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It all started one September morning, weeks after Joseph had released me from my duties. Maybe a day or so after Joseph had found a new Faith; on the cold, worn floor outside my door lay a dead thing. Cleanly gutted, its fur was soft against my fingers, flesh pliable, its ears long and pure. A lingering warmth still resided in it.
Jacob. It started as a hoarse whisper between me and God. A prayer of sorts, or an incantation. I stood there, staring, my stomach tight. I thought about wringing its neck, just to hear it snap. That gift filled the space left behind by Joseph, if not fully, then at least partially, momentarily. I wasn’t forgotten, cast aside for my indiscretions.
Above the sink in the kitchen where a draft slithered in past the window panes, I pulled off its skin, cut it to pieces, tossed the bones into a battered bowl. The Judges took my offering gladly, while the rabbit slowly cooked. I stood there, in the frozen yard, stray hairs stuck to my clothes. I asked the whys, the hows, from God, from the creatures around me. The Judges had no clear answers for me; only hungry licks between my fingers, annoyed huffs against my palms. And God, well, He said nothing at all.
Again and again, I would wake up to a dead thing outside my door. Rabbits, mostly. Once a week, before the waters froze, there was always a large trout, neatly wrapped in wax paper. Prepared, for me, so I could just cook it, then eat it whole, fish bones and all. I didn’t know then, why I chose to grind those little sharp things between my molars until my gums bled. It didn’t matter.
The dead things were always clean and flawless. Gutted and scaled and neatly packaged. Sometimes, their entrails would be replaced with herbs, and white flowers, peppers, or things I did not recognize. I ate those too.
The rabbits’ fur turned from brown to white as snow swallowed the mountains, the rivers, and the lakes, and darkness encompassed the world. They became more elusive, I thought, because sometimes days went by without one. And although I did eat, I grew hungry during those days, waiting for Jacob’s gifts. Hungry for something more. There was a void behind my teeth, so deep in my throat that I couldn’t reach it. No matter how hard I tried to pry it open, to tear it loose, I just couldn’t.
Once, when I first cut off all my hair, and bound my chest, he brought me a whole gutted Whitetail, mouth filled with dried cranberries, a wreath made of bright, white flowers around its head. Eyes dull. I wondered what those eyes had seen before their fire was snuffed out, easily, I assumed.
That one, I hesitated to eat. I knew I’d never get used to the vile taste, but I tried. The bones, I fed to the Judges, like I always did. I watched them splinter the femurs, radials, watched them eat those little metacarpus and phalanxes, like they were kibble. It sounded like gravel being ground up. Crunch. I heard the sound for days afterward, echoing in my head.
The dead things kept coming. And coming. I ate them all, gladly. Alone, with grease-slicked fingers I devoured all of Jacob’s gifts until my stomach hurt, and I wanted to throw up. When I saw him, I constantly wondered, could he smell it on me? All that death. Dried blood under my fingernails.
I sought him out often. But he just looked straight through me, as if he couldn’t even remember my name. As if he couldn’t remember me. Like I hadn’t held his hand, our heads bowed in prayer, Joseph’s voice droning in the background, his fingers toying with mine. Like I hadn’t wiped blood from his skin, tended to his wounds when the memories of war became too much. Like I hadn’t caught him staring at me. Like he hadn’t caught me staring back.
He looked at me like he hadn’t seen me. Like we hadn’t fucked one night, before the dead things. My blood had dribbled onto the wooden floorboards of the church that night. I didn’t know if it was there still, or not, but I chose to believe that those rust-colored blotches were never properly cleaned, that they were still embedded in the wood. Just like the salt from my skin, saliva from my lips.
The days shortened, until they could no more, and my hunger began to keep me awake. No matter how many dead things Jacob brought me, that void inside me would not fill. At nights, I lay in my narrow bed, the space between my legs raw. My nails nicked all my tender parts, until I drew blood. I thought of Jacob, his weight, his smell, how he sounded, when I desperately tried to come. Only when I thought of him, fingers slick with the blood from his hunt, those dead things, shot and gutted, I could come. For a passing moment, I was satiated, then, I would hunger again. My mouth would fill with saliva, and I would claw at my stomach, fingers wet and warm, my thighs stuck to the sheets.
I started to seek out the Whitetails. I traveled through the forest, along those familiar trails, pangs of hunger driving me forward. One by one I would hunt them down. I watched into their eyes, as my fingers cracked something in their necks, and they suffocated. They never fought that much. But always—always—afterward I was bruised and sore. Maybe I just didn’t notice them fighting.
One night, wiping sweat off my brow, I realized it was already spring. Whispers of leaves had begun to tease the branches above my hunting grounds. It had been a while since my last prey had walked into my trap. But that night, I caught one. A young, fresh-faced one. It came running, lured in by my siren call. From the river it pulled me out, my breasts and my stomach whitened by the cold water. Shock. Concern.
But it all quickly morphed into wide eyes, agape mouth, flailing limbs.
Only later on I found out that Jacob saw it all. Reveled in it.
And, I wonder, what he thought, when I strangled that particular Whitetail until it stopped moving, my knuckles white, bruises blooming along my arms. I wonder what he felt, when I dragged the body back home, and offered the warm dead thing to the Judges. But not before I took parts for myself.
At the very end, I wasn’t afraid. I stared into Jacob’s eyes, his weight on me a great comfort, his fingers around my head a halo of pain. Slowly, he covered my eyes with his thumbs, and pressed. He prayed in a quiet voice, words that I couldn’t make out from the thrumming of my heart. I thought, then, that he was going to kill me.
“If you take the wings of the morning,” Jacob said, the pressure reaching a point of no return.
But I wasn’t dying.
“—and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,” I cried out, my nails drawing red lines into Jacob’s shoulders. “Even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.”
With all his might, he pushed down. Blinded, I prayed, screaming so loud, that I assume God wasn’t the only one who heard me. I had once asked Jacob to make an angel out of me, for I couldn’t do it to myself. He was gifting me this one last thing.
Like clay in the hand of the potter,
to be molded as he pleases,
so are humans in the hand of their Maker,
to be given whatever he decides.
— Sirach 33:13