Behind My House

9/5/1986 - Entry log 34

Behind my house there is a meadow I dare not venture. The land drapes low, like a dewy blanket of fresh grass, dappled with dazzlingly blue flowers— an exotic tapestry. Thick pine encompasses the borders, locking in any animal that strolls through within eyesight. It’s beautiful. I do not wish to disturb its splendor. I see deer pass by and sometimes I wave. They only stare but I pretend they’re waving back. I never look too long— I can’t. They don’t know I decorate my house with their carcasses. 

9/9/1986 - Entry log 35

I had a successful hunt today, I shot down a stag. I started at 4:00 this morning, before the sun even rose. I was cruising down Highway 5 when I spotted him. He was large, I almost mistook him for a moose. He was walking off the side of the road, unwaveringly unaware of the cars passing by. Engulfed by fog, his coat was laminated with the early morning mist— almost metallic, like staring at a ghost. He was perfect. I turned off the road and drove towards him, aiming to hit him. As if he already knew my plan, he switched direction and bolted across the lane. I clipped his back leg. I hit the breaks and abandoned my car. There was no time to grab the rifle in my trunk so I went with my handgun. When I got out, I noticed he had settled on the other side of the road— resting. I crept over, there were no other cars now. When he saw me, he tried to stand up but my tire had crushed his back hoof so severely it was nothing but a twisted pulp of meat. I shot him five times. I could tell he didn’t want to die because he kept staring at me, even when my bullets were peeling back his skin, exposing his skull and squeezing the life from his eyes. That’s what I get for using a handgun, more or less. Some may call it cheating, but I call it easy game.

9/10/1986 - Entry log 36

I mounted the head of the stag in the living room. His body was too large to fit in my truck, so I decided to only take his head. He’s a part of my masterpiece now. I placed him above the mantle of the fireplace, along with my other prizes. Ducks, badgers, beavers, all part of my own diorama. I tried to stitch the stag up, best I could. I forgot to take that into account when I was blasting his brains out the other day. I replaced his eyes with two black stones. Apart from the jagged cross stitch over his left temple, he was quite the sight against my wall. His antlers remind me of thick spindles of ivory. They’re large and wide, they take up half the space of the wall. I was thinking about sawing them off, but I think he looks much better with them on. Let it be a simple ode to his grandeur. Across from him is a window with a perfect view of the meadow. I like to offer my prey a lens into paradise while they hang in my home. A reminder of what they could’ve had, if only they were quicker. Pity. I try to respect the wildlife that shelter in the meadow behind my house. It’s what motivates me to hunt each day. The disorder of nature, not just the sight, but what lives within each animal. How they behave, their capabilities. That is the true beauty of it all, the change, the unknown. Afterall, what is true art without some chaos? If it was brushstrokes I fancied, I would just hang a painting of some trees. At least in here, I can control what dwells in my meadow. 

9/13/1986 - Entry log 37

The stag really completes my mural, it's like finally having a replica of the meadow for myself, only, I can’t replicate all its miracles. But at least in my meadow, I have authority over the wildlife. After every hunt, I use what I must and return the rest to the woods. Jaw bone, hooves, ribcage, skin— whatever it is I don’t need. I may be wasteful, but I like to have order over these sorts of things. I’m an artist you see, I want to present a juxtaposition of life in the meadow, and death on my wall. It’s where things finally stand still. Afterall, that’s my job as a hunter— to end change. 

9/16/1986 - Entry log 38 

There was a carcass the other day, but it wasn’t from one of mine. A gnarled body of flesh and bone, that of a doe. I couldn’t even tell what might’ve killed it. It looked as if it had been decomposing for some time. The chest cavity was exposed— raw, gaping open and festering with flies. The stench was the worst part, rotten and thick. I haven’t seen any deer since. In fact, no animal has passed through today or yesterday. Maybe it’s a warning. 

9/20/1986 - Entry log 39

The focal point of my masterpiece is decaying. I noticed the smell first— I thought the stench from the carcass outside had finally wafted into the house, but I was unfortunately mistaken. Instead, when I entered the living room I found the head of the noble beast withering. Maggots had already embedded themselves between his stitches. His eye sockets shrunk and were no longer fit to hold the stones. His gaze was empty once more. I mustn't have properly preserved it. I followed the same system I used to preserve the others, but the stag is different. He was always different. His grace was unlike any other creature I’ve killed before. 

9/22/1986 - Entry log 40

Still no sign of deer. It’s been seven days since the carcass first showed up and not a single animal has passed through the meadow. I couldn’t even find anything to hunt. It’s like the whole forest is on lockdown. Even the breeze has stopped. The air is still and the birds no longer sing. Only the clicks and whirrs of insects outside remind me that I’m still here. I had to remove the left side of the stag’s face in order to prevent the rotten flesh from contaminating the rest of the head. Now half his skull and jawbone is exposed, revealing a wide set of teeth. It’s like he’s smiling. It’s a little unsettling, but at least he looks happy to be a part of my art now. 

9/24/1986 - Entry log 41

There’s a predator in the meadow. I saw it. It was 10 pm, I was sitting on the back porch staring at the tree line, listening to the cicadas hum, when I heard crunching. I thought it was an animal chewing on leaves, but it grew louder. Tracing the sound with my eyes, I settled on a faint shape in the distance. I was staring long and hard before I realized something was staring back. That’s when the cicadas ceased, and the crunching stopped. At the edge of the clearing, standing eerily still, was a four-legged incomplete silhouette. Although I couldn’t see its face, I knew it was looking at me. I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe. I only heard the blood roaring in my ears. It was not its shape that vexed me, but rather how still it stood while my gaze was upon it. I was straining to make out the creature in the darkness for so long I hadn’t even realized It was no longer there. When the cicadas began singing again, that’s when I knew, It disappeared. 

9/25/1986 - Entry log 42

I had a nightmare last night. I walked outside to the backyard of my house, where I was greeted by the meadow. Only, it wasn’t the one I was familiar with. It was a flat brush, with shrouds of tangled weeds, twisting and squirming beneath each other. The air was stale and dry against my skin. The trees that protected the clearing were more like a fungus, their rubbery stems stretched too far into the atmosphere to see an end. The sky was swelling, like an infected wound. The colors were saturated, layer upon layer of blinding light. It hurt to look at. And there were deer— hundreds of them. I couldn’t believe how many deer I saw. Bucks, doe, fawns— they were all here. None of them were moving… Perhaps I was in a painting. I was admiring the scene before me, when I saw It again; A broken silhouette, watching from the edge of the meadow. That’s when I decided to walk forward, and for the first time, I ventured into the meadow behind my house. Each step commanded the weeds at my feet to part, scrambling aside to avoid my touch— like I was diseased. I moved closer into the center of the meadow. And from the fungus near the edge, he pulled his legs forward. His steps made no sound, and the broken silhouette soon turned into the stag, my stag. His hide was matted and dull, his back left hoof hovering limp beside him. Yet, he continued to step towards me, from the shadows that veiled his being, I soon understood why I could not see him before. There was no face, there was no head, only the jagged neck cut from an uneven saw. Still, he knew I was there. Only a couple feet away from me, and he knew. I stopped before him. The deer had settled their gazes onto me, unblinking as porcelain. The many eyes I had stripped of life were here to witness me standing still, for the last time. The eyes of the murdered. From the meadow behind my house, fate finds a way right back to me. And so I, the predator, now the prey, know what it means to be hunted. 

It means fear.

9/27/1986 - Entry log 43

I was woken up by an unfamiliar noise. It’s one in the morning. I had to sleep with a shotgun beside my bed since my dream. The sound reminds 

Creeeeaaaak. 

The man pauses his writing. He sits quietly, coiled in his chair like a spring. He waits for something, for anything to happen. His room is empty, nothing but a single cot with a bedspread and a tiny desk in the corner. The night unfolds around him, silent and eerie. No insects, no birds, no wind. The man hesitates to put his pen back to the page. His eyes fall upon his gun, jolted upright beside his bedpost.

Creaa…eaaaak.   

The man makes for his shotgun. His fingers find their way around the barrel, hoisting the butt to his shoulder. The weight of the weapon did little to stop his hands from trembling. The man creeps into the corridor of his cabin. He presses his back to the wall, shifting slightly every few moments— his breaths wavering. All around, twilight welcomes him with thick darkness, black as stone. A veil of pale moonlight falls across the doorway at the end of the hall, allowing him to see little visibility. 

The living room appears untouched, only the back door is open. Moonlight washes over his furniture, letting him know that his chairs, couch, and table are still there. With the comb securely beneath his chin, the man steadies his gun and swings to face the mural of heads. His eyes catch each of them— duck, beaver, badger... The center of the mantlepiece is empty. Two thin jagged lines are carved across the wood in its place. 

The stag’s head is gone. 

Crreeaak. 

A silhouette falls upon the man, blocking the light. Standing in the doorway, the broken shape of a stag stares at him.

His head was lopsided, unable to properly twist back onto his raggedly cut neck. The skin couldn’t hold the right side of his face, which droops down as a pitiful flap of fur. The other side of his head, pure bone. He has no eyes, only empty sockets devoid of vision. But he stares as though he can see the man clearly. The tendons cupping his bare cheek are mere wisps of string, unable to keep his jawbone connected and in place— his mouth awkward, crooked, and permanently ajar. The creaking sound came from his antlers, which had rutted themselves into the ceiling, splintering away at the wood. The stag finally found his head. 

The moonlight laminates him with a ghoulish glow, the reminiscence of an angel. Even in death, the stag’s majesty holds firm and true. Perhaps that's how Christ kept the demons at bay, he must have been horrifyingly beautiful. The man cocks his gun towards the doorway. He hooks the trigger and pulls. The man’s breath hitches. 

 Nothing. 

The stag cranes his neck to the sound of the empty gun. He pulls back his lip, the corner of his mouth curling upwards into an uneven grin— uncannily human. 

“I like to hunt too.”