Prologue

Ben couldn’t say for certain how long ago the screaming started, but it must have been some time ago. He plugged into his iPod the moment it began, though he couldn’t afford to buy many songs. Technically it was Mama’s, a piece of penance from his father, but she let Ben borrow it, and hadn’t yet asked for it back. He used to wonder if she wanted him to have it, as an apology or a gift. Their screaming left little room for goodwill. 

He flipped the page of his book, lying on his stomach on his and Andy’s bedroom floor. With his brother outside, Ben had the space all to himself. He could faintly hear Andy chopping wood by the barn, a steady, slow rhythm that made his muscle spindles burn with a delicious pain. Ever since his growth spurt, his older brother almost always ran outside when their parents argued. Their father seemed excited to sell the excess wood at the end of the road for some extra cash so didn’t begrudge Andy his indulgences. Ben never got the chance to abandon his family. He was too small to do anything of use, inside or out. 

A female voice broke through his music. “—well if I’m so fucking bipolar then you—!” Ben turned up the volume on his iPod, and refocused on the page.

There weren’t many books at the Ward household. Back before his father sold Mama’s car, she used to take him with her into town, drop him off at the library, and go run her errands. Since then, he had been left with what little literature they had at home. Ben had done his best to stay busy with copies of Bassmaster and Field & Stream, but he could finish one of those in less than two hours, and they only received one a week. Andy even stole the newspapers to read the funny pages. He thought he hid them well and did, at least from their parents, but secrets— indocile and loud, never hid from Ben for long.

Things changed on Christmas. He and Andy were used to getting one present each, plus whatever small trinkets and candies Santa could fit into their stockings. Andy opened his gift, a digital camera that he would use all the memory on within a week, then Ben unwrapped a box that weighed more than he did. Inside were not just books, but the books. Each spine read Britannica in shiny, gold letters, and numbered all the way to seventeen. They were used, and number eight was missing a cover, but they were his, and they would last him months. Andy took a picture of him, then another of their parents. Ben found it again under Andy’s bed, framed between two panes of recycled glass, and freshly chopped wood. Ben would look at it now and then. The family looked like someone else’s. 

He was halfway through Britannica twelve when his father threw open his bedroom door. Ben ripped out his earbuds, slammed his book closed. His father looked at him sitting on the floor, nothing on his face to suggest he had just been screaming for the better part of an hour. 

His father was a bowling ball of a man, nearly as wide as he was tall, with three gaping holes in his face where eyes and a mouth should be. Those eyes stayed forever wide, like every blink was a terrible risk that might leave him blind. He constantly struggled to breathe through his beard, fighting lungs subjected to twenty years of smoking. Ben could usually hear him coming before he even felt his cells stumbling down the hall. 

“You doin’ anything?” His father asked. Ben shook his head. “Good. Dress warm, and put on your boots. We’re going hunting.” He closed the door without another word, leaving the sentence to settle.

Ben dutifully followed the instructions, pulling on boots and generous layers. He knew what to do by now. They had hunted together since he was eight. Mostly Merriam's Turkey, spoonbills, mallards, Ross's goose, and Snow goose, but neither time nor fowl had made blood splatter easier to look at, or his stomach less queasy. Something about seeing an animal that had once been alive, that became nothing more than a hollow lump of flesh and feather, made his skin crawl. He hated feeling a body die when it took its final breath, feeling a trillion stars fading at daybreak. 

On the way out to the truck, Ben passed the kitchen. He peeked in from the hallway. Alone, Mama grabbed the plastic jar of spatulas and baking utensils off the counter, and flung it at the stove, wailing, vain and hysterical. She snatched one of the chair cushions and screamed into the fabric. Ben already knew his mom was having a fit, but something else made him look. He silently prayed for her to see him, then silently hated himself. When she noticed nothing, he met his father outside and got in the truck. 

They spent the drive in silence. His father tried a few times to prompt a conversation, but Ben gave dry and short answers. He closed his eyes. Usually, he liked driving with his father. His mom wouldn’t let him ride in the front seat until he was thirteen, but his father said ten was close enough. Today, Ben selfishly wished to be back in his room. 

After a while, his father pulled over on the dirt road, somewhere even deeper in the forest than the farm. Ben didn’t say anything as they unloaded the truck and followed his father silently into the woods. Around them, the trees whistled and sang, clicks and songs like morse code, or Andy’s foot tip-tapping under the kitchen table. Ben listened to them as they walked. It drowned out the ache in his arms from carrying the gun and one of his father’s hundred camo bundles. The forest didn’t have heads, but their eyes turned to follow Ben as he walked. He didn’t say much, but when he did, the trees listened. They told him they hadn’t heard anyone speak in a long time. Maybe they meant to be reassuring, or lure him deeper into the woods, but the idea only made him panic. Ben wouldn’t believe he was alone. Not as long as he kept looking.

“Here is good,” his father said eventually. They stopped along the bank of a lake Ben knew well. He and Andy would come here in the summer to swim and shoot each other with water guns, but he had never been hunting here, and certainly not for birds. Ben set down the equipment, relieving his shaking arms, and watched his father silently put it all together. His father wore all black and camo, donning only the very best regalia. Once, Andy stupidly suggested selling some of their guns to help pay for his school field trip. His father did not like that idea. Ben could understand. There was no reason to work if you couldn’t purchase niceties for yourself. 

“Do you know why I took you all the way out here?” His father asked, and finally finished setting up the blind. Ben shook his head, putting together his Remington 700. After so many years, he could do it with his eyes closed, but both of his parents put the fear of God in his head when it came to guns, enough to make him never take his eyes off the weapon while it was in his hands. “Well, you’re ten now. I killed my first deer at eight. It’s high time you get yours.”

Ben froze. 

“I know you can handle it. Then, you can start coming with me, Paul, and Antonio on the weekend trips, yeah? You can be our designated driver.” His father let out a deep, bellowing laugh. “You almost done?” Ben snapped himself out of his swirling thoughts long enough to nod. “Good, let's get in. Remember what we say about hunting? Children should be…”

“Seen and not heard,” Ben said softly, staring at the gun. 

“Yeah. That doubles when we’re looking for whitetails, got it?” Ben nodded and put a finger to his lips. His father smiled, reached over, and ruffled his hair. “You’re a quick learner.”

Inside the blind, Ben tried to calm his racing heart. The watching trees noticed his agitation, their cells whistling in tune. Birds were one thing. They were small. Prey. Food. Not so different from chicken, or a Thanksgiving turkey. But something about the size and scale of a deer made him hesitate. He had eaten venison brought home by his father, even preferred it over most other meats, but doing it himself felt wrong, somehow. Like crossing a line. 

“You doing okay, cowboy?” His father asked. He pulled a bag of beef jerky from one of the camo packs and ripped it open. “Hungry?” Ben shook his head. He stared out of the blind, watching the water ripple across the lake with every gust of autumn wind. 

“Papa?”

“Hm?” His father hummed, tearing into a piece of Jack Links. 

“Do I have to?”

He frowned. “What do you mean? You’ll do just fine, Benny, and if you don’t, well, I’m sure your good luck will bring us another deer soon enough.” Ben’s ‘good luck’ brought him more trouble than anything else. It meant sitting in the back of the car or silently in the blind while his father did the actual hunting, coaxing enough birds their way to keep his father distracted. They needed to be out as long as possible. 

“Do you ever feel back for them?” Ben asked quietly. “We don’t have to kill anything.”

“Well, what else should we eat?” His father asked with a snort. Then, his face grew hard. “You’re not going vegan on me, are you?”

“No,” Ben mumbled. “But cows and chickens come from farms, we have them just to eat. Deer and ducks live out here; we’re going into their homes.”

“It’s the circle of life. You know, predator, prey, plants. It all eats itself. Just how the world works. Not our fault we’re at the top. And farms aren’t exactly paradises. The cows they kill to make your burgers, some of them never even get to see the sun or grass. They’re born in a cage, get milked dry, then slaughtered. Out here, these guys get to live in nature, raise their own kids, eat fresh food, rut, the whole deal. The more we eat from nature, the fewer cows they have to shove into farms to feed us.” His father tore off another piece of jerky and kept talking with it still in his mouth. His lips smacked. “Think of it like we’re saving a cow instead of killing a deer.”

Ben went quiet. It made good sense. At the end of the day, wasn’t that what really mattered? Doing the most good at the lowest cost? Did it matter if one deer died to feed a family of four, to save a cow, to have a few more hours with his father alone? The ponderosa pines outside cooed at him like night birds. 

Ben put his cold hands into his pockets. “Okay. Sorry.”

“You know, I’m not gonna be mad if you miss,” his father promised. “I just want you to try.” He passed Ben a piece of jerky. When Ben shook his head, his father held it out further toward him. He took it. “You don’t have nothing to prove to me. I already know you’re gonna be the one to get out of this shithole. We’re the same, cowboy. Hunters, carnivores—” Ben tore the jerky with his teeth. The seasoning made his tongue burn. “Smart. Hell, you’re smarter than all of us. Just don’t forget where you came from when you get to the top, what we are. Promise?”

“Promise,” Ben nodded, warmth blooming in his chest. Praise from his father was rare, unless it was just the two of them. He took it when and where he could, and held it close. 

The pitch outside shifted. Ben looked out into the forest, and brushed over the buzzing life, skimming the collectives like book spines. He found her, and faster than usual. She must be close. 

“Can I go to the bathroom?” Ben asked. 

His father looked out over the lake. “Sure. Be quick and quiet about it.”

Ben nodded and slipped out of the blind, autumn leaves crunching beneath his feet. He took a moment to enjoy the air, then he was off. 

There was never a time before the music. Ben remembered being barely more than a toddler holding full conversations with his mom’s sunflowers and white-winged crossbills on the school playground. His classmates stamped out any desire to do that years ago. Few wanted to play with the freak of nature who talked to plants and birds. Ben found out quickly that even fewer would tolerate someone who could control them too. It wasn’t until he began hearing human cells that he swore to keep the whispers to himself. 

There had been plenty of close calls. Once, Ben had held an entire conversation with a teacher in German, not knowing he was speaking it in the first place. Another time, he had pulled an infected tick off his father’s scalp, but couldn’t explain how he knew it was there. Only Andy knew, and found out less than a year ago, after Mama hit a Rocky Mountain elk with the car, and it had stumbled off into the woods to die. Ben ran off after it, claiming a need for the bathroom. He found it bleeding and wheezing, fallen over against a tree, yet still more massive than any living thing he had ever seen. Ben taught the flesh and bone to make itself whole again. It was the easiest the song had ever been. Andy ran into the forest after him and arrived just in time to watch Ben restitch the elk with nothing more than will. He had to explain then, and Andy promised on his life to keep the secret. Their parents didn’t need to know. His father would be furious, his mother, terrified. 

It took Ben nearly ten minutes to find the deer. Not from a lack of trying, or the sensations too distant and quiet to hear, but from distance alone. 

“Hello,” Ben said, before the doe could notice him and run. She looked up, and Ben could read the astonishment on her face as instinctually as the text in his encyclopedias. They never understood this part. “I need your help with something.”

The whitetail froze, her heart beating faster in her chest. Ben learned quickly that animals didn’t speak the same way in real life as they did in Disney movies. When they spoke, it was not in English. He still heard their grunting or snorting, but he could pick out the dialects and the details. It was the other side of this two-way street that was hard. Deer didn’t understand literal English, but understood loose connotations, somehow carrying far more meaning and information than nearly any animal alive could communicate. The horror of his ‘hello’ must have been eldritch. 

Ben took a slow step forward. The doe didn’t move. Ben closed the distance between them and held out his open palm. She looked at him, studying his face, then lowered her head, smelling his hand, her wet nose tickling his skin. He didn’t realize how strange deer looked up close. Without antlers and with barely any fur, she looked almost naked, and smelled even worse. By crushing the language barrier, he found it too easy to forget this was a wild animal. 

“Can you go to the lake?” Ben asked softly. He ran his hand over the deer’s neck, a brown so discolored it was nearly gray. She let out a grunting, snorting wheeze. Danger. “No, I’m not going to hurt you.” The doe paused. Ben had learned that lying seemed to be an almost uniquely human condition. The concept never even occurred to most animals, at least, not in a way quite so direct as this. They hardly had ‘language’ to begin with. 

“I will reward you.” He pointed her in the right direction, and she scurried off into the forest, quieter than should have been possible for an animal of her size. Ben found his way back to the blind and entered without a word. 

His father looked up from his phone. “There you are. Where did you go, Wyoming?”

“Sorry,” Ben said quietly. He sat across from his father and put his chin in his hand, closing his eyes. The doe was making good time. His chest ached, imagining the blood he was about to spill. 

“Don’t go falling asleep on me,” his father ordered. 

Ben blinked awake. “Sorry.”

“Come here, do you remember how to use this one?” Ben knew how to shoot well enough and had killed his fair share of birds, but he watched as his father explained for the dozenth time how to load, unload, and most importantly, how to use it safely. Back when he was little, his father made him wear a neon orange vest several sizes too large for visibility. That didn’t translate well in his head. For weeks, nightmares of getting shot plagued him. Even after all these years, Ben couldn’t hold a gun without shaking. 

“Shooting deer is a little different from birds,” his father explained, passing over the gun. He watched Ben unload, then reload it. “Aim for the front of the body, the space between the stomach and the front legs. If you’re using a rifle with a well bonded or solid copper hunting bullet, you can go higher and hit the shoulder. But today, you’re looking for the lungs, or the heart.”

“Not the brain?” Ben asked. He looked through the scope, scanning the edge of the lake. 

“You’d get a pretty shit mount— sorry, you’d get a pretty bad head out of it. Don’t tell your mother I said that, the last thing I need today is a lecture.” He sighed and looked out at the lake, where Ben pointed the rifle. “And a deer’s brain is too small for that. You’re probably gonna miss, and it’ll just make the thing suffer. Heart and lungs are the way to go.”

Ben’s stomach churned. I’m going to shoot it in the heart. That was the sort of cruelty performed by the monsters in Mama’s stories, the ones told when his Father was away on hunting trips. She would pull them close under a shared blanket and warn them of bears who devoured children, and serpents who emerged from the bottoms of black lakes to steal away young girls. He could barely hold the gun steady in his hands.

“Look,” his father whispered, pointing out across the lake. Ben swung the gun to face it. The doe lingered at the edge of the water and simply stood, waiting for Ben to fulfill his promise. “What did I say? You’re good luck.” The words made his skin itch, like bugs were burrowing into his muscles. Ben wanted to throw down the gun and run into the lake, to make the algae drag him to the bottom. 

Instead, he raised it and aimed for the lungs, for the beating heart he could feel pulsing behind cells of skin, flesh, and bone. It was a clear shot. He couldn’t miss. Ben chewed on his lip. 

“Take a deep breath,” his father instructed. “You’ve got it.”

The doe looked around, then met Ben’s gaze from across the lake. He stole control of her muscles before she could bolt. That thing he could only ever identify as “soul” pulsated and thrashed against his grip. Ben stamped the rebellion down hard and fast, snapping her resistance like a twig. She froze. She stared at him, her heart hammering with such ferocity. Ben feared it might kill her. Her eyes, full and black, glimmered with light. Ben thought of the dark mirrors that refused to look back at him, the nothing in the eyes of every dead duck and goose, how, when he gazed inside, he saw that unfailing black whirlpool that promised to swallow the world. She was small in its shadow.

He released her and pulled the trigger. She bolted at the same moment he shot the tree behind her, sending bark and shrapnel flying. 

One hand yanked the rifle from his grasp. The second sent piercing pain across his face. Ben fell on his back, clutching the struck cheek, holding himself up by the elbow. 

“What the hell was that?” His father demanded. He sent several more shots in the forest, but the doe was long gone. “How the fuck could you miss?” Ben didn’t say anything. His eyes stayed wide open, still processing the stinging in his cheek. 

“Sorry,” He cringed the second the words were out. 

His father shot him a glare. “Pack up. You’re done.”

The silence on the ride back was a thousand times worse than the silence on the way there. He stared at his feet and tried his hardest not to cry. His father drove faster than usual, passing trees and roads at speeds that made Ben half sure he’d left his stomach behind. His heart hammered as fast as the doe’s. Why did he do that? He had already agreed with himself to kill it, to save everyone the trouble, but he couldn’t follow through. How could he be such a coward? Shame swelled in him and filled his lungs like saltwater. 

When they parked, his father grabbed the rifle from the back seat and got out of the car first. Ben fumbled with his seatbelt, then scrambled inside after him. Yellow light flowed out from the front windows, and when he followed his father into the kitchen, it drenched him in warmth. His father made a beeline for the fridge. Mama came down the hall and saw Ben first. He winced and tried to hide his face in his coat. 

“Oh my god, Benny—” She rushed over to his side, crouching, and held his face in her hands, turning his head to observe the growing red mark on his cheek. Ben tried to pull away. “Lorenzo, what—”

“Are we seriously going to do this? Again?” His father demanded, slamming the fridge door closed. The jars of sugar and flour above it trembled. Arms wrapped around Ben, pulling him closer. 

“You have no right to put your hands on—”

His father picked up the gun from where it leaned against the fridge. Ben froze. His mother didn’t. She scooped him up in her arms and broke down the hallway, sprinting with adrenaline Ben had never felt before. Thunder exploded across the house. 

She threw open the door to his and Andy’s bedroom. She dropped Ben and threw her body against the door. It slammed closed, and she locked it. Andy bolted to his feet, scrambling away from where he had been drawing on the floor. Ben felt his father marching down the hall. 

“Andy, Benny, get away from the door!” His mom shouted. They climbed into Ben’s bed and piled into the corner, the furthest place from the door as they could. Mama pulled the dresser free from their closet. Another clap of thunder resounded across the house. He and Andy screamed as a bullet tore through the wooden door. 

Rapid knocking broke through their screaming. “Maria, open this fucking door!” Ben’s mom pushed the dresser in front of the door. It trembled as his father slammed his fist against the wood, bursting blood vessels. Mama pulled out her flip phone and dialed a short number. 

“Go away!” Andy shouted, sobbing at Ben’s side. His brother’s arms found their way around him. Ben’s nails dug into his skin. 

“W— we should go out the window,” Ben stammered quietly, barely able to make himself heard over the knocking. He pictured the three of them running through the forest at full speed, mowed down one by one. They wouldn’t even be able to reach the window without getting hit. Wood splinters flew into the air as another bullet shot through the door and embedded in the floor. Andy shrieked. Ben heard his mom reciting their address into the phone. 

“Benny!” Andy hissed. He gripped Ben’s arm so hard it hurt more than his face. “Do something!” His mouth went dry. 

“I just want to talk!” His father shouted. Ben looked over at his mom. Her face barely moved as she spoke on the phone in hushed whispers. She hardly looked afraid. She pulled one of Andy’s baseball bats out from the closet and held it with two hands, tucking her phone in between her ear and her shoulder. “Open the fucking door, or we’re going to have a real fucking problem!” 

Ben’s entire body trembled. This was his fault. If he had shot the deer, or hid the mark on his face, or stopped Mama from asking about it, they might be eating a quiet Saturday lunch. 

“I don’t know, I don’t—” Ben stammered. “I can’t— wh—” Why does it always have to be me?

“Benny! Andy! Open the door!” His father shouted. “I’ll burn the fucking house down!” 

“Ben!” Andy begged, shaking his arm. His brother looked at him with wide black eyes. Glassy mirrors showed him his own reflection. 

It didn’t even occur to him that he could fail. Careful to watch his hands, Ben wrapped the control around his wrist like a rope. Resistance broke with a crunch. He tugged, down, and pulled the trigger. 

Wailing erupted through the door, and not a moment later, Ben’s father collapsed on the floor, the rifle clattering to the ground. He clutched his foot where blood poured out of his boot. His mom finally hung up the phone and opened the window. She lifted Andy out first, both of their backs turned to him. 

Ben looked over his shoulder, sensing his father stand. Through a hole in the wood, a dark, bloodshot eye stared at him. They froze. He knows. 

Warm arms wrapped around him and lifted him up to the window. His brother helped pull him through to the other side, and they both helped their mother. Together, all three of them ran down the dirt road against the autumn wind, Andy and his mother still barefoot and coatless. 

Nearly three hours later, with statements taken from all of them, and his father handcuffed in the back of an ambulance, Ben finally felt safe enough to lie down. With their bedroom door broken, and a pool of dried blood in front of it, he and Andy piled into their parents’ bed, their mother between them. 

“Are they going to let him out again?” Andy whispered, sounding so much smaller than thirteen. Ben wondered if this time, Mama would get desperate enough to sell the iPod, or worse, pawn off the guns. 

“I don’t know,” Mama said, brushing Ben’s hair with soft hands. “I don’t know.”

Ben didn’t know either. He didn’t know why he was like this, or why his father was like that. He stared at his knuckles, his wrists, his fingers. He felt the blood rushing through them, swimming laps around his extremities, ready to run from home at the first sign of a cut. 

Perhaps, there was something better than knowing. 

About the Author

Waverly O'Malley is a double major in Psychology and English & Creative Writing at the University of Iowa. 

Cover design made using Canva design tools.