Fetal Bait Apocalypse: 3 Collections in 1

Today, the snow fell in flakes as large as moths, knee deep, and each step a struggle. Pearce trudged through it, only fifty feet from the road, when a semi roared by, flushing out an eight-point buck from a stand of old white pine. He lifted his rifle, aimed and fired, but the buck zigzagged through the snow. Pearce fired again. A piece of hide burst from the buck’s shoulder, but the animal didn’t go down. It leapt and sprinted, leaving a bright red trail of blood in the snow.

Pearce stumbled after it, lifting his knees high in the air. Jesus. Sweat ran down his face and soaked the collar of his coat. The blood trail turned the snow into a pink slush.

Pearce’s temples pounded. His vision blurred. He sucked in lungful of icy air. He wasn’t the man he used to be. Not since Mary died. But he wiped his eyes clear. Sharply breathed the cold air in through his nose.

There. A tan and white mass trembling over the snow.

The buck stood with its head low to the ground, looking at him. White mist poured from its nostrils and rose from the blood that trickled from its wound. Must’ve done a little more than nicked him, Pearce thought. The buck’s front legs buckled, but it remained standing. Pearce raised his rifle. Took a deep breath.

A wrecking ball slammed into his chest.

Pearce dropped to his knees in the deep, wet snow. His gun fell uselessly beside him. Heart attack. I’m having a -

The deer staggered into an island of tamarack and collapsed onto its side.

Pearce clutched at his collar. The pain stretched down his arms and up through his jaw. Rays of November sun bit at his eyes. I’m going to die. He heard the wheezing of the deer, even over the sound of blood pounding in his ears. He heard flakes of snow touch the earth, felt them melt on his skin. He waited for the harsh yellow of the sun to fill him and carry him away. It would be okay. If he could be with Mary again…

He waited. The deer’s wheezing stopped.

He waited. The silence was magical. His breathing slowed. The pain melted away. He blinked. Wiped away the sweat that dripped into his eyes.

Why aren’t I dead?

He struggled to stand. Used his rifle as a crutch and got to his feet. The world teetered, started to turn bright white, but he bit down hard on the tip of his tongue, and the forest became a crystal clear contrast of black tree trunks stitched into a background of thick, white snow.

“You could have died.” Dr. Leroy sat next to Pearce and pushed his glasses up off his nose. “Is bagging a deer worth your life?”

Pearce didn’t answer. How could he explain his reasons for staying with the dead deer, gutting and cleaning it there in the tamarack despite the trip-hammer of his own heart, the flutters of muscle up and down his arm? How could he explain dragging the buck’s remains through the deep snow a half-mile to his truck?

“If you would’ve come in right away, you’d have been right as rain in a few months. But since you waited a week before coming in, your heart is infarcted.” The doctor pronounced the last word with disgust. “You’ve got a dead spot on it the size of a quarter.”

Bigger than that, Pearce thought. Six months pregnant. Mary had been six months pregnant.

The doctor wrote a handful of prescriptions; beta-blockers, ace-inhibitors, cholesterol reducers, Nitroglycerin. Pearce winced at the list.

Dr. Leroy sighed. “You have to take it easy for a while. No hunting, no shoveling. I don’t want you to change a goddamn light bulb unless you have to. You need rest. Okay? Take the meds I’m prescribing. Come back in a week.”

The days passed slowly. Pearce missed the guys at his construction job. They sent him a get-well card, called now and then to shoot the shit. But it wasn’t the same. To be here. Shut in here, an invalid, surrounded by all these memories of her, of Mary. Her essence seeped from the walls, the furniture. It was comforting, but sometimes it was too much.

He wrapped the tanned hide of the deer around him and sat outside on his front step. He’d been ready to die out there in the woods. When he stared into that dying deer’s eyes, he’d wanted to take its place. He pulled the hide tight around his body, held it close to his face and breathed in its musty odor.

A shadow spilled over him. He looked up, embarrassed in his intimacy with the deer hide. A woman hovered over him holding a black plastic bag.

She pointed back at the house across the street. Her mouth was an awkward line, her cheeks puffy and flush. Even before she pointed to the Bolt house, Pearce knew she was related. The same face, the same posture, the same lack of style. A daughter, perhaps?

She mumbled something, her mouth barely moving.

Pearce leaned forward. “Pardon?”

“Ankoo. Ma say ankoo.”

Thank you.

Again, she pointed back to the Bolt house. She reached in the bag and pulled out a blanket. Shook it open. Panels of colorful fabric exploded on Pearce’s lap. A quilt.

No. It was more than a quilt.

Pearce’s pupils dilated at the menage of threads and fabrics. He’d never seen anything like it. Entire dioramas had been needle-pointed and stitched, so many different materials snipped and shaped and sewn onto it. The detail was amazing. Pearce easily recognized himself in some of the scenes.

Silks, satins, cottons, denim. Pearce became lost in it. Feathers. Dried flowers. Seeds. Bits of bark. What other materials had been used? He saw himself with his rifle, stalking a deer, and goddamn, if it didn’t look like the very deer he now wore — there was even a spot of red on the deer’s upper shoulder where it had been shot, a trail of blood sewn into the goose-down snow.

The woman hovered over him expectantly.

“Oh,” Pearce said. Looking up from the thing felt like being pulled from quicksand. “Thanks. I — this is too much.”

She shook her head. “Ankoo,” she said, pointing at him.

“Okay.”

She held out her hand. Pearce shook it, her grip light and clumsy. He watched her leave. When he turned back to the quilt, his heart froze.

Mary.

Mary sitting at an easel, painting.

Her favorite hobby. Her passion. And here, on a panel in the middle of the quilt, in stunning detail, was Mary. Painting.

Wearing the clothes she wore the day she died.

The day a drunk driver drove into her head-on.

Pearce held the quilt up to his nose and breathed in. Jesus, her smell. The smell that had faded slowly, agonizingly, from her pillow until Pearce thought he would never smell her again, never remember the fragrance of her, but here, now, on this quilt, it was her, her smell, and Jesus, oh Jesus, what is happening to me?

He spent that night wrapped inside of it. Although its surface was decorated with a multitude of textures, the underbelly was a smooth salmon-colored silk. He took in deep breaths of Mary, afraid that the scent would wear off and he’d be left with only the memory once again. He wanted that memory to be strong.

She filled his mind—

—painting in overalls — Osh Kosh B’Gosh — and nothing else. Concentrating on the canvas, the paint, the brush. He’d slide his hand over her shoulder, over her breast, roll her nipple between his thumb and forefinger, and she’d giggle, sweet and girlish, but she wouldn’t stop moving that brush, spreading the paint on the canvas, her eyes as focused as laser beams.

And—