Fetal Bait Apocalypse: 3 Collections in 1

—casting a fly-rod on the Firehole River on that trip to Yellowstone, the grace of her casts something uncatchable on film, because it included everything around her, the air, the current, the sparkle of sun at the point where her fly kissed the river’s surface.

And—

—six months pregnant, making lists of girl names, rubbing her hands lovingly over the swell of her belly, her eyes lighting up like stadium lights when she felt those first kicks — ‘Here, feel.’ She made Pearce listen, put his head on her abdomen, rubbed his hair until he felt it, felt that tiny foot or hand knock him a good one in the cheek. That was all Pearce knew of the daughter that was never born. That was the last time he talked to his wife of eight years, unless you counted later that evening when he identified her body at the morgue. “Yes, that’s Mary,” he whispered to the coroner as he held her lifeless hand.

And this was Mary; being there when he needed her, wanted her, just her presence enough to make him happy.

Morning. Pearce rolled out of bed and looked across the street, the quilt still wrapped around him. Black patches of windows on the dark red siding of the Bolt house stared blankly back at him.

He dressed. Folded the quilt, slid it in a garbage bag, donned a parka and boots, and walked over a starched blanket of snow to the old woman’s house. He knocked on her door.

Ms. Bolt opened. Struggled with a smile.

Pearce held out the bag. “I can’t accept this.”

Ms. Bolt looked at the bag, but made no move to take it. “Come in,” she said. Her mouth hardly moved, her lips a straight line, her left eye shut, her right eye open partway. She was small and frail, her knit pink sweater worn thin in spots.

Pearce hesitated.

“Please,” Ms. Bolt said.

Pearce stepped into her house. He momentarily forgot about the bag he held.

Color dripped everywhere, splashed in patches on the walls, on the furniture. It disoriented him for a moment, and he hesitated in the foyer and gaped at the quilts spread over the living room — over the walls, the furniture, the floor. Everywhere.

Ms. Bolt cleared off a wooden chair. “It keeps me busy,” she said. “Please, have a seat. And please — call me Eugenia.”

“You’ve done all these yourself?”

She tilted her chin toward the ceiling and regarded him down the bridge of her nose. “Angela and I. You met her?”

The ankoo girl.

“Yes. Your daughter?”

She nodded.

Pearce’s eyes roved.

Colorful, intricate needlepoint. Dyed pieces of cloth arranged in wild geometries. Fields of flowers. Orgies of fabrics. Self-contained worlds of cotton and thread and silk and batting, all of them different, all of them intense.

“What is it you want?” Eugenia asked.

Pearce realized he still held the bag in his hand. He came here to give it back, but now — “I don’t want anything.”

He noticed the image of a bird, made of tiny black and white squares and triangles hidden in the quilts, its head turned to the side, its visible eye a shiny fleck of obsidian. It was everywhere, like a trademark.

His days of boredom, of loneliness suddenly weighed heavily on him, and even as he sat there, he felt it crushing him. He sighed. Maybe there was something he wanted. “Can you teach me? Teach me how you do this?”

She scrutinized him with her right eye. “Why?”

He remembered Dr. Leroy—

No hunting. No shoveling. No…

He shrugged. “Because I can’t do anything else.”

She gave him a list of materials. Simple things. Needles. Threads. Fabrics. Batting.

“Must all be done by hand. No sewing machine. Only by hand.”

She started him out with a simple quilt. An easy two-foot by two-foot square divided into sixteen six-inch squares. She guided him through the process. “You must listen. Pay attention. Remember.”

Sometimes Angela worked with him instead of Eugenia. Angela, who rarely talked, rarely smiled, rarely looked at him. But if he got stuck on something, she silently took his hand in hers and guided it through the correct motions. Sometimes, her soft, silken hands lingered on his and massaged his stiff knuckles.

He was slow. Clumsy. Yet he was consistent. Each project grew progressively harder. He worked with different fabrics, different textures, ones he’d never imagined used in quilts.

Weeks passed. Months. His house became cluttered with scraps of material, thread, works-in-progress. It wasn’t just the feel of the needle piercing the fabric that made him continue, or the way the quilt glacially spread a comforting warmth over his lap. There was something more. A quilt had a front, a back, an inside. Three dimensions. Something tangible. Something you could see, feel, hold.

The winter turned frigid. A crystalline silence spread over Pearce’s street. Calls from friends grew infrequent, almost non-existent. But he hardly noticed. His rough, callused fingers grew deft, manipulating the needle and thread smoothly, precisely. He’d never been more focused. The walls of his house, the entire world, melted away as he worked, his fingers moving in a ceaseless, meditative rhythm.

One night, there came a soft knock at his door. Pearce ignored it at first, his fingers coaxing a needle a thread through a circle of thick leather. The knock came again, as softly as the first time, but now Pearce put down his needle and thread, his patch of leather, and threw on a shirt and sweat pants. He opened the door, the cold air sending shivers through his body.

Angela stood there, a forlorn smile streaked with thick lipstick spread across her face. She stepped inside, stepped past Pearce, turned and stared at him, that pitiful smile stuck there.

Maybe it was a way to pretend, to go back in time, blot out the present and pretend. Maybe it was the pent-up loneliness, the longing that allowed him to accept Angela’s outstretched hand, soft and dry, let himself be pulled to his bedroom, let her hand slide inside the waistband of his sweats and grab hold of him.

Maybe it was a hundred maybes, but he let her wrap her body over his, fall back onto the bed and pull him onto her.

A dry rasp escaped her throat. Her limbs frantically tugged at him, wound around him.

She was smooth, but dry. She bucked at him, and he thrust into her, the friction almost painful, turning his skin raw until he lost himself, becoming a wet oasis in her dryness. She left him on the bed staring at the ceiling, wondering if he’d dreamt the whole thing, the tears in his eyes glistening like shiny needles.

No. This wasn’t right. He got up. Pulled on a pair of jeans, a sweatshirt, his hunting boots.

He crossed the street, the cold penetrating his clothing, his skin, turning his blood to slush. He stood at the Bolt’s front door, his breath spilling from him, fickle and ghost-like. He didn’t knock. Instead, he circled through the dry snow to the back of the house. Everything was dark, save for a single shaded window that glowed with a soft, amber light. There was a narrow space between the shade and the frame that was wide enough for Pearce to see inside, wide enough for him to see—

Angela’s skin fall off.

Her back to him, her shoulders slumped, her head folded forward, one hand tugged at her face, and—

—her skin fell off.

Sloughed off in one piece like a loose dress, catching a moment on her hips, then continuing on to the floor.

What was left was a framework of yellowish bones, speckled with black mold. Inside the ribcage, something