Savage Beasts

by John F. D. Taff

  The boy that was Hayden lived in the back stretch of a rural town. He had his mother, his love of nature, his dog. The dog was a yellow Labrador. She was a gift from his older brother, Jason, who lived in the city, who visited when he could. These visits were sporadic, sometimes long and sometimes short. They opened gaps and stretches of time when there was sunshine, freedom. An arm around his shoulders, a voice laughing in his ear. A time when the mother faded into the abstract. She was never abstract when Hayden was left with her. She was a force, solid and unyielding. She watched television all day, she ate. In the living room, her space consumed the couch, her edges expanding into it. Her eyes were hard, grey. They glinted with secret, sullen hungers.

  When Jason was there, these hungers couldn’t be filled. When Jason was gone, they were. The boy that was Hayden knew her scent: salt-sick, sweat and meat. Ground into his nose, against his tongue. He knew the weight of her hands, fingers wrenching handfuls of his hair. Those hands were heavier and harder than they looked, weighing on him, pressing down on him. Pulling him to his knees.

  The dog he loved, the dog his brother gave him, was kept chained up outside because she tended to growl at the mother. In the past, she’d tried to bite. Puncture scars peppered the mother’s ankle from a time when the dog once succeeded. The boy had to pay the price for those marks, over and over again. The mother shuffled outside sometimes, swaying on heavy steps, to kick the dog when she thought it was making too much noise. She wore boots when she did this. The dog would yelp, back arched, head down, trembling. The dog would try to step away, was stopped by the chain. Hayden watched this from the door, from the window. He watched, pretending not to watch. He was washing dishes, he was cleaning up. His legs trembling, urging him to run outside, to stop this. His heart writhing in sick, unsteady beats. Later, when it was safe, he put his arms around his dog, who licked his face, who met him with joy. As though none of it had happened. Running his hands down her body, she winced when he accidentally touched her wounds.

  One summer, Jason came back home. The sky opened, light came in. The brothers spent the days together, fishing, walking in the woods. They took the dog with them, her tail sweeping against their legs as they stepped, her fur brightening gold under the sun. The mother was left at the house, the mother was left alone to her television set and her food. One afternoon the clouds rolled in. Storm winds blew stinging pelts of warm rain onto the old house. The brothers took the dog to the barn, and tied her there, safe out of the rain while they drove into town. The drive was a short one. They wouldn’t be long.

  When they returned, the mother was in the bath with the door open. She was squeezed into the trough of water, a slab of rolled skin scalded pink. She glared up at them, eyes hard grey. They closed the door.

  When they got back to the barn, the dog was gone. There was a pool of blood at the end of the open chain, soaking into the ground.

  * * *

  The suburbs are thinning out. We pass clusters of houses silhouetted on the hills. I see snatches of lawn, green and gold patchwork divided by walls. I see houses still in shadow, lights on in some of the windows. They’ll go out, soon.

  In my hands, I’m holding the model of a small yellow Labrador in a blue bonnet. She’s lying under a tree, her head resting on her paws. She’s thin, her ribs a series of delicate ridges, her fur pulled out in places. The furless patches are dabbed with pale red paint, lacquered over. It’s only if you look into the face that you’ll see she’s dead.

  I turn the figurine over in my hands. I turn to Hayden. “If you could be any kind of animal, which one would you be?”

  Hayden’s eyes harden, grey. They glint with rabid hungers. “I would be a wolf,” he says.

  * * *

  When I ask Hayden to pull over so I can pee, we glide off the shoulder and stop the car on the verge. Getting out, I smell clean mountain air, pine needles, wild water. The wind moves and I catch an undertone, sweet and sick. Ripe. Something rotting somewhere nearby.

  This is the one thing my childhood gave me that I’ve never been able to recover from. My discomfort at doing things rough. Brushing my teeth with my finger, sitting by fires with mosquitoes singing around me. Squatting behind bushes. Things Hayden has tried to teach me.

  He’s grinning at me now, watching my face. “You’re afraid?” he asks.

  “No,” I say, sarcastic.

  We laugh.

  I turn and walk into the wild.

  When I get back to the car, a trickle of urine bleeding moisture into the cotton strip of my underwear, Hayden has cleared some space off the backseat. He opens the door for me with a wicked smile.

  “After you,” he says.

  * * *

  Seated up front again, we pull the car back onto the road, and now beside me he’s calm as still water. He’s the late morning sun streaming smooth, warm light on the road ahead.

  Hayden and me, we like to do it from behind. Bestial, real. I’ve got a fresh graze on my elbow from fighting to keep myself stable on the narrow seat, with Hayden shoving and grappling for balance over me. My bra strap is twisted. I yank at it through my shirt, trying to pull it straight.

  The rest stops we occasionally pass now offer hamburgers, hot dogs, coffee. The signs, more and more, offer things with names like OLD STYLE, HOMEMADE or FARM FRESH.

  The hours melt by, the colours thicken.

  After a while he leans forward, points. “You see that mountain there? That blue line against the horizon?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s where we’re going,” he says. And smiles.

  * * *

  We’re on the dirt roads now. The sun that we drove towards has swept over us, and is lowering itself behind. We’ve passed country cottages, opulent estates, one-road towns with crumbling hotels and barred up liquor stores. Roads half overgrown, lanes blocked by fences, cattle grids stuttering underneath the tyres.

  I’m thinking of my evening dress and feeling a little ridiculous. I’m thinking of his mother, the woman I will meet. I’m thinking of the hours ahead, knowing that the warmth of the sun is behind us. That we’re moving deeper into darkness, and cold.

  I’m asking myself if I’m afraid yet, but I know I’m not. I’m not.

  An hour later we pass through a broken gate between crumbling walls, and the car jerks and rolls up the dirt road. Hayden, tense beside me, says, “My mom, she doesn’t like to be left alone for very long.”

  Then we turn up the bend, and for the first time I see the house. Wood and battered brick, windows thick with dust. It’s beauty hidden by neglect. It stares down at us with a stubborn strength in its presence. Against the hills, the sky is charcoal grey. Black with far-off storms.

  We leave our bags in the car and walk up the overgrown drive. He takes my hand in his as we approach.

  Inside, the house is small, the carpets worn. Tables are cluttered with empty beer cans, overflowing ashtrays. Against it all, in my mind’s eye, I see my own childhood home. French windows, polished door handles. There’s no doubt that Hayden needs me here. The place could use a woman with my tastes.

  “Let me show you,” Hayden says, holding my hands in both of his. He leads me back outside, round the house, and to the barn.

  “Are you afraid?” he asks.

  “I’m not.”

  He draws back the door.

  In the dim light, I can just make out the pig. She’s large and pink, her legs and forearms raw and bloody from moving on the rough floor on all fours. When she moves away from us, loose skin slides over her body in thick folds. She is emaciated beneath. Light slits in, reveals her eyes: small, grey, bloodshot. They fix on me. The look in them is broken, muted. She has a thick chain around her neck. Too heavy, maybe. It sits half-embedded in the folds of her neck, the flesh swollen around the links in blooms of tortured red. It wears her down, hangs her head close to the floor.

  I crouch down, smiling at her.

  “You believe me now?” Hayden asks, sinking to his ha
unches beside me, arms leant on his knees.

  “I always did,” I tell him. “You know that.”

  The pig grunts, a guttural, choking sound, as Hayden stands, moves toward her. He picks up the end of the chain and yanks it.

  She gags, her eyes shifting, fluttering shut. They leak.

  “Mom,” he says, “this is my fiancée, Kate. Kate, this is my mom.”

  She lowers her head, the shoulders tremble. A line of silver drool suddenly loosens, makes a slow, lazy web from her jowls to the floor.

  I look around the barn. At the trough of tepid water set up against the wall, the worn mattress stained black and yellow. The bucket of potato peelings, mouldy bread, spoiling meat. The other bucket in the corner, sending waves of vile stench.

  “Don’t be scared,” Hayden says.

  “I’m not.”

  * * *

  Back at the house, Hayden turns the power on. Together we vacuum, polish, clean.

  “My brother,” Hayden says, “really needs to work on his housekeeping skills.”

  “He needs a woman.” I laugh.

  Hayden smiles and stops to kiss me.

  While we clean, I sometimes think I hear sounds coming from the barn. High, shrieking, trying to make words. When I stop to listen, Hayden shrugs.

  “She does that sometimes.”

  Hayden says Jason will get back sometime tomorrow morning, giving us this first night alone. Tonight I’ll bring out the bottle of wine we packed, the glasses. We’ll sit on the veranda, in the quiet of the country, and talk and drink. Later, we’ll slip into the freshly made bed and make love, at peace in the chaos of our joined worlds. We’ll wake and have breakfast, we’ll do some more work on the house. Right before my mother comes, I’ll put on my evening dress. I’ll take out my makeup, shadow my eyes, paint my lips bright red. I told Hayden I wanted there to be something theatrical about this, something beautiful. My sense of dazzle lifting his rustic tastes. My mother will like that, I think. She’ll air-kiss me and tell me I’m beautiful. Then we’ll take her for a walk to the barn. We’ll show her the place for the pigs and cows.

  “Do you think your mother will find the place okay?” Hayden asks me.

  If you could be any kind of animal, which one would you be?

  I take out my cell phone, pull up her number. “I’ll give her a call,” I tell him. “We don’t want her to get lost.”

  Karen Runge

  Musical Inspiration for “Going Home”

  This takes some explaining.

  I’ve been a huge Nine Inch Nails fan since I was thirteen. My brother and I were in a music store, and he called me over to the listening section, clapped a set of headphones on me and forced me to listen to The Downward Spiral. And I was mesmerised. I bought the CD (instead of him, which annoyed him to no end) and never looked back. Early NIN (I liked it when it was harder) took me all the way through my teens and into my mid-twenties. After that, life sort of took over, my interests varied and while I have all the music, I seldom listen to it anymore.

  April 2014, my fiancées birthday. One of my voracious passions (aside from industrial music and no-holds-barred horror) is… food. Particularly, making it and feeding it to other people. I bake at every opportunity, and this time I made a huge two-tier cake for my man’s birthday. Three people were celebrating their birthdays together that night, including my man (all these Martian Rams!), so I was sure to make the thing massive. It took hours to make and ice and decorate, and it was a serious pain in the neck transporting it to the bar. But I managed and was super proud of the result.

  The party was at a bar some friends of ours own, and it was this huge mess of people—some we knew, some we didn’t. We were all downing Long Island Iced Teas and rabble-rousing as usual, while the cake sat in the kitchen at the back. At midnight someone called, “Cake time!”

  I couldn’t wait for the big reveal.

  And it was…apple pie.

  Someone else had made an apple pie for the birthday, and my cake—my massive labour of love—sat forgotten in the back. Okay, I wasn’t completely sober at this point, so give me some room for drunken melodrama.

  Okay, I was devastated.

  Eventually my cake was carted out and shared and there were all these apologetic “thank yous” and “it’s lovelys” and all that stuff that, sincere or not, did make me feel better about the whole thing.

  Except for…my man. “What’s the big deal?” he’d said earlier. “It’s just a cake!”

  It felt like such a slap in the face.

  And yes, okay, melodrama and all that.

  I told myself to let it go, maybe it isn’t really a big deal, who cares. I got it together pretty quickly. On with the show. But past all that, I was furious with him.

  Knowing he was in trouble, at some stage he slunk over to the music booth, and the next thing I knew my favourite Nine Inch Nails album was playing. The second track on The Downward Spiral, “Piggy.” He looked at me and laughed. Okay, he cared about how I felt. This was for me. Peace offering. All forgiven.

  The recipe here is domesticity + rage + sour love + “Piggy” pounding beautiful chaos in my ears = inspiration for “Going Home.”

  It took a few more listens and some focus on the lyrics, and the parameters of a story came clear. What else, but a happy young couple caught in chaos, falling joyfully into mutually destructive, animal-obsessed depravity?

  So this is how this story came into being, courtesy of well-timed Trent Reznor and a twisted moment of romance.

  The latest pop star sent over from the label, E-Z Mike, turned on his digital recorder, set it on the table between us. He looked at me and adjusted the bill of his custom-made baseball hat with its jewel-encrusted E-Z logo.

  Overhead, the California sky was cloud free, reflecting its blue nothingness down onto the acre-expanse of swimming pool that took up this corner of my backyard. Bought the place years ago with the money I made from my third album, Trust in Nothing. Used to belong to Warren Beatty or Al Pacino or someone. Can't remember now. Haven't even been in every room yet.

  “Just want to remember alls you tell me, dude. You're like…the ninja of pop, ya know? You got an ass-ton of hits in like no time at all,” he said, trying to phrase the question so that it sounded somewhere between an insult and having his tongue planted firmly up my ass. “More than The Beatles, Elvis, Michael. How's that shit even possible, dude?”

  So, this is what I told that greasy kid sitting across the table from me, on the other side of a spread catered by the label: fresh sushi, bottles of wine and champagne, crystal flutes, dishes of sliced fruit, and a mound of peeled shrimp and cracked lobster claws, most of which would remain completely untouched. I don't think E-Z Mike was a sushi kinda guy anyway.

  “It's simple. I can do it to you, give it to you, infect you with just a word or two, just the first few notes.

  “It's a small world...

  “And it's already there, isn’t it? Slithering through your mind, grinding slowly to life like a wheezy music box. Building up speed as it races through your brain, pushing all other thoughts aside. Growing louder and louder.”

  “Are you saying that you make your stuff into ear—”

  “Yeah, there's a trendy new internet term for it now, but we'll get to how entirely appropriate that is soon enough,” I said, cutting him off.

  I smiled, tugged at the hood of the robe I wore, pulled it lower on my head, then told him my story.

  * * *

  I met Linus Paulson before I hit it big, in the little café that I sometimes hauled my battered guitar to and played songs in the clearing by the grimy front window. I'd seen him before, huddled at the back near the kitchen door, his chin nearly touching the table.

  He was older, somewhat more unkempt than the other patrons, but when seen as part of the crowd he was just another hipster, with his trilby hat and tight jeans and dark, layered clothes. The unshaven beard and unkempt hair. The affected, preening air of someone who wante
d people to think he was homeless for no other reason than he thought he was too cool for this world.

  As I learned later, he was a sad, frightened man, distracted. He loved music, ate and breathed and lived music. It would take me a while to discover that the very thing that sustained him had also damaged him.

  * * *

  I was putting my guitar back into its case, snapping it closed, when Lisa came over. She put her hand on my wrist, squeezed a little.

  “That was effin' awesome, bro,” she said, swiping her hand nervously across her cheek and up into her spikey, elfin hairdo. “That last song…whoa. I'll be hearing that one all night.”

  I smiled. “Thanks, Lisa.” I propped the guitar case up against the wall. I needed something to drink, something to eat. The café fed me when I played, and it was an entirely cool arrangement.

  “You wanna order something now?”

  I looked out the window onto the street. It was raining, and the lights of the storefronts and the cars streaked across the watery pavement, squiggles of white and red that pulsed in candy-cane ribbons. I knew it was now colder outside than it had been earlier. I could feel the air creep in from under the front door, and I realized that I hadn't exactly dressed for the weather.

  “Any of that soup left?”

  “The barley vegetable? Sure.”

  “How about some of that and maybe a hummus wrap?” I asked. Yeah, it was that kind of place.

  I sat down at an empty table right in front of where I'd been playing. It was about eight in the evening now, and the place was filled with diners, local college kids sucking off the free Wi-Fi tit, people coming in for a cup of coffee or a bottle of some trendy microbrew after an early movie.

  Lisa returned with a glass of water.

  “Thanks,” I said, sloshing the cold water into my mouth, sending it down to cool my scratchy throat. As I lowered the empty glass, I saw him.