I don’t rush straight back. Once I’ve seen it, the image sits in my head, lays there, unmoving, like a desktop wallpaper while I set about my morning chores. Washing goes on, the dishwasher is emptied, my ironing pile shrinks by tiny increments as I press the kids’ clothes and all the time the image rear projects itself onto the horribly magnolia walls behind me.
I passed it in the car after dropping the kids off. A dead squirrel. A freshly killed squirrel. The russet of its fur looked unbroken, the usual roadkill explosion of guts and blood noticeably absent. It couldn’t have been run over, surely the pressure of tyres and solidity of chassis weight and forward velocity would split it like a sausage. It must have dropped from the trees that line the road, dead from an hereditary heart problem or brain aneurysm or some tragically debilitating illness.
I don’t rush straight back but I do return. I walk there in my stockinged feet, leaving the front door swinging, the washing turning, the iron on, and I listen for cars. It looks just as it did when I passed it, steering the car so that the wheels would pass safely either side. It looks as if it is sleeping and it is only as I notice this that I realise why I have come. I lay down on the road beside it. The tarmac is warm on my cheek from the early summer sun and the dark open eyes of the squirrel question me, so I close my eyes and I listen.
this one is haunting and has a melancholic undertone. very nicely done dan.
Aww. I was like that as a kid. Maybe it wasn’t really dead, just listening. Just sleeping. I love the word ‘russet’. It’s so…literary. Well done.
Very well written. The roadkill that does look peaceful and not messy is always perplexing.
Chilling…
I’m left wondering what’s going on in her mind. Deftly done!
The reader listens with you. That’s a nice moment.
I used to say a Hail Mary every time I saw a dead animal when I was a little kid. That damned Catholic mysticism played on me as I read your story. I liked especially the warm tarmac on the cheek visual. Lovely stuff Dan.
I’m another one of those folk who get upset when they see dead animals, so there was a fair bit of awwww-ing here!
The “gore” part was ever so gently done, I liked that.
Powerful, well-written tale that leaves me with more questions than answers and a deep melancholy feeling that makes me wonder about her intentions… perfect.
Usually the roadkill I pass is not lying in sleeping posture. Their deaths were violent and they show it.
There is melancholy in this piece, a melancholy derived from a quotidian life of washing, ironing and other chores, with no place/time to stop and listen.
Until she makes it so.
Lovely piece.
You have turned roadkill into something beautiful. I can’t help but wonder what this stocking wearing woman is thinking as she takes a nap with this squirrel.
Oh wow! I was so bummed with the dead squirrel, then POW you transform the trauma into something powerful.
Very well-written!
Wonderfully evocative with a touch of melancholy. It was as if I was there with you.
this one gave me chills – so simple and yet so powerful. what is she thinking as she lays in the middle of the road. well done!
“A dead squirrel. A freshly killed squirrel. The russet of its fur looked unbroken, the usual roadkill explosion of guts and blood noticeably absent.” The rhythm of your writing and your word choice is exceptional. I love how you swallow your MC in the mundane, washing clothes, dropping off kids and then she has this almost spiritual connection with this squirrel. Well done!