A Pretty Deer
A Pretty Deer
***
I think I’ve been here before.
I take a seat on the grass bank overlooking a great river. It is day, and yet the light here is dim, as if someone blotted out a part of the sun. Everything feels dull, and I am so tired.
I’m always tired here.
I don’t know where I am, but I have the sense that I live here now.
I don’t know where I used to live. I don’t know who I used to live with, either.
It’s as if my head is empty when it should be full, like someone cracked open my skull and scooped out my mind, the same way you scoop out a soft-boiled egg at breakfast.
I’m not bothered by it, per se. I just… exist. I am here, sitting in the grass, with nowhere to be. I am no one. I am nothing.
I don’t know how much time passes, but at some point I become aware that I am not in fact alone.
There is a little girl, with jet-black hair that curls in long waves down her back.
She stands some distance away, much further down the river, staring out across the water.
Something about the way she stands tells me that she is wary of whatever she’s looking at.
I follow her gaze, and that’s when I see it. A pretty deer.
It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before, but then again, I’ve never seen a deer other than the pair painted on my mother’s favourite china.
Mama. I try to grasp at that memory, of the china and the smell of fresh-baked bread that clung to mama’s apron, and the warmth of her arms around me, but it wiggles away like a slippery eel in the water, and I am left dizzy and unsure of what it was I was even thinking about.
A deer.
I watch the deer across the river, its huge antlers stretching up, up, up, larger than its entire body. They are branches, filled with blossoms that rain petals as it turns its head, glowing green eyes looking directly at me.
It is a pretty deer, but there’s something about it that feels ominous.
I feel very cold.
When I look again for the girl she is stomping away, a tiny figure in the long grass, her head down and her shoulders pulled up to her ears, the unhappiest little child I ever did see.