My brother James stopped coming over for dinner when he sat in the blood that permeated my flattened couch.
It wasn’t really my fault. At the time, I was still learning how to work cleanly and, to be fair, my clothes were worse. I couldn’t leave the house without a red stain standing out against my starched white sleeves or a tuff of hair sticking to the hem in my pants. I constantly looked as if I were shedding my skin to howl at the moon.
The bloodshed started about three months before James stopped coming to Sunday dinners. The day it started was when my good ole boy Charlie brought some of his friends to my back patio. The day I took to adding real value to my life.
It was also around the time I had lost my job. I was selling life insurance, and, admittedly, I was truly terrible at it. Preying on the old was never in my nature, and it was hard to convince anyone under the age of 65 to sit and listen to me. From birth, it was hard for anyone to hold a conversation with me. My mother attributed it to my looks. I preferred solitude anyway; it was less pressure and rejection.
Inevitably, after losing my job, my sleep schedule adjusted to better suit my natural circadian rhythm. I was always a night owl, preferring the quiet and seclusion. I can recount the sounds of nightingales and mockingbirds more than morning birds and woodpeckers. Unfortunately, the new schedule didn’t match Charlie’s. He was stubborn and wasn’t so keen on shifting his schedule. He liked running around the misty mornings more than sniffing by the porch light.
Once I started consistently waking up well into noon, Charlie and I decided it was best for me to let him outside as I was about to fall into the couch. Changing of the guards at first light.
There was no need to suck anything else into the black hole of my life. It was a mutual agreement between friends. Once Charlie got comfortable enough with running around unmonitored, he also took to his more natural callings. Like my rednecked neighbors, he hunted.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t similar to my neighbors. For many reasons, but one being I never had an affection for dead things– except feel bad for them, and feel an uncanny similarity. We had the same bugged eyes and shapeless mouths (features my mother used when describing my face to my aunt).
Weeks into our new routine, as I peeked my eyes open to the afternoon sun, I saw Charlie smiling on the opposite side of the screen door, his pink spotted tongue hanging out the side of his sweet mouth.
As I approached, I saw three squirrels lying on my doormat. Limp furry bodies lined in a row, wet with slobber– their eyes exceptionally buggy.
Charlie was ecstatic; they were his new friends. Friends who reminded him of his father. There they lay, dead, on my dirty doormat, big black letters seen between their bodies spelling ALL ARE WELCOME.
One of the three was still fighting for survival. A broken neck left him paralyzed, but the muscles still flexed in his back. Hopelessly struggling to reach the tree line, guarded by a giant golden sentry.
I had no idea what to do. It was Thursday, and trash day was yesterday. Were they really supposed to sit in the bin for a week? If it were me, I would hope my neck was broken for a better reason than population control (Even though that’s what Henry at “Shaw Mutual Co” did to me. No severance by the way. My neighbor Peter told me to sue. He was living off a settlement after getting hit by an 18-wheeler. No lawyer would talk to me without an upfront meeting cost. I guess it was for the better— I didn’t want to bother anyone.)
So I took the squirrels inside, the dead ones at least. Charlie’s struggling friend was thrown into a bucket until I decided how to help him.
Plopped on my counter, I stared at their flaccid, soft bodies. After all, they were cute looking. Charlie sat nearby, wagging his tail, looking at me with his smile of pride. To get rid of them would be to throw away your child’s art project. Charlie was a good boy, my best friend, they deserved to be hung on the fridge.
Doing what I thought would be the logical next step, I started to gut and clean them.
When your waking hours are in the middle of the night, you discover two things almost immediately. Your life is very quiet, and there is nothing on TV.
I would turn on all my appliances in my house to fill the silence. It sounded as if there was someone different in every room. The kitchen would be playing the radio station my mother used to like. Down the hall in my bedroom, college football highlights cheered on like my brother used to play. And, in my living room, hunting videos sputtered consistently for my father.
I watched countless hours of Texas Hard Shots and bobcat mounting. I’ve watched so much gutting and cleaning through dreary eyes that when I was looking down at these squirrels, I felt like I was in one of the TV shows. Unfortunately, the tangible skills didn’t seem to pass through the screen. Blood, guts, and shit started to cover my linoleum kitchen.
However, after a few hours, I had two relatively clean squirrel hides. Charlie even did a good job of not puncturing their skin. His jaws must have issued a soft, but harsh pressure that snapped their necks cleanly. He was rewarded with two small, cold squirrel hearts (or maybe it was their livers).
Resting on the counter once again, these furry hides lay flat and deflated. They looked incomplete. As if their fate was yet to be complete. So I looked to my sidekick, “What next, boy?”
Charlie responded by running back into the kitchen with his favorite stuffed alligator toy. He sat, wagging his golden tail, looking up at me, nudging the gator towards me, and whining. I stood there thinking, then I read his mind. “Well, I guess I could try, but I was never a great seamstress.”
I tore into the alligator and started to stuff and tie the empty squirrel bodies. As I started to rip the seams of the alligator, I expected at least one whimper. One longing sigh for his lost friend. I was only met with smiles and happy woofs. I guess I was doing something right! Stuffed full, their form began to return. As I crudely sewed them shut, I threw them back to Charlie. Two toys for the price of one.
After hours of work, I went to check in on the one in the bucket. Maybe he was in the realm of saving. I didn’t want to cut and stuff anymore; it was rather taxing.
The squirrel was curled up at the bottom, but he looked alright. The paralysis seemed to be from fear rather than injury. I decided it was best to grant him redemption and put the bucket back in the woods, hoping he could carry himself back home to his friends and family.
But as I started to move towards the tree line, Charlie began whining and running circles around my legs while holding another stuffed toy (an armadillo) in his soft mouth. He wanted to trade another toy. After some thought, how could I say no? He was my best friend after all.
This started to become our new routine. My days of wallow began to be filled with cutting and stuffing. I ended up having to dig into my pillows and couch cushions to find enough stuffing. Charlie wanted so many new friends. Birds, rabbits, squirrels, a raccoon, and my neighbor’s Jack Russel named Soldier. Soldier was a little torn up, but I was able to bleach the fur and patch the puncture holes.
My house began looking like the woods out back. Covered in woodland creatures, I was Snow White, and Charlie was all seven of my dwarves.
After focusing on Charlie and my new job for a while, I started losing contact with everything else in my life. People like James didn’t appreciate the smell. But I didn’t mind the smell or solitude. Besides, Charlie kept me busy. He had me working all hours of the day. Everyday. I had no more time for leisure.
Then one day, something slightly unusual happened. I heard Charlie coming to the back door, as he has every day for the last few months. However, it was already well into the day, and Charlie usually hunted for his new friends while I was still sleeping. I was already elbow deep in his American badger he brought this morning.
As I poked my head out, curious to see what was Charlie’s new surprise, I heard a voice. The first voice I heard that wasn’t recorded in weeks. It was my neighbor’s 4-year-old daughter. She was walking next to Charlie, asking him where her puppy Soldier had gone. Charle was pulling her by the sleeve of her princess pajamas while she giggled. He brought her right up to my welcome mat, where he sat, nudging her forward, whining.
I guess I’ll have to find some more stuffing.
