Hunt's End

She was visited late at night by - no other word could be used to describe their mediocre slouches draped in hazard vests and utility clothing - forest bureaucrats. A body was found, dead of unknown cause, identified possibly as her father? Could she come, paperwork, a boring night pondering the body under harsh lighting until she could be let free. It was the middle of hunting season, his body was draped wounded over his rifle, blaze orange stained darkly vomit colored in the red seeping from the gashes across his body that struck him prone, leaves and first traces of frost already beginning to take him to dirt as he was found terminating a trail of footprints through frozen mud from his truck.

This was one of the times of year, the transition between seasons, where the air smelled sharply as it did at no other time. The autumn was coming to a close, the last leaves blown off to whistle on the ground as the last of the animals began to settle in anticipation of the oncoming snows. Gunshots rang out through the forest as she sat outside the gas station, still unslept from the previous night of questioning. Antlers dragged, cutting furroughs behind the corpse dragged by waist-harness through the woody undergrowth, twigs snapped as the party stepped in a line parading to the butcher’s. A pair of men stepped past her out of the gas station, shouting obscene jokes, cracking open beers as they stepped into their pickup, speeding off down the highway to find a two-lane access road to venture off from.

She was able to take home a single souvenir, her father’s glasses. Small, round lenses stuck in wireframes, the glass was cracked from the rim inwards, a few chunks on the outer edge having already fallen out. Obviously not shatterproof, as sentimental as he was. However he was struck dead, he fell on his face, the glasses possibly striking a rock or the gun that fell before him, flattened under his body. That was obviously evidence, no weapon is ever innocent, even if its possession should be incidental to the investigation at hand. She went to sleep on the couch as the sun began to assert itself, straining to make pale-grey light through the thick cloudcover that blanketed the entire month of November.

There were secrets that she had left unspoken during the previous years of cohabitation. Now, with even the night noiseless, she could rest easy and let the pact flourish, as the other party came out to bear upon her. Lying in the baths he had always only reluctantly allowed, the spiders emerged to speak to her. Across and within the water, one mother to a daughter, it tapped legs on her skin. She got out and dried herself and promised further meetings, looking forward to a beautiful dawn of their interiors.

She was downstairs to uncover some fetishized artifacts of the bank’s desire when she discovered the clock. There, amidst the accumulated junk of outdoor gear and auto parts she couldn’t help but find accessory to her father’s death, a clock stopped at some occult time, the second hand ticking the same strike over and over. Should it reach the hour, the intended function was the sound off, screeching synthesized birdcalls corresponding to each of the twelve numbers. In service of her liquidation papers, she searched too close to it, bumping some adjacent pile of clothing to release a small black spider, purple with the fog of the bathtub. The clock strained, against some weight behind it. From its wall, tacked into the yellowed drywall, she yanked it free, letting it clatter to the ground.

Gouged into the house, a crevice of permafrost brambled through with throned spikes and roots, holding the desiccated corpse crumpled, clenching into himself. She met his eyes, finally in peace. He wasn’t going away, not what of him mattered. He was harmless now, eyes darting in wild fear as the spiders weaving ever tighten his wooden bonds met their sister at the tip of her painted nail.