deadelk

As if I'd ever. I've seen worse through landscapes, scarred faces and torched hands. Melting, melting skin. I guess they were more convinced that the elk's death was of natural causes, as if the metal chunk lodged in it's heart just formed there. I ate it anyway, and threw it up of course. I'm sick on sitting on this log everyday. I keep looking at the skyline waiting for something the change, for a tree to fall, for that eagle's nest to fall. It's been the same. Nothing grows, nothing falls. Even after the storms, which is why I started checking. When the storm happened, the one that killed the dog, and that lead to the dead of the elk, I expected something to happen to the forest around us. Winds so hard they tore the shed down, and yet none of the trees moved. I don't care if they're giants, I'm better than them, right? They don't understand math, they don't have pets just so that they can stare at them. I have a blueprint better than them, fundementally. They mock me, just standing there. Next storm I'll outlast them out there, no matter who tries to stop me. I still think about that elk. It looked so sad when it's heart failed. It's body is still in the freezer. I look at it every now and then. There's a pattern in the veins, maybe a message of sorts. I think it's death reminds me of things. Father gave me one of it's teeth and while I didn't care at first, I think having it in my pocket keeps me reminded of things. Maybe eventually I'll decode it's message.

About

All of the "dead" stories have something in common, I go about writing them in a similar way. This is the first one, and you can tell there's a lot of things about this character that are just kind of undefined later or now, a lot about the world too. She is repulsed by the concept of hunting and killing something. She thinks that people act like the killing of animals is as heart-breaking and unavoidable as a natural death. She doesn't like how stagnant things are either, perhaps that's a driving force later on. Despite this, she still undermines life, treating anything non-human as below her.

This sort of push-pull is seen at the end too, when she says that the death of the elk reminds her of things, and yet wants to keep being reminded of things. To make it clear, she didn't like that the elk died. "Decode it's message" could mean that she wants to know why she feels this way.