Misplacement — Estrus, Rowan Bagley

CW: Violence, Gore

Rowan Bagley (she/they) is a 2020 UMaine BFA graduate who specializes in weird fiction and occasionally writes poems when the stars align. Her work has been featured in The Sandy River Review, The River, and the West Review. They are currently the Editor-in-Chief of Not Deer Magazine. She lives in Vermont with her girlfriend and their two cats.

Mallory Ross, called Mal by everyone who knew her, was washing the breakfast dishes in the deep farmhouse sink. Her husband, Phil, sat at the small kitchen table and read the latest issue of the Times on his phone. He had recently discovered the mobile app and had spent most of every morning reading while Mal cooked. The two of them existed in silence more often than not, which had been a welcome relief in the weeks following their youngest leaving home, but now the silence had a wall-like quality to it. Mal had always been a housewife surrounded by noise and kids but seldom had Phil around to talk to. He’d retired from the small insurance company where he’d been mid-level account executive for almost thirty years, but it didn’t seem to make a difference. Even though they existed in the same space day in and day out, no more than a handful of words were exchanged between the two of them.

When was the last time he looked at you?

The voice was barely above a whisper and it whined in her ear like a mosquito. She shook her head. She did her best to ignore it during the day when there were other things to occupy her thoughts. Nights were different, it was impossible not to reply as she stared up at the ceiling in the dark with only the sound of Phil’s snores between her and a voice that wasn’t her own. She couldn’t remember when it had first begun, but it was part of her daily life now.

Mal glanced up from the pan she was washing and out over the field that spread beyond the window over the sink. The morning was overcast and a dense fog clung low to the ground, making everything soft and hazy. Beyond the field, dotted with the small shapes of distant cows belonging to the dairy farm in the valley, a dense wall of hardwood trees marked the beginning of the forest. The trees were dark in the weak light that filtered through the cloud cover. She imagined all the things that might be living in those trees. On many nights she could hear coyotes howling in the valley and the way the sound bounced off the hills made it sound as though they were right below her bedroom window. She felt a chill run up her spine and looked away.

She placed the scrubbed pot in the drying rack, wiped her hands on the crisp dish towel hanging on the oven handle, and sat down across from Phil at the table.

“Any plans for today?”

He didn’t answer for a moment. “You say something, Mallory?” he finally asked, without looking up from his phone.

“Any plans for today?” Her tone was sharper.

“Avery’s room needs to be repainted. Now that she’s gone, I don’t think we need a room with bright pink walls.”

He stood and stretched, revealing the bottom of his ever-expanding stomach. He’d never been an athletic man, but he’d become doughier in recent years and the top of his balding head was usually covered in a sheen of sweat.

“Right.” She’d forgotten about his plans to turn their kid’s childhood bedrooms into guest rooms. Maybe one of them would become an office. For Phil, of course. Mal wasn’t sure what she’d do with an office, even if one had been offered to her.

When was the last time he asked what you wanted?

They’d helped Avery move into an apartment not far from campus with two of her friends and since then her bedroom had been empty. It made sense, Mal had reasoned, Avery was almost twenty-one and needed her own space, she wouldn’t need a bedroom in their house anymore. She couldn’t stay with her parents forever. After waving her daughter off from the front porch as the young woman drove off in a U-Haul, Mal had gone back to the pink room her daughter had slept in since birth and cried quietly as she stared at the divots in the carpet where a canopy bed had once stood. Phil had been downstairs watching a baseball game from his recliner and didn’t ask her why her eyes were red when she joined him. She wasn’t sure he’d noticed.

“Need any help with it?” She hoped the answer was no, but she had to ask.

Phil dropped his plate and fork into the sink where they clanged against the metal in a way that made Mal dig her fingernails into her palms. He’d walked past the empty dishwasher to put them there.

“It’s just a little paint. I think I can manage.” His answer was curt.

She heard his heavy footsteps as he climbed the stairs to the second floor and the click of a door closing. She thought she should remind him to open a window so the paint fumes didn’t get to him but then reconsidered. Through the window across the kitchen, she could still see where the fog was thickening in the valley.

Mal settled into her spot on the couch with the cross-stitch pattern she was working on. It was a rose garden, all full white and pink roses dripping off their bushes against the backdrop of a baby blue sky and puffy clouds. She was working on a rose in the foreground, big and blush pink, but her focus felt scattered. The living room was cool with the AC but there was moisture beading on the back of her neck. Not hot like sweat, but cold the way dew was still cold on an early summer morning. She tried to ignore it, or chalk it up to menopause, but she still felt it rolling down her back. There was a faint smell drifting up her nose that she didn’t recognize. She thought she could smell wet earth and pine and underneath it, something else. Something old. She tried to identify what it was. It certainly wasn’t any of the candles or the potpourri in the bowl on the coffee table. It felt familiar and alien all at once. A sharp pain in her thumb broke her concentration and she let out a gasp as she dropped her stitching into her lap.

A round drop of blood welled out of the pinprick her needle had made and she watched as it grew fatter and fatter. The redness of it was so real she couldn’t take her eyes off it, more real than anything else she’d laid eyes on in a long time. She’d hated the sight of blood and the smell of it had turned her stomach, but now she wanted to taste the iron spread out across her tongue. Her thumb was halfway to her mouth before the tension on the droplet broke and all that red spilled across her rose garden. She watched in awe as it seeped into the stitches and stained those delicate white and pink roses. “I made them real,” she thought, “my blood made them real.”

“Didn’t you hear me calling you?” Phil’s voice came from behind her, loud and irritated.

She jumped, covering her thumb and blood-stained stitching with a corner of her blanket.

“I-I’m sorry. Did you need something?”

“Yeah, I was hollering for you to get me the step stool. Don’t know how you couldn’t have heard me.”

The stomach of his t-shirt was covered in smears of white paint and some had sprayed from the roller to dot his flushed forehead.

When was the last time he spoke to you with anything but annoyance?

“It’s in the entryway, where it’s always been.”

“I know that,” he huffed. “I wanted you to bring it up for me so I didn’t track paint on the carpet, but since I’m already down here I might as well do it myself. I don’t know what was so important that you couldn’t do this one thing for me.”

“I was distracted, I stabbed myself while I was sewing.”

“Get a Bandaid, then.” His voice came from the other side of the kitchen, muffled as he dug in the hall closet for the stool.

She waited until the sound of his footsteps had disappeared up the stairs before she pulled her thumb and stitching from under the blanket. She’d continued to bleed and now the red stain spread out over nearly a third of the batting. The blood on her thumb was sticky, but no longer oozing. “What if I opened it again, just enough to cover the rest of the stitches?” she thought as she ran her fingers over the stain. She wanted to make the rest of the roses real. Her cheeks were uncomfortably warm and her heart was hammering against her ribs like a bird in a cage.

When was the last time you tasted something so real?

She put her thumb against her lips and licked off the dried blood. Nothing had ever tasted so good.

Mal couldn’t bring herself to keep sewing, couldn’t focus long enough to make all those little Xs. She opened a Nora Roberts novel she’d been trying to finish for the last week or so, but found herself reading and rereading the same paragraph over and over. She felt feverish and her skin was hot to the touch as moisture continued to bud on her upper lip and the back of her neck, soaking her long hair. But she didn’t feel sick. She felt needful, like there was an itch somewhere in her brain that would neither go away nor make itself known.

Phil came down around 4:30 with rings of sweat under both arms.

“What’s for dinner?” he asked, wiping the back of his hand across his forehead.

“Roast chicken. Vegetables. I might make rolls.”

Mal could smell the musty scent of body odor mixed with the hint of deodorant that had stopped functioning hours ago. It leaked out of his pores and nearly made her gag, even if he was across the room from her. She covered her mouth and nose with her hand, pretending to yawn.

“When should that be ready?”

“I don’t know. Maybe six,” she choked out.

“I’ll shower, then.” He turned and went back upstairs.

She let out the breath she’d been holding in and felt shame well in her stomach. What kind of wife was she that the smell of her husband would make her gag? When had this man, whom she’d bound herself to over thirty years ago, started to revolt her? What would her mother think if she told her the smell of her husband made her sick?

When was the last time he did anything but disgust you?

Mal couldn’t remember and that opened a pit in her stomach. She got up and headed for the kitchen.

In the sink, she cut the chicken she’d been thawing out of its vacuum-sealed plastic and grimaced at the strings of translucent slime that clung to the skin. “It’s barely meat anymore,” she thought, “everything animal about it’s gone.” She sliced the skin open near the cavity that had held another plastic bag filled with giblets and massaged the whipped butter and herb mixture she’d made into the flesh. The cold, immobility of it raised goosebumps along her arms. She stuffed slices of onion and lemon into the cavity and shoved the whole thing into the oven, happy to have it out of her sight.

Dinner was uneventful, as it usually was. Phil made some neutral and noncommittal remark about the quality of the food before propping a John Grisham novel open against his water glass. Mal picked listlessly at her chicken, unwilling to bring the soft meat to her lips. “What a horrible life for a bird”, she thought, “to live its entire life in a cage.” At that, she felt the same heat she’d been feeling all day flare up and roll over her body like she was standing next to a bonfire, making her gasp and drop her fork. The sound of metal against ceramic caused Phil to look up from his book.

“Mal, are you okay?” There was genuine concern in his voice, which caught her off guard.

“I-I’m fine,” she stammered, “I’m just feeling a little queasy. I’ll be right back.”

She pushed back from the table as her hands began to shake.

“Are you sure? Do you need anything?” He half rose from the table as he said it, but quickly sat back down when she waved him away.

She stumbled to the living room before looking back over her shoulder briefly to see that he’d returned to his novel.

In the bathroom, she gripped the edge of the sink to steady herself, but she had lied when she’d said she wasn’t feeling well. She felt incredible. She felt euphoric. It felt so good her head spun and her heart pounded in her chest like she’d been running. She hadn’t felt this way since she was in college, when she’d spent every weekend in the backseat of someone’s car with their hands under her skirt and her head thrown back. But she’d given that up. Those people weren’t safe choices, they weren’t going to be good for her future. She’d chosen someone soft with a dependable paycheck and health insurance. She’d chosen the man she was supposed to choose.

Was that your choice? Or was it made for you?

A vision of her mother’s pinched, disapproving face swam before her and she gripped the edge of the sink so hard she thought she might rip it from the wall. Her mother had died almost six years ago, but her disappointment in her daughter still clung to life. Another wave of fire ripped through Mal and she sunk to a squatting position with a grunt as sweat beaded on her forehead. She took a long breath to steady herself and swore she could smell pine and the rich aroma of decaying leaves, like she was standing in a deep forest somewhere.

When was the last time you felt anything like this?

“Never.” She thought it so quietly that she could almost pretend she hadn’t answered.

Chase it.

She wondered what Phil would do if she walked back into the kitchen naked and asked him to fuck her on the counter. She felt like an animal in heat. That thought and the intensity of her need shook her to her core, but she knew what her husband’s reaction would be if she ever got up the courage to be that bold with him. The last time she’d tried to add some semblance of spice to their bedroom, she’d bought a red lacy nightgown at Kohl’s in an effort to spark his interest. When she’d shown it to him that night, he’d spared it no more than a passing glance before turning his attention back to CNN. “You’ll be cold in that,” he’d said. Mallory buried it in her closet under a stack of spare towels after that. She hadn’t even tried it on.

The memory made her throat feel tight with embarrassment and the fire that had consumed her a moment ago burned down to a flush, but refused to go out entirely. Mal stood, patted her face with cold water, and returned to the kitchen.

Their bedroom windows were open and the gauzy curtains shifted in the breeze. The moon was waxing and so bright it could have been a street lamp outside. Mal lay on her back, feeling the air move over her body as she listened to Phil snore. After she’d gone back to the kitchen, Phil had looked up from his book long enough to ask if she was okay. They’d finished dinner in silence as Mal picked at her food and bounced her leg under the table.

The need had built again, making it difficult to focus on anything else. She’d crawled into bed naked, radiating heat and feeling so alive that her nerves were humming, and pressed herself against him. But he’d rolled over with a grunt and complained she was too hot. She’d been laying on her back for hours now with the space between them on the queen bed sprawling like a no man’s land.

When was the last time he touched you? The voice asked like dry leaves scraping against their branches. It was always louder at night.

“I don’t know, maybe a few weeks.” Her reply was tinged with guilt. Did she even want him to touch her? She hated the way he only made love to her in the dark, in the safety of their bed.

When was the last time he made you feel, Mallory? When was the last time he did more than crawl atop you in the dark?

“Not in years. Not really.” Her eyes stung.

When was the last time he made you feel so alive it burned? When was the last time you were so alive you feared your skin might tear open and expose you right down to the bone?

She didn’t answer that. She didn’t have to. The voice faded and left her. She could always tell when it was gone. It left a hollow space beside her right ear when it went and filled it with a feeling like lead when it returned. She couldn’t stay in bed anymore, the heat was coming off her in waves and she had the overwhelming urge to move.

The living room was bathed in the same pale light as the bedroom and Mallory padded between the bright pools and the deep shadows. It reminded her of light filtering through trees. She brushed the bare skin of her thighs against the faux suede of the couch, relishing the softness. In the kitchen, the bones of the chicken she’d roasted for dinner were still in their tray. She’d picked them clean before going to bed, but the carcass sat on the counter glistening with fat and shreds of meat. She could smell the rosemary and thyme she’d cooked it with that almost overwhelmed the smell of something that had once been living. But not quite. The smell of blood and raw tissue clung to it faintly, smells that human beings tried to ignore as they prepared dinner for their families in kitchens glinting with stainless steel appliances. She hadn’t smelled it as she’d rubbed butter into the cold flesh, but now it made Mal’s mouth water.

She twisted out a rib and turned it over in the moonlight. It snapped in half as easily as snapping a pencil and she could see the hint of marrow at the center. That one look was all she needed. She sucked it out like she was starving and did the same with the rest of the ribs. But it wasn’t enough. She tossed the broken bones on the tile floor and moved to the fridge where she’d put away the remaining wing and both drumsticks. The meat went down her throat in chunks as she squatted naked in front of the open fridge, cracking open the bones and sucking the marrow as she’d done for the ribs. She licked her fingers clean and crawled out of the kitchen feeling bloated.

She was only able to stand when she pulled herself up by the back of the couch. She dragged her hand across her mouth, coating the back in grease and saliva. Across the room, she caught a flash of her reflection in the full-length wall-mounted mirror. But something was different about it. Something was different about her.

She crossed the room on shaking legs and stood in front of the glass. It was her body reflected back at her, familiar but also alien. She ran her hands over the white and purple stretch marks on her thighs, belly, and breasts. The surgery scar from her gallbladder removal was still there, as was the faded purple mark on her knee where she’d skinned it down to the muscle after falling off her bike as a child. But her head wasn’t hers. It was a deer skull, yellowed and huge, with antlers spread out so far she couldn’t see all of the tines in the mirror. And the teeth. Long and sharp and wild, the teeth of a dog or a coyote, sat where an herbivore’s teeth should have been. The eyes were her own dark brown ones staring back at her from the deep sockets in the bare skull. She brushed her fingers along her face, expecting to feel bare bone, but only felt her sweaty cheek.

Are you afraid?

It was back, but this time more solid. Not alive, but more present. She could feel its fingers sliding over her shoulders and down her arms. Long fingers, tipped in razor-sharp nails that barely skimmed her flesh.

“No.” She was calm, calmer than she’d felt in a long time.

Do you want more?

“Yes.” Her voice was barely audible but she meant it with every fiber of her being.

You must do something for me, first.

“Anything.” She wanted this to last forever.

Bring him to me.

She didn’t have to ask who he meant. Her foot was on the bottom stair when something shining in the light caught her eye. It was the cut glass vase Phil had bought her for their thirtieth anniversary last spring. Could it really have been thirty years? Had she spent so long with him? Thinking about it made her head feel hazy. She picked it up and turned it over in her hands. It was thick and heavy, carved with winding flowers and leaves, but the rim was coated in dust and a dead fly sat curled in the bottom. She supposed it was pretty, but it made her feel nothing. She carried it upstairs and felt the owner of the voice following her close behind.

He was still snoring in their bed, the man she’d dedicated so much of her life to. She stood over him and rested a hand on his arm. He was clammy and hairy and she realized he didn’t make her feel anything more than the vase had. She brought it down on his head in one sharp motion that split his skin and sent blood splattering over their linen sheets.

“I can’t move him,” she said to the voice where it watched her from the darkened corner by her closet. She couldn’t see it, not fully, but she thought it was getting bigger.

He is lighter than you suspect. And you are stronger than you know.

She grabbed his arm and yanked, sending him spilling off the bed to land in a fleshy heap on the floor. He landed with a low moan but didn’t open his eyes. She took both his wrists and pulled.

The voice had been right, he was lighter than she’d thought he’d be. Dragging him to the stairs was easy and all she had to do from there was give him a shove. His soft body rolled and bounced down the steps before landing in a fleshy heap on the landing with a muffled groan. As she moved to press her foot against his back to give him another shove, she came eye-level with the large photograph on the opposite wall. Her breath caught in her throat and she felt herself falter.

The photo was old, taken when her children were still in high school. Her two boys, David and Sam, stood side by side with nearly identical grins as they each rested one of their hands on the chair in front of them. They’d grown so much in the intervening years, but here their faces were still childish and rounded, their hair the same wavy curls they’d both had since they were toddlers. Sam’s braces gleamed through the photo and David’s forehead was peppered with the painful acne he’d struggled with since middle school. Her boys. How would they ever understand what she’d done?

They wouldn’t, she could feel it. But Avery, her little girl, would she understand? Here she sat between her brothers, no older than fifteen, hands clasped in her lap like a vision of innocence and Mal wondered how much herself she’d placed into her daughter. She saw herself in the set of the young girl’s shoulder and the way she crossed her legs at the ankle. She saw herself in her honey brown eyes and her up-turned nose. This beautiful, flawed, independent child was hers more than her boys had ever been.

“They’ll hate me for this.” Mal’s tears ran into her mouth and dripped from her jaw.

Perhaps, but they will still have all your love. Your life was never meant to be lived for them. Nor theirs for you.

The voice was soothing, like the promise of cold water at the bottom of a well. Her tears were already drying on her cheeks.

She pulled his limp body easily through the house and out into the yard. She stopped at the edge of lawn that met with one of the open fields surrounding the house.

“Where should I take him?”

To the field. Leave him near the treeline and we will do the rest.

The voice still came from behind her, but it was coming from above her as well. “It’s getting taller,” she thought with a small thrill.

She kept pulling him, barely noticing his weight as he slid along the wet grass. He moaned when she dragged him over a rock or over a patch of thistles, but remained unconscious. Her breath was coming fast and she wasn’t sure if it was from excitement or exertion. She was coated in sweat that matted the hair on her head and between her legs. She let him fall with one last grunt of effort about ten feet from the line of spruce trees and burdock bushes that marked the beginning of the dense forest.

“What now?” She stared into the trees expectantly.

We wait.

She didn’t have to wait long, but she heard them before she saw them. The howls and yips were soft at first, growing louder as the pack slipped out of the trees like living shadows. They’re drawn to his blood, she thought. His head wound had washed his face in blood.

The first coyote sniffed at Phil before growling low in its throat. The others padded forward and nosed at him like the first had before the field exploded into a frenzy of teeth and fur. She heard him whine a few times, but eventually there was only the sound of meat being torn from a body. They went for his belly first, pulling out his intestines and fighting for his liver, and moved on to the soft tissue on his calves and upper arms. Mal had never seen anything so beautiful before and she laughed as tears ran down her cheeks.

Do you wish to feel as they do?

“Yes,” Mal said, turning to look at the voice for the first time.

It was tall, eight feet or nearly, and its arms and legs were long and slender but still chorded with muscle. Its feet arched back like a dog’s. It was covered in black fur or hair, but it was so worn in places that she could see the bone shining underneath and all its ribs were visible. Its head was a deer skull with the same teeth and antlers as the head she’d seen on her own reflection. But the eyes were human. Beautiful blue-gray like a storm. It pointed toward the body of her husband. When it spoke, it’s voice came from somewhere deep in its chest.

They have left you his heart.

She turned and saw the coyotes had dispersed, gnawing on limbs or tearing flesh from bloody masses in the grass. They didn’t seem to mind that she was so close. Mal could smell the iron scent rolling off his carcass, the smells of offal and bile, and it smelled delicious. She straddled what remained on his chest, thinking of all the times his weight had pressed down on her in a loveless embrace that could be mistaken for sex, and plunged her hand between his gaping ribs where lungs had once sat. The heart resisted at first, but her nails were sharper and her fingers longer and she severed the arteries holding it in place with ease. It was still warm. She sunk her teeth into it and felt it burst in her mouth as she chewed the sweet meat. Tears mixed with the blood smeared around her lips. There was a weight on her shoulder as the creature rested its hand on her.

Howl with us, little sister. Howl with us and feel alive.