THE OFFERING

by Katie Stevens

It started with a dead crow left on the doorstep outside the kitchen. Its wings were folded tight to its body, eyes mercifully closed, feet curled up to its body. There was no sign of how it had died or where it had come from. I was unsettled, looking at the dead body laid there like an offering.

I live alone. I like it that way. There was no one to get rid of the body but me. I wore bags on my hands to pick it up and threw it in the hedge. Dead things make me squeamish and I puked up in the hedge next to it, haunted by the memory of its dead weight.

The next day I found a rabbit, its neck broken. I used to have a cat until my husband hung it by the neck. He was drunk and I was hiding. He left it swinging high in a tree outside my bedroom window.

I vomited before I got close enough to remove the rabbit. The body was rigid in death and my stomach heaved at the sight. I averted my eyes when I pushed it onto the spade with the edge of my shoe. It joined the crow in the hedge. I used half a bottle of bleach cleaning the blood off the step.

I came here to escape, to hide from a violent man who sought to possess me. I had felt safe until now.

The fox kickstarted the nightmares. It was blood covered and battered with a broken leg. The poor creature, still alive, hunched in a ball shaking, was shrieking the most god-awful scream. I swung the door open and it tried to run. Its movements were slow and agonised as it attempted to drag itself away. The sound of its screams pierced me to my core. I might have dumped two dead bodies in the hedge but I do believe in living with compassion and the state of the fox was cruel.

I didn't own a gun. I never wished to possess the power to kill before. I moved around the house reluctantly, considering the options, hoping if I delayed the fox would do the decent thing. It didn't and so I had to do it myself, with an old towel laid over it and a brick. I cried for a long time after.