Chapter Text
On a drowsy July afternoon, a girl danced through a mossy forest, darting through the trees and avoiding the occasional blackberry bush to ensure that she wouldn’t prick her legs.
The forest was filled with wild deer and beautiful creeks that sat beside dark green ferns and moss covered rocks that were damp from the relentless rain. Dylan loved the forest for multiple reasons but if she had to pick one, it’d be the dark spring water of the creek.
For a while, Dylan sat on the mossy carpet by the creek and ate blackberries, slowly staining her pale fingers a dark burgundy.
In Oregon, most people were pale, their skin would end up washed out after living there for so long. There weren’t many natural blondes or freckles around because of the constant foggy days. Dylan’s skin was strange for Oregon, it was covered in light freckles that she assumed were from genetics. Her long black hair was generic for the state though, in the hallways her friends would have to recognize her outfits instead.
Dylan’s eyes glazed over as she watched minnows dart through the stream. The stream slowly turned over pebbles to reveal more pebbles that slowly continued into more pebbles.
It was peaceful. She liked that.
After a while, the smell of cheeseburgers wafted towards the creek- her dad was outside grilling, no doubt. It was almost dinner time after all.
Dylan hopped up to explore the forest a bit more, although she already knew where everything was- she hoped for something new.
The wire fence stood opposingly at the end of her family’s property, rust blooming through the grey. Her neighbors liked to keep the deer out of their land, however they only lived there during winter, so it didn’t really matter whether spring fawns would jump through the ferns anyway.
Dylan looked up at the rusty fence and shivered- she was directly faced with what looked like a very sick doe trapped within the broken wiring- juts of slashed wounds surrounding the wiring.
“Mom,” she yelled. “Mooooooooom. There’s a stuck deer.”
Her mother never came, the girl was at the end of the property after all.
Dylan took a few steps toward the deer but she kept on glancing towards the bruises and emaciation of the doe, at something sticky, dark, and red stuck into the fur near its mouth.
Dad, Dylan thought. Dad will know how to get the deer out of the fence. Dad will know what is wrong with this deer.
But Dylan couldn’t seem to make herself move any farther.
She carefully reached out- the doe’s eyes were filled with fear and contempt. She grabbed at one of the wires, pulling it towards herself. The doe stood still- Dylan could now see the flies surrounding the doe’s mouth and stomach. A rib stuck out towards her- she took another wire and bent it forwards, straightening it out.
When the job was almost done, the girl decided to feed the poor doe some blackberries, after all…it was so emaciated. She tilted her hand towards the deer. She watched the jaw open revealing dark black teeth and the smell of rotten eggs, she could almost envision the next couple of seconds.
Her hand pulled backwards but not before the deer sunk her sharp teeth into the side of Dylan’s palm. Blackberries tumbled from the girl’s palm to the ground and Dylan pulled back in pain, tripping backwards over something.
She looked down and saw the remains of a baby fawn, sweet freckled skin rotting into the ground. The doe did this. She looked up from the fawn to find the doe fighting against the wiring, cutting more deep wounds into its own skin.
“Dylan, get away,” her dad ordered sharply from behind her, Dylan’s head swung around to see an old wooden rifle in her dad’s toughened hands, and when she looked back at the doe- it was slumping over the fence, dead.
Her dad regarded her for a long moment. “It had chronic wasting disease,” he said finally.
The girl had heard about the disease in school, it left deer slowly dying. Bad for farmers. It didn’t explain the dead baby fawn underneath Dylan’s black converse.
She turned around- her bitten hand flying into the air with a purple bruise blooming into her pale skin, “it bit me.”
His gaze went to Dylan’s hand, and his expression hardened. “Let’s get you home and disinfect that. Are you good with cheeseburgers?”
“Okay,” was all Dylan said, taking her father’s brown hand and walking back through the forest.
This time there was no dancing or blackberry picking.
Her eyes stung with tears as she thought about the dead doe and her baby fawn, what could have happened? To make that poor mother so violent and sick?
Years later, when Dylan told herself the story of what happened, she couldn’t recall the part where she ate the first person. Shock seemed to have erased that hour entirely. Somehow she must’ve gathered the clothes and gotten rid of them, she was 14 at the time and her first victim was her freshman boyfriend.
She couldn’t imagine how she’d done it, alone with him resting in her stomach, making her skin warm and her mind sleepy. She couldn’t imagine how it had felt, and as the years went by, she couldn’t make herself feel that feeling again. The horror of the murders dulled with time. Her memories of the days blurred.
It would only get worse from there.