Gail
I went out walking. Nobody knew I had gone. I was restless, like snakes writhed through my torso. I didn’t know what was wrong. Nothing bad had happened. Yet I’d been feeling like this, a little more every day, for months. I went out to feel and breathe the cold night air, hoping to freeze the poison. It was maybe 3AM. Everyone else was asleep.
She must have heard me leave. Her room was next to mine. She came out of the house and ran up behind me in the dark. “Are you going on an adventure?” she said.
“Yes,” I replied, smiling. I’d wanted to be alone, but I didn’t want to yell at her and tell her to go inside. I liked her. She was sweet, and cute, and I liked the idea of being the uncle who let her do fun things the other adults wouldn’t allow. “Wanna come?” I said.
“Yeah!” she whispered excitedly, as we passed the chicken pin. “But don’t tell Mom, ok? She’d be really mad.”
“Never,” I told her, and hoisted her onto my back. We took off toward the pond, and she told me about her dolls and their favorite kinds of food, and about what she wanted her life to be like when she grew up. She wanted horses.
“A whole stable,” she said, “Like a noble lady, with black ones and white ones and brown ones, and I’d train them every day.”
I set her down when we got to the far end of the pond and neared th forest. “I had my own horse when I was little,” I told her. She looked up at me, and in the light of the nearly full moon, I could see her eyes widen like I’d just announced I was secretly the king.
“Really?” she asked.
“Really,” I said. “His name was Lord Alfred.”
“What color was he? What happened to him?”
“He was blond, with a snowy mane. He got old. Horses don’t live as long as people.”
Her face fell. “He died?” she whispered.
“Yeah,” I said.
We walked down a narrow path, and the moon’s light was blocked by the treetops. Gail bumped up against my leg, and grabbed my hand. “Are there wolves in these woods?” she said.
“Maybe,” I said, “but they won’t bother us. There are a lot of rabbits this year, and they like those a lot better.”
“Wolves are scared of big people,” she reassured me, “that’s what Mom says. But she told me never to go out alone at night, because I’m not big yet.” She pressed closer, grasping a tiny hand-full of my trouser seam. “But they’ll be scared of you, right?”
“Yes,” I said. “Even if we see a wolf, I won’t let it hurt you.”
“Do you have your knife?”
“Yep.” I patted my pocket. Not that a little pocket knife would be much good against a wolf. But she seemed satisfied by that, and relaxed her grip.
We walked for a long time. She stretched and yawned, and I thought several times that I should bring her back. But I still felt that poisonous restlessness, and was compelled to be swallowed by the heart of the forest. I could always carry her out if she fell asleep.
Which she started to do, after not too long. She struggled to keep up, and rubbed her eyes. “Let’s go back,” she said.
“How about I carry you,” I told her.
“Ok,” she said, and reached up. The tips of her fingers barely reached my waist.
She was so light. That’s one of the things I remember most clearly about that night. It was like lifting a kitten. Her body was delicate, and soft.
She wrapped her arms around my neck, and her legs circled my waist. She squirmed to position herself so that what little weight she had rested on my hip bone, and I held her calf briefly as she adjusted. My fingers easily met my thumb, completely encircling the limb. She yawned, then leaned her head over my shoulder, nuzzling my neck and sighing. Her breath deepened almost immediately, and she slept.
I carried her for a long time, out into the forest, farther from town than I’d gone in months. The only sounds besides the quiet crunch of leaves beneath my feet were the night birds, the crickets, and her steady breathing.
The distraction of conversation gone, my mind returned to the restless feeling in my stomach. It had been growing, even while I wasn’t paying attention to it. It was much worse now than it had been when I’d left the house. It burned now, blazed, insistent, like thirst in the middle of last summer when the well was full of rot, like sex before I learned to relive myself on my own. It was an overpowering craving - but I had no idea what it was a craving for.
I came to a clearing where a tree had fallen and moonlight poured down through the hole in the canopy. I laid Gail on a soft patch of grass, covered her with my jacket, and sat down on the mossy log.
I breathed deeply, trying to calm myself. My heart was racing, and my throat was tight and burning. It had never been this bad before. I needed, so badly I needed. I tried to look into my mind, to feel carefully for the source of the desire.
But I couldn’t concentrate. I couldn’t think of anything but the sick tightness in my chest and stomach, the feeling that something huge and powerful growing inside me was choosing this moment to tear its way out of my skin.
I leaned forward, supporting my torso with my elbows on my knees, bouncing my legs and rubbing my palms together. I pressed the heels of my palms into my eyes, then dropped my head and covered my face in my hands. Silently, hoping not to wake Gail, I cried.
I felt so much like a drowning man fighting for air that I suddenly wondered whether holding my breath, as long as I possibly could, might shift my mind’s focus. Maybe, when I finally did breathe again, I’d feel relief from all of it at once. At the end of a sob, when all the air was expended, I shut my mouth and clamped my nostrils between my thumb and forefinger.
The pain in my lungs started after maybe twenty or thirty seconds. I opened my eyes, held my nose tighter, and pressed my other hand over my mouth. I saw Gail, pale and peaceful in the moonlight. The pressure in my chest increased. Gail stirred, but just to reposition her arm to cover her eyes. The intensity of the suffocation did seem to combine with the intensity of the other need, whatever it was. As my vision began to blur, it became difficult to tell the sensations apart.
Gail’s arm was so tiny. She was weak and vulnerable sleeping on the forest floor like that. I pictured the delicacy of her limbs, and imagined how they would crack, just like a twig, if she were held too tightly.
I was starting to lose consciousness, I realized, and through the fog of pain consuming my body, I imagined myself grabbing her arm - I tried briefly to push away the horrible thought, but found I had no control left over my mind - imagined myself cracking it, and the snapping, the splintering sensation beneath my hands, and then I imagined her scream -
And I released my grip on my nose and mouth, and gasped, letting all the air back into my lungs, heaving shuddering sighs in and out. Gail heard me, and lifted her head to look.
“Uncle Mateo?” said her high voice. “Are you ok?”
But I barely heard her.
The vision that had begun would not stop. It was pouring through me like the air through my lungs. Her high-pitched scream, my hand over her mouth, my grip around her neck, her heels beating helplessly against the ground, the momentum of her body as I lifted her to bash her head against the rotting trunk.
I was growing. The creature that had been trying to tear through my chest relaxed, as I became large enough to accommodate it. Expansive and powerful. Indomitable.
The craving wasn’t gone, but it was transformed. It had a name: Destruction. Death. Pain.
At last, I knew what I had to do.
I stood, and stepped toward Gail. Then I stood over her.
“Uncle Mateo?” she said again.
I leaned forward, started to put a hand over her mouth. And then I stopped, grinning with a deep joy I’d never felt before, and reached instead for her shin.
“What are you - “ she said.
And then I snapped her leg, and she shrieked, high and pure and perfect.
I dropped her leg and froze, closing my eyes, listening to the sound of her immaculate suffering. Imagining her confusion and betrayal. Imagining her terror. Imagining her pain.
And then I took the jacket I’d draped over her, grabbed her beneath both arms, and threw her at the log.
She sailed through the air, still screaming, and her face smashed against the bark with a wet thud-crack.
I lifted her by her hair, and draped her over the fallen tree, so that her ribs pressed against the bark. I drew my pocket knife, touched the tip to her side midway down her back, between two ribs. I leaned forward, feeling the resistance give way to a smooth puncture. I twisted.
The scream went on, and on, and on.
I withdrew the knife, and stabbed again. I cackled, feeling tissue tear, feeling blood trickle down my arm, feeling her struggle as I held her in place by the back of the neck.
I put my knife away. Then I pushed her harder into the tree and rolled her slowly from right to left, cracking each of her ribs, one by one.
I inhaled deeply, over and over, feeling like I was breathing fire, and with every exhale I laughed.
Then I flipped her over, thrusting my arms down on her pelvis and chest, and I heard her back snap.
I was conflicted then. I could stand back, and listen to her wails until she finally died. That would be delicious, to let it linger, to savor every last moment until the end.
But I couldn’t do it. I had waited too long, too long not even knowing what I was waiting for, and now here it was.
No more waiting.
Now.
I wrapped both of my hands around her throat, and squeezed. Her screaming cut off with her breath. And then her pale face began to darken as her features twisted.
She looked up at me with dying eyes.
I wished I could be inside her mind, then, to taste her experience directly. I had been her king. Now I was her killer. What is that like, to a six-year-old child?
And then she went still. Her eyes were open, unseeing.
I let go of her neck.
Then I lifted her head with one hand, braced the other against her chin. And with one sharp twist, I snapped her neck.
I moaned, feeling the vibration of the sound through my body, feeling more alive than I’d ever imagined possible.
I straightened up, radiating elation like heat from a barn fire. I just stood there, for - I don’t know how long, maybe five minutes, maybe an hour - letting the newly released predation wash over me, through me, letting it sink into every part of me.
However long it was, those were the happiest moments of my life. I still dream about them now and then, and for a heavenly time, I believe it’s all just happened, and I am free.
Eventually, I threw her body into some bushes, picked up my jacket, and left.












