their eyes said. They thought she had lost control over the one person she loved most in the world.

Their words were more polite than their eyes, though. “We’re sorry about your son,” they said. “How have you been?”

She didn’t respond. She shut them out of her house, and she cried. 

The fox slinked out of the shadows, nose twitching as if it could smell those tears. She kneeled in front of it and plucked a chicken feather out of its hair. Blood stained its white muzzle like lipstick. It was pretty. She scratched behind the fox’s ears and said, “Don’t pick on the chickens. They never did anything to you.”

That night, she dreamed of Lee wearing blood red lipstick, too, and she woke up screaming. Lee had only worn lipstick once. On that last day. Not in her coffin, though. Not when placed on that conveyer belt that fed her to the fire. She wouldn’t wear it ever again. Ashes had no lips for lipstick, no hips or breasts or eyes. Ashes were what they were expected to be.

And now a gust of wind smacked her in the face. Powdery snow stung her eyes, froze the tears to her cheeks. She crested the hill between her land and the neighbors’. From the top of that hill, she could see down to their barn. Its silhouette leaned against the darkening sky. She thought she saw light inside that barn, a light so warm that it felt insulting. She thought she smelled smoke. The house behind the barn was dark, though, and the chimney silent. The wind whispered at her, carrying the muted barks of dogs somewhere in the distance.

She made her way down the hill and spotted the paw prints again. They went a few feet down then disappeared, turning into widely spaced holes in the snow. Her boot sank into one, and she nearly fell. Her ankle ached, but she kept going. She needed to get to that fox. She couldn’t leave it to the dogs. She couldn’t let it be torn to pieces again.

The screams returned. Raspy, wordless, and frantic screams. She breathed a sigh of relief. They were not the screams of a fox.

She got to the barn to find the hasp undone, the door ajar. She lugged it open and squinted against the light of the fire inside. That fire burned in a corner, inching its way towards the door. Lee stood near that fire, ablaze with its light like Joan of Arc, like a witch among many. Her favorite dress draped her body, still tattered by fox teeth. Bruises colored her arms and legs and neck, as if she’d never been reduced to ashes.

At Lee’s feet was the neighbor boy, whose screaming had stopped. The boy’s body didn’t move. It was as naked and limp as Lee had been that last day.

The fire blazed higher and hotter. Lee held up a bloody mass in her hands. It was the boy’s liver, shiny and visceral. Lee brought it to her mouth and took a bite. She took another and another, until blood covered her lips and nose and nothing was left in her hand but bits of chewed meat.

Her mother wiped away tears. She ignored the phone in her pocket that vibrated and beeped. She wouldn’t turn away this time. She wouldn’t wonder where her daughter went or if she was happy. She would watch as she burned to ashes again. She’d watch as that boy burned to ashes, too, and became someone else’s dead child.

At least her daughter was warm now.

At least she was finally safe.