Jim eased his truck to a stop on the quiet back road he normally took from the large feed store on the edge of the big city. He maintained an organic farm of chickens and cows that was contracted by COHH Inc to supply local grocery stores, and he lived in the North Carolina town where the headquarters was recently built, a little ways from the cul-de-sac neighborhood where many employees of the company lived.
He had just passed the sign welcoming him to his town when he saw the mangled deer carcass splayed across both lanes of the road. He stood next to his truck and shook his head, wondering what the car that hit the large animal must have looked like and he was surprised that it was able to drive off.
Jim also wondered why the deer was still there on the road like it was. The accident must have recently happened, otherwise someone else would have been forced to move it, or drive around or over it, though there was no indication on the carcass or the side of the road that either of these things had happened. Jim pondered his options while he stared at the thing. It must have been over six feet long and it looked heavier than any deer he’d ever seen, like it was obese and its stomach was large.
Jim went to the head end of the deer and tried dragging it from the road by hand. The carcass moved slowly and eventually Jim had it off to the side. Handling the deer carcass was easy for Jim, he wasn’t squeamish about the sight of dead animals because of his job on the farm, but before he left he stood for a moment staring at the twisted body of the deer. It didn’t look like it had been hit by a car, it looked like the thing had seized to death, like all of its limbs went stuff and were then jerked in every direction as all its bones snapped into awkward angles. Jim could see a design in the carcass, as if someone had taken the time to injure the deer as it was.
He pushed his thoughts out of his mind and got back in his truck. As he neared the driveway to his home, Jim noticed a group of three deer emerge from the woods and in his passing glance, it looked like three deer necks and heads sprouting from one deer body.
“Oh, you just missed Luca!” Jim’s wife said. She was a dainty lady and always wore dresses when she was out about town or receiving visitors at home. “He’s looking much better, his wife said he was feeling really bad, but he’s back on his feet and he stopped by just to check in before the block party.”
“I would have been home but there was a big deer on the road,” Jim said. “I’ll give him a call, maybe stop by his place.”
“You said you saw a deer on the road?” his wife asked curiously. “There was a horrible accident this morning right in front of the house. A school bus hit two deer and another car going the other way got hit in the back. They were out there for hours, and there were so many deer, a group of them ran off to the backyard and into the woods.”
“I guess it’s a lot of them running around,” Jim said. “Seems kinda sudden, though, like they’re all going somewhere in a hurry.”
The day before Halloween, Jim and his wife finalized the route for their hayrides. It has been lightly raining for two days and Jim worried that if the rain continued, they would have to cancel the hayrides altogether because of the mud that created a treacherous path. Luca was on the tractor with Jim and his wife, and when they arrived back at the neighborhood where the block party was to take place, Luca smiled at them sadly.
“The rain is threatening to ruin the party altogether,” Luca said. “I don’t think the hayrides are a great idea, it’s supposed to still be raining tomorrow. We already have tents for activities on the street here, maybe you all can do something here instead.”
“We have so much venison,” Jim’s wife offered. “Jim’s been trying to make something from all the poor deer carcasses all over town.”
“It’s been an insane amount of deer,” Luca said with a slow nod of his head.
“Yeah,” Jim said. “I’ve butchered the ones I’ve found around my property. Meat is good and healthy. Maybe we can grill up some skewers or something.”
“That sounds good,” Luca said. “You can cook it up on the grill my wife rented. Should be a hit!”
Jim hauled the skinned deer carcasses out of the freezer with the help of a farm hand. He and his wife worked diligently to prepare hundreds of skewers for the following day.
Halloween day was gloomy, but the rain was light and members of the neighborhood felt optimistic that their block party would be a success. Jim met Luca’s wife at the large grill under a tent on the street with containers of his skewers stacked on a handcart that he used to move them. Jim fired up one of the skewers and he was surprised at how delectable the meat smelled. The smells attracted a crowd and Jim gave the skewer to a sweet little girl and her mother. They both ate it with smiles on their faces, and Jim saw shimmers of neon green pass through the irises of the girl and her mother. He stared at them both strangely as they thanked him and told everyone how good they were, too good to share in fact.
As the sun set, the weather intensified. The winds swirled and the thin rain seemed to fall diagonally. Luca stood in the middle of the street where booths and tents lined both sides of the street and he used a bull horn to gather everyone into a crowd in front of him. Jim and his wife stood in front of the tent where they had grilled a pile of the skewers. They had both been about to try them when Luca gathered the crowd.
“The weather is supposed to continue to get worse tonight. We think it maybe best to leave everything as it is and try Halloween again tomorrow.”
A collective, mournful groan went up from the crowd, but there weren’t many protests. The rain seemed to intensify by the second and everyone did what they could to protect the things they could from the weather before going into their houses
Jim and his wife were scrambling to pack up their things under the tent with the grill when they noticed a neon green column of light shoot up from the woods and into the sky like a laser. And then, there were thin lasers of neon green energy from the meat of the skewers and after a second, all of the meat turned to ash.
“What is happening?” Jim’s wife asked in shock.
“Let’s get back home,” Jim said and they ran to their car and struggled to make it home in the storm.
Jim and his wife watched the column of green rising out of the woods until it disappeared.
“We should hit the hay,” his wife said. “We have to figure out what happened with the meat on our skewers in the morning.”
The next day, all of the venison Jim had butchered had disappeared and there were piles of ash in its place. When he met Luca on the street for the block party, Luca had a serious and grave look on his face.
“Don’t worry about the skewers,” he said to Jim. “You remember Kate, her and her daughter tried your skewers yesterday?”
“Yeah, I remember,” Jim said.
“Kate’s husband was found murdered this morning,” Luca said mournfully. “Kate and her daughter disappeared. The police are looking into it and all that commotion from the woods last night. We saw it in the distance, must have been a real show for you out there at the farm.”
“It was scary,” Jim said. “We thought the house would blow down. But everything’s ok.”
Luca half smiled at him.
“As good as it can be, I guess,” he said with little enthusiasm.
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