“Answer me this.” His brow wrinkled, cleared, and he spoke slowly. “Am I an animal?”
What. The. Fuck. Where had that come from?
“Of course not,” I blurted, while trying to think of what I should say – being truthful was not on my agenda in that instant. This was a loaded question.
What did he want from me? Was any sort of truth worth saying? Or would it get me killed, or worse?
Not that I thought he would murder me on the spot. Mine was a visceral reaction to a disturbing question that had me stumbling as I went ahead of him down the bus aisle.
He wasn’t an animal, I decided without voicing it.
But he was worse than one when off the drug. Animals did not regularly hurt and kill for amusement, although predators in the animal kingdom might toy with their prey. They did not fuck for revenge or for fun. They did not fuck then kill.
And I was never telling him this. Besides, he must know already. The thorns of prior murder, sex, and mindfucks pricked at me. Like the crackle of footsteps creeping up from behind in a horror movie. The axe in the dark. The mirror leading to Hell. Whenever I recalled his past, our past, I regretted it.
After a light lunch, the group headed up an easy track. It took two hours of casual walking to reach the next camping ground. Group conversations sparked, rambled, wafted by us, leaving Isak and me as rocks in a sea of humanity. The children would all be older than eight or nine years? Any younger and they’d need to be watched constantly and carried.
I heard the rumble of Isak’s voice, and my stomach contracted, because the start of his sentence harked back to that last question.
“Not an animal?” he mused. “You lied.”
Luckily, we were walking fairly separated from the groups ahead and behind us.
“Fuck, yes, I lied,” I whispered, sotto voce and only to him. Something had burst within, forcing me. This was not a command from him, it was pent-up anguish and anger. “I did. How can you do what you did and not be labeled a…” I looked about. “A bad word. Animal is too good for you.”
Done it, then and there. I just signed my death warrant.
“You know I’m not going to kill you.”
Startled, I looked at him.
“Yes, I can sometimes guess your thoughts when they’re strong ones.”
Fuck.
“I’m not that now. Remember? Teach me.”
Like teaching a rock or a corpse.
I must not think that. He is a man. I can do this.
We reached the next stop on the Great Walk through Carnarvon, and most had no intention of going further, but Isak decided to walk a little further and higher along with about half the tour group and the guide. We had an hour, no more, before we must return.
I should be talking to him about morals or some such philosophical crap, but I simply could not. Not now. Not yet.
The walk was tougher and ascended more steeply than before. We stopped at a small lookout with the others.
Isak and I wandered further and sat a meter back from where a ledge dropped away past a guard rail. The forest floor and the gorge were a couple of hundred meters below. The few children who were with us talked excitedly and ran about pointing at things while chewing on snack bars. Birds tweeted or cackled echoing calls, and an eagle soared on the warm breeze. A little yellow-gray bird the guide called a weebill hopped about in the branches of a shrub.
The view was stupendous.
But the weight in my heart was greater.
I was lost. What was I doing? What did he really truly want? He would not kill me, okay, fine, but I needed to be elsewhere. A million miles from him.
He was a monster – not just an animal. Did he not see this?
Maybe he couldn’t even understand what he was?
I stared out over the ranges and forest below, at the river snaking its way into the gorge, glinting with sunlight, and yes, I despaired. Sweat stuck my T-shirt to my back, dribbled over my nape. I fanned myself with my new hat with the Carnarvon Gorge logo. This was a country I thought I could grow to love – vast and full of exciting and unknown creatures and nature, as well as sweat, and yet I was lost in a way that felt impossible to rescue myself from.
Talk to him. Begin somewhere. Pretend this is a casual chat with a friend.
Stupid idea. I tilted my head and eyed him.
A baseball cap lay beside his splayed hand, propped on the rock, earth, and grass. A pair of bought, not acquired, sunglasses shielded his eyes. His ruffled, yet short, dark hair framed his face. He’d had it cut and dyed days ago. A muscular, fit, confident man, was what most would see. His long navy shorts were incongruous – revealing as they did the hair on the calves of his legs. It turned him innocuous and normal – a potential boyfriend, a lover, a man who would help granny across the road.
The barely scuffed sports shoes were also the footwear of a dad and not a killer and torturer of women.
Isak, the conundrum.
“You want to know what anyone who knew your past would call you?” If they were asked. If they knew what I knew.
His mouth twisted, but he didn’t look at me. “I can guess. I shouldn’t have asked you. That was weak of me.” He’d whispered the last bit. Now he looked my way. “I’ll choose a word. How about—”
A scuffle of feet and the voices of two laughing boys caught my attention a second before one of them ran past, between us and the edge.
