TW: Animal Abuse
I remember when my town was normal. Which is not a great accomplishment or anything, seeing as the shit all went down when I was in high school. Lots of people in this town remember what it was like to live normally, but still, every time I see the awe on a kid’s face when they learn that other towns don’t have shapeshifting gas station clerks or invisible mayors, I feel like an old man.
It started, as all fucked up stories do, with the government intervening. One day, when I was a sophomore in high school, it was announced that the government was testing some new drug. They told us it was harmless, that it had already cleared all the major trials so there was no harm in volunteering to be tested. They told us it was safe for all ages, and they offered a hefty cash reward for all participants.
We’re not the richest town in the world, for sure, so needless to say, dozens of people and their children signed up.
I still don’t know what was in that drug, and nobody’s ever told me, but shit went haywire almost immediately, and the government shut the project down, and with it, our town. No one moves in, no one moves out, and now we’ve got a hefty government facility in our tiny little town to take care of the aftermath. There’s firewalls on almost all our social media and communication outlets, censoring what words we can or can’t say, but I checked, and somehow this Reddit sub isn’t covered by it. So I’m gonna tell my story here.
But this story isn’t really about the government or even the town, it’s about Jolene.
Yeah, like the song. I went to high school with her, and she’d mention that literally every time she introduced herself so I don’t want to hear anyone commenting about it. I wasn’t so annoyed by it then, but that was when I was still easily captivated by pretty girls, and she was still pretty enough to be captivated by.
Hell, she might still be, to some people. I’m on the internet, I see what you freaks are into.
Anyways, Martha knocked on my door at about 10 am this morning. I knew it was her before I opened the door. I guess that’s what all these government employees have in common—cops, SWAT, federal agents, technically unlabeled government agency workers—they all knock like they’re trying to bring your whole house down.
Martha visiting could only mean more work for me, so I opened the door with an exasperated sigh.
“What now?”
Martha looked equally as annoyed as I felt, “Jolene’s sister brought her son to visit her.”
“And?” I asked, waiting for her to get to the point.“Little fucker likes picking random shit up, I guess,” she said grimly, “there was a dead mouse in one of his pockets.”
My stomach dropped, “Fuck. Jolene’s gone then.”
“Sure is.”
“How long do we think?”
“Judging by the fact that the blood in her cell’s still wet, I’d say not long.”
I nodded, rubbing a hand over my face.“I’ll start looking. Radio me with any information.”
“You got it, boss,” Martha said dryly before turning to leave.
Now, before you get all freaked out, most of this town’s residents don’t go around regularly killing little boys. In fact, most of them are generally capable of living among us normal people. But some cases, like Jolene, need to be kept away. They’re more prone to violence. But even if Jolene wasn’t, well, Jolene, her sister should’ve known better. Our special residents don’t think the way do, they don’t feel the way they do. Jolene probably loves her sister, to the best capability that she has, because she remembers loving her when she was still human. There was no reason for her to extend that love to her sister’s son. All she saw in him, and that damned little mouse corpse in his pocket, was a means to an end and a little bit of fun to be had.
Anyways, our town’s pretty isolated, most of what’s around us is just woods and one-lane roads, so I knew Jolene couldn’t have gone far. The bad news is there’s plenty of wildlife around here, so she’s probably traveling quickly. I drove down towards a certain patch of the forest that I knew was overrun with deer and a couple of wolves since I figured I’d have the best chance of finding her there. My suspicions were confirmed when Martha buzzed into the car radio.
“Helicopter pilots are seeing a deer’s body about a mile from where you are.”
“Got it,” I responded.
The radio crackled back. “Be careful,” Martha said.I chuckled. If they wanted me to be careful, they wouldn’t send me out to do this shit in the first place.
Eventually I spotted the aforementioned deer corpse lying across the middle of the road. I parked the car, blocking the road on purpose, to avoid any innocent passersby coming across the deer themselves. I walked up to it. It was dead alright, lying there with its guts splayed out on the concrete and its legs twisted unnaturally, eyes dead and blank.
“Jolene?” I asked, “You there?”
The deer’s body began to shake, not like a shiver, like you would expect, coming from within its body, but as if there was an invisible hand yanking it back and forth. Its head twisted upwards, and its neck snapped in a sickening crunch as it rotated its head fully upside down.
“How do you know what my name is?” It, or rather, Jolene said, voice guttural and raspy, “You know, it’s like the-“
“Yeah, yeah, the song, I know,” I sighed, “It’s me, it’s Jack.”
The deer’s head twisted even further, as if she was cocking her head at me in confusion. I sighed.
“You know, we went to high school together?”
The deer blinked slowly, eyelids jerkily moving over its blank eyes. I rolled my eyes. Once a popular girl, always a popular girl, I guess.
“You mind telling me where you are, Jolene?”
“If you know me, you should have no trouble finding me,” she said, and then the deer shook violently once more and flopped down to the ground again. She was gone.
I sighed again. The deer was facing west, so I figured if she started here, I’d have better luck if I tried moving in that direction. After a bit of tripping over random logs and stepping into way too many anthills, I saw a couple of trees in the distance that looked way too bulky to be regular trees. Bingo.
I walked into a small clearing, and sure enough, three more deer carcasses were hanging upside down from the trees, tied to the trunks with their own intestines, necks slit so blood dripped down over their snouts into their open eyes. A wolf’s head sat in the middle, eyes gouged out, the rest of its body spread out in an indiscernible mess along the grass. Against my will, my heart started to pound in fear. I know this is my job, it’s what I get paid for, but nobody knows what Jolene can do better than I do. I shut my eyes, trying to force images of my own imminent death out of my mind.
“Jolene, your sister’s worried about you,” I said, doing my best to keep the terrified tremor out of my voice.
The wolf’s head snarled, its grin baring so wide that the flesh along the corners of its mouth tore.
“Why would she be worried?” It said, “It’s not easy to kill me, you should know that.”
“She’s your sister,” I responded, “It’s natural to worry. Plus, you kind of . . . Killed her son.”
The wolf head stayed quiet for a moment, and even with no eyes, I could tell she was thinking.
“She’s upset about this.”
“Yeah, I mean, anyone would be.”
“If she wants a human child, I can find her another one.”
“Um, that’s not quite the same.”
“Why not? There are many human children. One’s not so special.”
I rubbed my temples, trying to think of the best way to explain this to her and also not get murdered.
“Well, it’s like, think of it this way. Your sister, you love her because she’s your sister, even though there are so many human women in the world?”
“ . . . I guess so.”
“You’d be upset if you lost her.”
The wolf head thought some more.
“Yes, I think I would be.”
“Well, quite frankly, you might lose her. I wouldn’t be surprised if she never talks to you again after this.”
The wolf head’s eye sockets widened, and the deer on the trees behind it began to shake and writhe in their bindings. My heart fucking leapt in my chest, and I squeezed my eyes shut. But I couldn’t run, even though I really, really wanted to.
“What?” She said, voice distorted and agitated.
“Yeah, you might never see her again for as long as she lives.”
The ground shook menacingly beneath my feet. The wolf head was breathing louder and louder until it erupted into a howl. The deer behind it started shrieking in unison, banging their antlers against the trees until the wood started splintering off. I was sweating through my shirt at this point, and I said a quick prayer. I’m not religious, but you know, fear will do that to a person. Every cell in my body was telling me to run at this point, it would have been the smart thing to do, actually the smart thing would’ve been to never come out here in the first place, but hey, they don’t pay me to be smart. So despite the fact that I was absolutely scared shitless and definitely felt a little pee eek out of me, I pressed on.
“See that? See how you’re feeling right now? That’s how she feels, knowing she’ll never see her son again. And if you want her to keep being your sister, you’ll come back and apologize.”
That was probably a lie. I didn’t know if Jolene’s sister would ever come see her again. But hey, as long as we don’t accidentally give her any more dead animals, that’s not my problem.
The ground stopped shaking. The deer limply fell out of their restraints and collapsed to the ground. The wolf head stood still. I waited a moment
“Jolene?”
“I’ll come back with you, Jack,” the wolf head said.
It was the first time she’d ever said my name. High school me would’ve been having a field day.
“Okay, tell me where you are so I can come get you.”
“No need,” she replied, “I’ll be waiting in your car.”
And then the wolf head shook and tipped sideways onto the ground. She was already gone again. I sighed in absolute relief and began the walk back to my car.
True to her word, she was in the backseat. Her many eyes followed me as I got into the car. Of course she would sit in the back. I felt like an Uber driver, but frankly, I was too tired to be annoyed and too terrified by the sight of her eyes in my rear view mirror, watching me. I just wanted to go home and crack open a beer. Or five.
I drove her back to the facility. She didn’t talk or put up any more of a fight, but my car has sigils etched over every square inch of its interior, so there really wasn’t anything she could do once inside. Plus, then I handed her off to Martha and the SWAT team-esque group of dudes there to get her back to her cell. Besides, from what I could tell, she only got to five animals—six if you count the dead mouse—so she probably didn’t have the strength to cause any problems.
If I hadn’t found her in time, however . . . Let’s just say I would’ve fucked off to Australia in the hopes that she can’t travel by sea because what she did to her nephew is nothing compared to what she’s capable of.
So, you’re welcome, I guess. One less apocalyptic nightmare for you to fear. Now, you only have to worry about climate change or nuclear war or something. Yay!