Think of the purest creature you’ve ever seen.
Like, what, an ex or something?
Doesn’t have to be human.
So a deer, maybe?
Possibly. Where did you see this deer?
On the edge of a forest.
A buck, a doe, a faun?
Doe.
What is she doing?
Showing me something.
How do you know?
Her tail is flicking, she’s kind of…
What? Kind of what?
Sashaying.
This doe. Okay. What happens next?
I get out of my car and…
Yes?
And I follow her. Into the trees.
Do you want to follow her?
Yes. I can smell her.
That deer scent?
No. Her sex scent. It’s pouring from her hindquarters like spores. I just…
What?
I just… want her. Want to fuck her.
The deer.
Yes.
So then you woke up?
I don’t think it was a dream.
Uh, I feel awkward saying this, and it’s not precisely my place, but I really hope for your sake it was.
It got worse.
I’m not sure I need…
She turned back to look at me as I advanced, and her face was gone.
Gone?
Smoothed like sand at the tideline. No face at all. And she was moaning.
With no mouth?
Exactly.
What did you do?
Turned around and ran, back toward the road. Night had fallen quickly.
I’m going to guess you got disoriented and missed the road.
No, actually. I did okay. Scrambled, found my car, and it even started, and I drove away.
You’re right; this wasn’t a dream.
But then…
What?
I drove hard and I drove fast and I kept going, those woods closing in on all sides, and I saw the glow of a town up ahead, and as I left the wild places a shape appeared in my headlights, something dark.
And it was a person? A rescuer?
No. And please let me tell this my way. But no. It was a wolf, breathing hard, hunched, a pool of saliva gathered on the hard-top below its muzzle. Daring me to run it over.
And did you?
I felt desperate. I thought about it. I even stood on the gas pedal and revved and let out the clutch and lurched forward.
But?
But before I could plow through it, I saw its face: featureless, plain, like pale-grey tundra, like the apparition of some other world’s fauna. Like some visceral ghost. Flesh rubbed out.
But did you eventually run it down?
No. I couldn’t. It felt like something fragile, dreamed of by bit-part players on the margins of some obscure film.
I don’t understand.
Like something unremembered. Told to none. Desireless.
Again, not following.
How do I explain? What it is to be alive, this sacred ruinous gift.
Uh, right. Maybe that’s enough now. Maybe we should stop.
No. One last thought. A faceless woman in a yellow summer dress with skin the colour of deer hide rides a bright-red bicycle along quiet lanes flanked by hedges of fuchsia, crickets sussurant, a lark rising in a helix spiral, a song of life, the trees and the sky all sparkling. Nothing will ever come along to erase this. Not now. Not ever. Whatever comes, this—this—has been stamped into the bones of the earth.
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Image © Rebecca Loranger