The Butcher’s Daughter

With each snap, she can feel the muscles tighten. Her smile grows wider with every break of cartilage and every crack. She hums a song as she does it. A bubbly melody that she makes up as she goes. She forms a crescendo at every pop then drops back into the rhythmic bounce of her song.

This is her favorite part. The kill is fun, but the skinning is better. There is a sort of choreography to it. The separation of skin and muscle, then muscle and bone, watching the tendons as they strain then burst, like a stretched wad of bubblegum. Her hands dance around the thin fibers, disconnecting each one with surgeon-like precision. She likes coaxing the muscles off the skeleton, their slimy sensation as they slide through her fingers. She loves cleaning the bones, rendering them back to their pristine ivory.

When the bones are clean and the meat is tightly packed away in the freezer, she dances with the mop. The song in her head shifts to a graceful orchestral number as she glides across the floor, painting the red concrete a shimmering gray. Her boots spin on the slick floor like ice skates, and her blood-spattered apron flutters around her. Each splash of soapy water leads to another symphony. The trumpets erupt into their final crescendo, and the cymbals crash as she spins the mop bucket into the corner. The violins creep louder and louder, building up to the finale as the flutes flutter around them. She tosses her thin rubber gloves into the sink at the sound of the bass drum. The sharp screech of a child’s scream erupts, and the symphony comes to a halt. 

When she was ten, she shot her first rabbit. She had made a slingshot out of two sticks, a rubber band, and a piece of twine. Twenty rocks later, she was shoving a fluffy carcass in her father’s face, showing off her prize. At twelve, she perfected the art of bear traps. She would find tracks after a rainstorm and studied their routes. She knew the best way to disguise the gaping metal mouths with their shining sharp teeth under piles of leaves, in the tall grass, and in patches of wildflowers. At fifteen she downed her first deer. From her spot in the bushes, she let her arrow fly and watched it find home with a solid thud in the creature’s side. That same day, she learned the dance of skinning a deer. She found her sharpest knife to slice through the skin and the best way to separate the tender meat from flesh and bone. At eighteen, she made a business out of death. 

She yanks the door open, the metal handle cutting into her hand. Outside the butchery, a mother holds her child close as soldiers burst into their house. She hears glass shatter and another child scream as another soldier comes out holding a little boy by his wrist. With a sharp crack, they slap the woman across her face and she falls to the ground. The soldiers stuff both kids into a van and take off. From across the street, she can hear the woman’s cry for her children tear through the air. 

Turning away from the scene, she thinks she can hear the woman yelling at her to help, but with the click of the deadbolt, the woman’s screams are cut off. It is another successful night of raids. The flashing lights of the police reflect off the walls as they drive up, and she watches as they shove the woman into the car. 

Shaking her head, she pulls the curtains shut and finishes her cleaning. She shines the tools and hangs them up then places a new cloth over the table and picks up the bag of bones. Throwing the bag into the back of the truck, she slides the cooler with a week’s worth of meat in the bed next to it. Then, she hops in to make the fifteen-mile journey up the hill and back to the cabin. 

Deep within the confines of the forest, only the bravest of creatures roam. No matter the time of year, decomposing leaves coat the floor and suffocate any wildflowers that try to poke through. The sun filters through the trees and makes the shadows drift like ghosts and reveal the thick dusty air that floats through the branches. The forest abruptly ends with a steep, two hundred-foot drop to the city that sits at the bottom of the cliffs. This drop is where she finds her prey. It is a difficult spot to escape and, if you don’t know the forest, you don’t know where the ground turns to air. This is where she waits, in the trees, and watches as they wander just close enough to the edge.

There are some types of kills she likes more than others; some take more skill while others are all about speed. Rabbits take speed to kill while deer are a waiting game. But this kill is different. It is a mix of patience and speed. A long day of tracking their smothered fires, footprints, and forgotten belongings leads to predicting where they will go and getting there faster. She found their camp while they were away, pitched only a couple hundred yards from the edge of the cliffs, the perfect place to be hunted. 

She had received this job only two days before, and after work, she packed up her hunting gear and left her father a list of food she had prepared, then trekked into the thick forest. Sometimes she wished she could tell him where she went for days at a time, but he wouldn’t understand. 

Movement out of the corner of her eye makes her head whip up, and she watches as one of them wanders back into the camp. She waits for more to show, but it is just one. Quietly, she slithers down the tree, pulls out an arrow, and nocks it. The string pulls back as the wood of the bow groans. With a deep breath, she lets the arrow fly and it lands in his back. She looks around again before jogging over to her prey. His breath is jagged and she can feel goosebumps rise on her arms. No matter how many times she does this, she can never bring herself to block out the sound of their final breaths as she pulls her knife and slits their throat. For evidence, she cuts off a finger. She wraps it in a thick cloth and slides it into her pack before escaping back into the woods. She never waits to see if the others come back. He only asked for one, so that’s what she takes. One soul as payment for food on the table. 

She pulls up to the cabin, the yellow headlights illuminating the dark windows. Frowning, she hops out of the truck and jogs toward the door. Her father should be home. The door creaks as she pushes it open, and it digs farther into the warped floorboards. It smells like stale pine and cigar smoke, and she does her best not to choke in the thick air.

“Dad?”

No answer. Her heart begins to race as she flicks the lights on. They buzz to life a second before sparking and shutting off. She sighs and goes around to the back of the house to restart the generator. After a couple of cranks, she can hear electricity whizz through the house with a soft hum. From inside the house, someone cheers, and the tumbling of her stomach stops. She jogs back inside to find her father dancing around the kitchen. His thin gray beard bounces with each skip, and his thin legs tremble with the sudden impact. In his pale fingers, he grasps a half-empty whiskey bottle. She wonders how long he’s been drinking today.

“Mara! Light giver! You fixed it once again!” he slurs and falls onto the couch.

Sighing, she goes back outside to bring the meat in. Why did she expect anything else from him? Of course he’s drunk. Since they took her mother, his dark hair has grayed to a silvery white, while his once strong muscles have thinned away from days of whiskey. She sets the cooler by the door and locks the truck before kicking her boots off and shutting the door. 

“Have you eaten anything today?” 

From his spot on the couch, he grumbles something and takes another swig. The amber liquid glugs into his mouth, and Mara’s heart sinks a little more. When he sets the bottle down, she quickly picks it up and replaces it with a glass of water.

“I think that’s enough of that for today,” she says and puts the whiskey back into its cupboard above the fridge. 

She can hear her father whining about the switch in beverages, but he drinks the water anyway. On the table, a large pile of mail sits with a crumpled letter lying on top. Carefully, she picks it up and uncrumples it. It is addressed to her from her employer. He requires another job, three targets this time. Her nails dig into the paper, ripping holes through it before she finally throws it down.

Her first assignment was to track down a group of traitors and bring them in for questioning. In exchange, she got to keep her cabin and her father. She made the deal the day after they took her mother. Treason: they claimed she was plotting against the government, had a posse hidden in the woods. If Mara found them, they would let her stay with her father, unbothered. That was four months ago. Since then, she has killed three kids that couldn’t have been a year over twelve, five young teenagers , a girl that couldn’t have been any older than Mara, and a man who had moved into the woods for peace and quiet. She has taken ten souls with the pull of a string and the flick of a knife. What worried her was that she didn’t care. 

She turns around and looks over at her father, wondering if he read the letter and understood. On the couch, he has passed out. His wire-framed glasses are crooked on his face and he is shivering. She remembers him saying he was going to chop some wood for the fireplace before it began to snow, but that was over a week ago. Gently, she pulls his glasses off and places them next to the half-smoked cigar. She drapes a blanket over his frail, shivering body before going back outside to drag the bag of bones into the shed for fertilizer later. She hauls the cooler into the kitchen then digs through the pantry, finding some bread and jerky for dinner. The sun has just set, but her muscles ache and she needs to be up early.

The eyes of death shine differently than the eyes of life. The eyes of life hold a sort of secret to them. They change with the mood; shimmering when happy and dull when sad or tired. One can learn a lot when looking at the eyes of life. They dart side-to-side when someone is lying, shrink when they are happy, pin to the ground when shame floods the body, and droop when sadness overcomes them. 

The eyes of death are frozen. They don’t shift and shine with time. They stand still, stuck in the moment captured before the soul was ripped from them. They are wide, void of color and liveliness. They don’t say anything, just stare up at the vast ceiling as the body falls limp. With the soul leaves the shimmer of happiness, the drooping of sleep, and the skittish anxiety. The eyes of death aren’t afraid to stare straight back at the person who ripped their life away.

In the morning, the windowsill is coated in a film of thin white frost, and Mara can see her breath drift through the air. She pulls on her warmest gear, grabs her hunting pack from the closet, and sneaks through the hallway, careful not to wake her father in the room across the way. She rummages through the pantry and gathers up the last of the jerky and a couple cans of beans that she can heat over the fire. Most of her food she will find in the forest anyway, so she isn’t too worried. As she turns to head out the door, she comes face-to-face with her father. His arms are crossed over his chest, and deep creases line his forehead as he frowns.

“Why are you doing this, Mar?” he says. 

His voice is hoarse from the alcohol and puking. Mara aches to put the pack down and say no more, but she is doing this for him, so they can stay together and not end up like the woman across the street from the butchery. 

“I need to.”

He shakes his head and looks down at her with sad blue eyes. He doesn’t have the eyes of life like most. Those disappeared four months ago with her mother. But his eyes aren’t quite dead either. Her stomach rolls and she looks away.

“You don’t understand. I am doing this for us.”

He shakes his head and places a hand on her shoulder. Even through her layers of coats, she can feel his freezing hand squeeze her shoulder. She sniffles and grasps his wrist gently.

“I’ll be back in two days. There is leftover stew in the fridge and at least a week’s worth of meat in the cooler that you can cook,” she says and pushes past him toward the door.

With one swift motion, she slides her boots on and laces them up. She pulls on her gloves and looks back at her father who hasn’t moved from his spot in the kitchen.

“Please be safe, Mar. I don’t want to lose you too.”

She leaves before he can see her cry. Does he know she is breaking down the barrier she has built up over the months? The people she’s killing are rebels, the reason her mother is gone. 

The truck rumbles to life in the cold air and chugs away from the cabin. Her skin itches under her coats. Whenever she blinks she sees his eyes, the eyes of not death but also not life staring at her, begging for her to stop before they ask her to go too far. 

She turns the heat up all the way as she makes her way to her parking spot at the far edge of the forest where the vegetation is the thickest. Once she parks, she pulls the letter out to read over it. She has two days to find three people. She wonders what will happen if she doesn’t find them in time, if she doesn’t do it. What would happen if she turned the truck around and went back home? Would they hunt them down and arrest them as they did her mother? Would they kill her for payment for all the souls she has taken?

Sighing, she turns into the parking spot, pushing the truck into the bush just a little bit more to ensure it is out of sight before turning it off. She climbs out and grabs her bow and quiver of arrows from the back and straps them to her bag. Tearing down some extra branches and leaves, she covers the truck farther in the foliage before taking off into the forest.

Through the trees, the light filters through the leaves. It illuminates the ghostly fog that drifts through the trees and mingles with the green, painting the vegetation a light white. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees a rabbit dart away, and she debates shooting it for dinner later. The cold air nips at her face and she has to hide her face in the collar of her jacket to keep warm as she marches through the trees, searching for any sign of her targets.