When I was little, two bees got stuck in my ear. It happened when I was around eight or nine, right by the small creek near my house. I was being careful not to bother them, taking notice of them darting past my peripheral vision. Uncle Landis said I should pay them no mind, that they wouldn’t do anything to me if I didn’t do anything to them. He even put himself between me and them. At that point in my life, I knew enough about bugs of all types to know that was mostly true. I’d avoided being stung by bigger things than a couple of bees, so I continued down the slope.
Then, a sharp pain out of nowhere. Like having a small needle being pushed through your skin. But the worst part was the noise. An angry buzzing noise of two insects desperately trying to get into your ear. Everything becomes so fast after that. Falling through the dirt road. A scraping of the knees. The buzzing, the buzzing, the buzzing. Uncle Landis yelling, trying to get the bees out of my small ear.
I was careful, but nature’s a bitch sometimes.
By now, I don’t live near that house anymore. Moved out, moved a bit further up north. I still live near the woods. It’s generally cold and fresh. Keeping in contact with my uncle is easy thanks to the internet, and he’s surprisingly tech savvy all things considered. Me and my dog, Sandy, generally go out for a stroll during the weekend. We like to go down a big slope until we reach the edge, leading to a big cliff overlooking an entire valley. The mountain in the distance is the icing on the cake. Every girlfriend I’ve had always comments on how pretty the sunsets look, and they’re probably right.
Bees are still annoying though. Insects, generally speaking, are the worst part about living near the forest. You need to be careful of arachnids crawling into your shoes, you need to have disinfectant, etc. I’ve managed to be completely fine until recently. The worst thing I could remember was when this big black thing bit Sandy over a year ago. It was definitely a flying creature, too small to be a bat, too big to be anything else. It hovered quite slowly before settling its hairy, bulbous body on Sandy’s neck. At first, I tried to swat it away, but it wouldn’t budge. I had to hit it until it flew away in a daze.
To be completely honest, I was worried for a few days, as the mark left by the insect was big and reddish. While I was afraid that it might need a little more attention than first aid, the wound seemed to get better after a few days. To be completely honest, I’d have preferred if that incident back then would have been the worst thing I’d ever experienced while living in the woods.
It started about a couple of weeks ago. Obviously, I go hunting sometimes. Uncle Landis did teach me how to shoot, but he stopped hunting when I was still young, leaving me to learn the basics of catching game by myself. We get elks near my house all the time, so it’s easy to track them down. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t do it for sport. Their meat tastes better, though I don’t believe everyone agrees.
The sun was hidden behind the dense leaves, the light trickling down like some wet, viscous liquid. Sweat covered my head - it definitely wasn’t a cool day. But I found my elk - it had wandered not too far from the slope near my house, slowly walking away from me. Actually, I’d say it was more like stumbling. While it did seem odd, I didn’t pay much attention to it as I readied my rifle.
Until I saw the eyes.
Something about that elk’s eyes was off. You know that moment in a dream that’s about to turn into a nightmare, when someone does something so unnatural that you realize that the shoe’s about to drop? Maybe when someone laughs too much, or a shadow darts past you on the corner of your eye: you know the dark’s about to get ya, and you can kiss your courage good-bye. Well, that’s what I felt looking at that elk’s gaze: there was something else behind that stare, as if it wasn’t really there, as if the body I had in front of me was just the shadow of something much different.
It didn’t last long, though. The elk immediately realized what was up as soon as it saw me, and ran. The problem was, it didn’t run away: it ran towards me. Just as I was about to sidestep, the animal kinda… Stumbled, before crashing into a rock. Just as I was starting to grab my rifle, the elk stood up on all fours once more and rammed the rock furiously.
And it did it again. Again, and again. And again, and again. Blood poured, bones broke. Pieces of its antlers fell off, and the jaw eventually dislocated. A pulpy mash of blood and meat dropped below the animal as it looked at me with that vacant stare. The creature raised its front legs, and for a moment I thought for sure it was gonna walk towards me like a human would. But the legs gave out, and the elk fell to the ground, dead. Happy hunting season was over.
I stopped Sandy from taking a bite out of the corpse. People and animals are way more similar than we think. Just like a dog would eat a putrefied carcass, humans will try to scrape the mold out of a loaf of bread and risk infection. I’d like to tell you that I approached the elk and inspected the damned thing, but I’d be over exaggerating my abilities. Truth is, I simply ran the hell back to my home, hoping to never see anything like that again. That night, I slept thinking that elks without jaws were going to surround my house.
Even though I was careful, the whole nightmare wasn’t over. I kept running into dead elk carcasses, their bloody rests covering the leaves and the grass. One time, I swear I could see something eating the carcass, but I backed the hell off of that place. I didn’t want to risk an airborne infection, and I didn’t know what was going on.
Last week or so, I heard it. A weird, whimpering sound. It woke me up in the middle of the night. The sound felt like a mountain being passed through a tunnel - and I knew where it was coming from. Sandy slept right near the bathroom, and the sounds were coming from there. Even if my mind could conjure the facts and notion that my dog was in serious trouble, something about that whimper sent a jolt of terror through my spine, bolting me to the spot I was in. I didn’t want to enter her room, because I knew something odd was happening.
Finally, I opened the door and looked inside. My dog didn’t look the same. She was drooling all over the floor, banging her head up against the walls. She seemed in pain, but she also seemed vacant. When I turned on the lights, that’s when I knew what was wrong: Sandy’s eyes were just like that elk’s. That thing seemed unnatural, and I didn’t know what to do.
So I did the cruelest thing ever: I closed the door. I closed it, despite that being my best friend in the whole world. I closed it, despite her whimpers turning into cries of pain at times. I closed it, and I’m so fucking sorry, Sandy.
Over the next few days, I brought her food, only slightly opening the door. It didn’t take long before the house started to stink, as she couldn’t go outside to relieve herself. Honestly, the smart thing would have been to let her out and leave her in the woods, or even put her down. The first option would have been more hygienic and logical, and the second the more humane. But, you know what? I’m not like that. I’m not like my uncle Landis, who knew how to take bees off my ear when I was 9. I’m just the kid who taught himself how to hunt and who’s now afraid of elks. I’m sorry, Sandy.
This morning, her whimpers stopped. I still didn’t want to open the door. I didn’t want to look at her. Thinking about my uncle and how he would have handled this made me want to call him. Maybe he would offer some advice, make this right. But you can’t unfuck something that is inherently fucked. We’re born great, strong individuals, and then we keep having children and each generation’s more useless than the last. My grandfather survived a famine, fought in the second world war, and raised three sons. My father died from a drug overdose when I was five, and my uncle took some bees out of my ear. I couldn’t save my dog.
Nevertheless, I called. I explained everything that had happened recently. He seemed worried for Sandy, but it got worse when I clarified that the same thing had happened to the elks too. His voice started trembling, something I hadn’t heard since I was little. Why was he so affected? He had heard all the excruciating details regarding my dog, why were the elks the ones to elicit such a response? It wasn’t until I heard his next question that I understood:
“Why do you think I stopped hunting?”
It had been the elks. Back then, they had started doing the same. The empty gaze, the ramming, and the blood. Difference was that my uncle had approached the bodies to check what was going on.
“It ‘sa disease. You don’t want to hear the details, you really don’t. It comes in seasons. Sometimes, me and my friends would get some months reprieve, only to encounter the dead animals by the next year. My advice? Stay the hell away from all that. You don’t want to have the animals so close to home. By all accounts, don’t touch that dog’s body with your bare hands or without a mask.”
It made some sense, but it still didn’t click fully. A disease? That is such a generic term, why didn’t I want to know more? I pressed a bit more, but he excused himself. However, just before hanging up, he said this:
“Well, who knows. Maybe it’s for the better. Kiddo, you were so lucky. You almost got infected once. Good thing I was there to save you. Your dad… He wasn’t as lucky.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry,” he said crying, “I should have told you sooner.”
“Uncle, what are you talking about? The bees?”
“Those weren’t bees, Mac. You just thought they were because I told you that.”
There it was again. The other shoe dropped. A cold sensation ran down my spine as I lowered my phone. Uncle Landis was still trying to talk, but I wasn’t listening. On automatic, I approached Sandy’s door. No other sound except a small, buzzing noise coming from there.
Inside. A body. Gushing blood. A broken, smiling jaw. Dead eyes no longer looking, but they hadn’t been looking for a long time.
Crawling out of her retina, a bulbous, hairy, body, it’s wings starting to flap.
“It comes in seasons.”
Nature is a bitch.