The Trapper

It Begins

“Nova! Where are you? You need to get back here!”

Mama’s voice carries through the swaying woods at a low hiss.

I snag the long stems of several wild garlic flowers in my fist and pull, laying them flat in my basket.

There’s a slight chill in the air, but I could stay here all day.

My worn gingham dress is just enough protection against the wind that whips off the coast.

I breathe deep, savoring the slight burn in my lungs.

“Coming, Mama!” I call, matching her tone.

She doesn’t want Papa to hear her. He’s not even my real Papa.

Only a replacement who stole his place in our lives.

I turn and begin working my way back to the trail to our small homestead, ignoring the twinge in my side where Vega had kicked me as I lay sleeping on my pallet during the night.

Whoops, she’d whispered gleefully as I’d cried out and Papa shouted for me to shut up, I didn’t see you there.

There are a few rocky outcroppings to scramble over, but I make it back to our dilapidated fence in no time. No one knows these woods like me. Vega refuses to forage anymore, ever since she and Papa—

“There you are. The pot’s on the fire. Go chop the vegetables for the stew,” Mama says, keeping her eyes on the basket she’s weaving.

Her fingers are chapped red, and her wrists stick thin.

I can see the swelling on her cheek even as she tries to swing her thick brown-and-gray braid to hide it.

It’ll be black and blue by tomorrow. Papa and Vega are inside while Mama sits out here on her small stool.

“Mama,” I whisper, pleading with my tone not to be sent in there even as I know there’s nothing she can do. “Maybe we can leave. Pack all the food we can carry and pick our way down the coast toward the rising sun.”

“Don’t even think that. You don’t remember what it was like, Nova. You and your sister were just babies. But I remember the violence, the fires—the groups of roving men. Your father protected us. We’re safe here, tucked away.”

Safe. I clench my fists around the wicker basket handle.

A low moan seeps under the cabin door and Mama’s fingers pause for just a fraction of a second before continuing by rote memory.

“But it’s been years. So many years. I’m twenty now. Vega is eighteen. What if people have rebuilt? There could be settlements, or—”

“Stop, Nova. No more. Get those thoughts out of your head. You’ve always been a dreamer. You need to grow up. This is our life. Our home. You and Vega. Me and Papa. We’re h—happy here. And we have a mission now,” her words catch in her throat, “your Papa is going to repopulate the world.

He has a vision.”

I grind my teeth together as my vision blurs. Papa first mentioned his vision the day before Vega’s eighteenth birthday.

“Please, Mama, I don’t want him to—” but before I can finish my sentence, Mama snatches the basket from me and whips at my hands with a thin willow rod she had been weaving. I whimper in pain at the sudden lashing, cupping the red line that was quickly turning to a welt on the back of my hand.

“Go inside and start the stew. Your Papa will want his supper on time.” There is no give in her voice, and something wilts inside me. I wipe away a stray tear and open the front door, leaving Mama to her work.

Papa found this cabin after months of walking away from Olympia.

He was a delivery driver before, so he knew there were all kinds of isolated properties to claim.

He knew Mama because he was best friends with my real father, who died in the first wave of the illness.

Mama was pregnant with Vega, and I was barely two.

I avoid the decades-old bloodstain right inside the door.

No sanding or cleaning has been able to erase the brown discoloration.

I keep my eyes downcast and turn to the right, entering the kitchen area where Vega and I slept our whole lives on matching purple pallets that have faded to soft lavender. Lately, I wake up to Mama curled up on Vega’s, having crept out of the bedroom sometime during the night.

“Oh, Papa!” My little sister’s cry is a breathy whine that makes a shudder roll up my spine.

The cast-iron pot-bellied stove is warm, and a large steel pot is simmering.

The room glows a dim orange, and I can’t stop looking up at the open bedroom door as I begin to chop the pile of mushrooms, carrots, and potatoes that are piled neatly on the table.

“Hush, now. Be a good girl and relax for Papa,” He growls low, and I freeze, watching the pale form of Vega lying on her belly in the center of our parents’ bed.

They are in profile, and I can see the shadowy dance too well.

Papa is equally white, with smatterings of black hair on his legs, chest, and arms.

His long beard is full of straggly gray hairs and his skin sinewy thin.

His hips are pumping steadily, wet slaps echoing through the room as he covers the little girl he raised as his own like a horny animal.

“Nice and tight. Your womb knows, sweet pea. That’s why it’s squeezing and leaking like that. Your womb wants to be plowed and seeded. This is what you were born for!”

Her pants are eager and familiar. The sounds she makes as she tries to keep up with me on the side of the mountain. As she lugs buckets of freshwater from the river to our cistern. She whimpers again, louder, as Papa’s speed picks up and he roars in satisfaction.

“Shouldn’t I help Nova, Papa?” Vega asks disingenuously. I can practically hear the smirk on her lips. I stand and scrape the veggies into the pot with my chopping knife. We have an entire shelf of expired seasoning bottles that I pick from and shake over the bland soup.

“No. Grab your legs. Yeah. Hold ‘em high. Your only job is to hold my cum and be bred. Don’t let a drop out of that tight little cunt.” I hear a light spanking sound and the squeak of Papa rising from the mattress.

I stand listlessly before the boiling pot, listening to the shuffling of clothes and Papa’s low mumbling. The heat of his body singes me as he passes, his bare chest brushing my back. He kisses the top of my head, looking over me at the swirling vegetables.

“Looks good, Nova girl,” he whispers. I swallow my cringe and stand rigid.

I don’t want his attention, but even more so, I don’t want his anger.

The threadbare gingham is no barrier against his emanating presence.

I can smell the heady perfume yeasty scent of his seed and Vega’s mixed together. I close my eyes and count to ten.

“Where’s Mama?” he asks, the puff of air tickling my ear. He tugs on the tip of one of my long braids.

“She’s just there,” I thrust my chin toward the door. Papa sets his big hand right on the curve of my hip and squeezes. Each fingertip is a brand, nearly burning through my dress.

He releases me and steps away. From the corner of my eye, I see his rangy chest, bare of clothing.

He’s impervious to the cold. It’s hard to believe the stories he and Mama tell.

Of how she dropped out of high school and worked at a corner store when she fell pregnant with me.

Papa delivering packages for online sales.

Vega still makes him repeat explanations about the internet every few weeks.

To me, he seems to have been born for this life, not the other.

“You’ve got some leaves in your hair, baby girl. Best clean up before supper time.”

“Yes, Papa.”

He steps out onto the front stoop, and for a moment he’s a silhouette against gray clouds, his arms stretching high, his muscly back arching one way, then the other as he calls out to Mama. Then the door slams shut behind him and only the flickering fire lights the room.

“He doesn’t want you. He only wants me. That’s why he skipped right over your ugly ass,” Vega hisses.

I turn to see her lying like a turtle on her back, hands holding the backs of her knees, toes wriggling to some internal rhythm of hers.

She doesn’t care that she’s bare-ass naked, her strawberry red nipples soft on the shallow pale fat of her tits.

Her hair is wavier than mine, shinier and more of a honey brown.

She glows with beauty. Of course she attracted Papa first with her vivacious grin and crooked canines.

“Good,” I whisper back. “I don’t want him.”

“You think you’re too good for Papa? You’re a dried-up old raisin. I’m gonna give him beautiful babies, and you’re just gonna cook dinner for me and do my laundry for the rest of your life!” Vega says meanly, still keeping her voice down because even she knows Papa wants a peaceful home.

“Better that than what you and him are doing,” I say as I turn away from my sister.

She used to look up to me, follow me around the woods in her too-big clothes that Mama scavenged from the closest houses and stores.

Those places have long since run out. If we need anything, we have to roam further afield, something Papa only does once every year or two. We make do with what we’ve got.

Something heavy and sharp hits my back, and I suck in my gasp and see white spots. A hardback thriller off of Mama’s nightstand thunks to the floor, and I can feel where its edge hit me, a bruise surely already forming.

“You’re a bitch,” Vega whispers, and I’m surprised to see tears forming in her sea blue eyes. I almost feel sorry for her.

“And you’re a stupid cow.” Not that sorry though.