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It was the record-breaking heat that finally sealed the deal for him. North Carolina, even the protected forests deep out, wasn’t safe from the suns unwavering glare that year. Even with shaded glens, mountain rivers and ridges, pools of dappled sunlight and crashing waterfalls that he had all to himself, Waysa was no stranger to being a victim that year.
The shades of their house were drawn, the windows cracked open to let in that sweet, sweet breeze, the precious ice cubes in their icebox being rationed as if they were in a war, the cubes melting quickly on their tounges, foreheads, anywhere that felt numb from the heat. Every ounce of dignity they had before the sun rose was gone now, even the most conservative ones in the village could be seen in their homes wearing nothing but underclothing, or for the more desperate ones, nothing at all.
Waysa wasn’t going around peeking through window-cracks and door frames to see all of this, he was never that adventurous, and even if he wanted to, he had bigger issues at home. He himself had stripped to nothing but his undershirt, lying miserably underneath a window, too tired and too hot to get up and do his chores. The living room was the stuffiest in the house but he stayed, even when the shade flipped over itself in a cooling gust of wind, and just stayed like that, letting hot rays beam into the room.
Sweat trailed down his face in rivers, even with the shade of the house he still felt as baked in as a cake in an oven, he wondered, as he smelled chicken cooking nearby, if that was himself. Organs boiling in his body, skin crispy, his insides spilling out to reveal delicately cooked, oven-baked chicken-a-la-Waysa.
Christ, now he was hot and hungry.
Dragging himself out by his hands, he crawled like an infant towards the other rooms in the small house, passing by his mother in law, who was mercifully asleep (He couldn’t imagine what she’d say to him if she saw him like that), to the single bedroom that they all shared. He tapped once, to be polite, then gave up and pulled his sweat-soaked body up and shook on the handle until he could hear someone moving around.
The door, swollen with the moisture in the air, groaned as it opened, the figure behind it grabbing his arm and pulling him inside, “Quiet! I just got him to fall asleep!”
Mercifully now in the coolest room of the house, Waysa walked over to his son’s bassinet, checked up on the infant, then sunk down back into his fetal position on the floor. Serafina stood sternly over him, her figure defeated as she sighed, combing through her messy black hair as she questioned, “Why’d you come in? You were ‘possed to stay out there and make sure all the windows and doors stayed shut.”
”Nothings gonna come in.”
”Bugs might. Possums might. You never know.”
”Well why is that my job? Why can’t you tell your momma to do it once in a while? I have a right to stay cool too, you know.”
She grunted, sitting down next to him, “Your burning up. Did you go outside?”
”No. I smelled someone cooking food and came to ask you if you were going to make dinner soon.”
”We dont have any meat, remember?”
He groaned loudly before Serafina shushed him, “Do you want me to go catch something really quick?”
”Are you that hungry?”
”Hungry and tired, but more so hungry.”
“Go out and catch something small. Don’t over extert yourself “, she paused in thought, “If you died of heatstroke then it’d make today wore.”
“Wore? It’d make today wore?”
”Im tired of talking to you, go out now please.”
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Running through the forest, beneath dappled sunlight and lazy birds asleep in the eves of the trees, Waysa could feel his disdain only growing stronger as he pumped more strength through his catamount body. He had dived into a nearby stream prior, the water was lukewarm with his luck, and now the heat was really driving him crazy.
He could see lazy spots forming at the back of his eyes, black dots clouding up his vision until he momentarily had to stop, switch back to human form and rub his eyes to get it back to normal again. Even running through the woods with his panther body wasn’t as exhilarating as he thought it’d be, he felt less graceful, more clumsy, more human, as he chased after nothing. The heat made a home behind his eyes and began to pound there, breaking through his sanity and state of mind more and more until he couldn’t take it anymore.
Waysa tore through the woods, more animal than human, his sense of self frayed at the edges as the sun blazed through the sky, an unwavering, unkind god. His motives were forgotten, he had to hunt, he needed to hunt, he needed that satisfaction of the kill, of the feast.
His human self was barely clinging on, and Waysa let himself go, he let his worries, his fears, his pain all away just to chase that high of being numb to everything.
As his catamount body tore through the woods, chasing after something, he closed his eyes and let the black take over, the pickaxe finally breaking through the rock of his mind, shattering all consciousness he had.
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The carcass was fresh.
Blood still on the body, which was warm- well everything was warm but it was warm in the way that life was still holding onto it, even if it was useless. The fawn, so innocent and sweet, now lay dying on the forest floor, underneath a patch of azaleas.
Waysa stood over it, horrified.
He had woken up from his trance when he felt his catamount teeth sink into the screaming infant, the iron taste drenched in his mouth and neck, the crib breaking his shield as he scrambled back. He hadn’t meant to do this- this was all a mistake, he would never touch a deer’s fawn, he’d never kill an innocent child but here he was.
What had he done?
He had looked around for the mother, even checking for tracks if she had fled, but had found nothing. The fawn had been completely alone, probably orphaned by the influx of hunters coming in by the area, and had been easy pickings for his catamount self. A fawn cant fight back, in fact, this one looked young enough to be just a couple days old. Its little legs were twisted, its soft, spotted fur drenched in its own life fluid as it took its last gasping breaths before sinking into the flowers.
The perfume was sickening.
The fawn was easy pickings, his mind, his animal mind (Did he even have one or was this just a side of himself that had been awakened?) must’ve known that he needed to conserve energy, that he needed something large enough to share with his ‘pack’. And so horribly, it had been right in its choosing. If he had tried to chase something as big a full grown deer down he’d be too tired to drag it back, and something like a pheasant or squirrel wouldn’t be enough to feed his family.
Everyone needed to eat, he knew that. His in-laws, his wife, even his infant son who depended on his wife for food. But did something as small as this have to die for that?
Scooping up the fawns dead body, he felt sick to his stomach as he made his way home. In the trees, he could hear the cicadas calling, it was the beginning of the season and soon there’d be new ciacdias climbing out of their shells to go out into the world. Once, while he was walking down the street, he saw a cicada in a birds nest with its head gone, the baby birds silent as the bugs around them sang..