He hadn’t seen another of his kind in many moons, since she stopped living. Her chestnut fur, the smell of pawpaw and dandelion. Her body curved with his child. She was taken by the sickness. He’d held her head in his lap and cried for the sickness to take him instead. He should have been the one delirious with fever, gasping for breath.
The men came more often now, desperate to find him and the glory that would follow. Camouflage, cameras, rifles slung across their backs, beating sticks against trees, whooping. The men had brought the sickness. They always left things behind: cans smelling of rotten fruit, white smoking sticks, thin metal fingers from their guns. Other things that could not be seen.
He rested his massive, leathery feet in the creek. The minnows skipped through the cool water as if they were happy. A squirrel climbed an oak, pine needles rustled. The smell of fall coming. He tried to take in all he could in these moments, since she could not—a penance. Despite its cruelty, the world can be incredible. She spoke like that, because fire did not smolder directly below the surface of everything she did.
It was not tradition to bury the dead, but he had dug a hole and covered it in rocks, the heaviest in the forest. His muscles were pulled to their limit under the weight. The men often visited the spot, felt the importance of what had happened there, speculated: a ritual, the work of witches, aliens, or his kind. She’d tried to go further into the woods, to be alone when she died, as was their nature. He had not let her.
He pulled his feet from the water and shook himself to his full height. He sniffed—sweat, meat, metal. The men were near, six of them this time. A few strides through ferns and ivy, and he met them. A few swipes and they were down, before they had time to remember to draw their weapons or run. His foot on a man’s chest, bearing down. The man’s eyes pleaded, like hers as her last breath escaped. She had not understood: He’d wanted to keep her from further suffering. But, an unforgivable effort to quell his own suffering. She had not understood: They were monsters, but he was monstrous. The crack of ribs beneath his foot. Penance.
Stephanie Frazee’s work is forthcoming from Sundress Publications and has appeared in Midwest Weird, Variant Literature, Pithead Chapel, Marrow Magazine, Stone Circle Review, The Evergreen Review, and elsewhere. She is online at stephaniefrazee.com and @stephieosaurus.bsky.social.