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Why would someone be camping out on school grounds?
There should be no one here.
I follow it.
My mouth is dry, and it gets drier the closer to the fire I get. All I can see in my mind’s eye is the image of dangling bodies, and in my head I’ve managed to give them a face.
Mine.
I screw my eyes shut.
Don’t think about the past.
Keep moving forward.
Finally, I reach the edge of the forest. Dark orange leaves cascade onto the ground, wrenched from their homes by the ceaseless wind.
The campfire flickers, lighting up an area of grass where two small shapes are moving.
Then I double-check, and see that onlyoneshape is moving.
Slowly, I approach them.
On flat grass, I see the surroundings of Lochkelvin so much more clearly now. The mountains in the distance are looming black domes, the forest behind me a carpet of fear. I hear the flow of the loch nearby, snaking and slick, a current of endless life.
But in front of me is another symbol of death.
Splayed out, its paws bent at crooked angles and its stomach exposed to the sky, lies a small brown rabbit.
I swallow.
It would be bad enough, except it’s so much worse.
Because its stomach is sliced open, its entrails spilled around it, blood soaking the grass.
And feeding on its innards is a bright red dove.
The dove pulls at the rabbit, gripping its pink guts between a sharp beak, gnashing down on it until the flesh is squashed and bloody.
I can’t believe what I’m seeing.
Since when do birds eat rabbits?
But the bird doesn’t look like any kind of bird I’ve ever seen. It’s bright,brightred, so sickeningly vibrant that it looks like it’s bathed in blood.
When I take a step forward, it turns its gaze up to me, the rabbit’s intestines dangling from its beak.
It tries to fly away from me, darting and fluttering in my direction, still attached to the rabbit…
And that’s when I realize —
It isn’t eating the rabbit.
It’sstuck tothe rabbit.
It’s as though the bird’s beak has been glued shut around the rabbit, and now it can’t do anything but perish alongside it.
I’m seeing this. This is happening. Because right now, I’m not entirely sure what’s real and what’s not.
