Point Perfect

It came quicker than I expected, the day he said I was ready. He said he could tell, it was point perfect, written in my eyes. He was all about point perfect, he said it was magic, never repeated, never a moment too late, or too early. Usually it was about death, my father's definition of point perfect. But on this rare occasion, I was graced with the phrase.

He caught the bird before I woke. A dainty songbird of white with frayed blurring tufts of feathers brimmed in yellow, and just a hint of orange beneath, like the sun was tucked and waiting to be released. 

I watched it flitter about nervously, it's chest quickly rising and falling while its eyes scanned looking for the exit it was sure it missed. It was a was a beautiful thing, and I trembled as my mind thought of ways to let it free without facing my father's familiar wrath.

Point Perfect

The words kept rising above my thoughts like a swirl of oil in a pan of water, unable to not notice its stark contrast. I reached my hand outward toward the cage, slowly, the tremble more persistent as it kept tempo with my banging heart. It would be worth it, in the end, to see it fly.

My father's gnarled hand clamped sternly across my boney shoulder and immediately my muscles tense and I pray he doesn't understand its guilt that's bound me up like twine, muscles so tight and rigid I'm afraid they'll unravel and snap leaving me bones without support.

"Yes," he says in a gruff whisper. "The desire is there, to touch, to wonder, to want to understand the movement and texture. But that, is not our goal. We must capture just one thing."

Point Perfect.

He doesn't have to say it, my mind already knows. Endless theories and dinner conversations in the cabin where we survive, just him and I, there's no way my mind doesn't know already.

He hands me a thin cool rod of metal, much like a hanger for the funeral clothes we've only worn once and won't touch again despite the ragged holes and winter bite of the thin ones we live in. Maybe it's made from one of those, and now the clothes that hang in his closet on the opposite side of the bed are bound together forever, like he and I.  The rod is unassuming, without twists and with no pretense of being anything else than the dagger it is. My hands close in slow motion, each muscle being forced by a signal to submit willing it to make my father happy.

"The puncture will be small, easy to repair and hard to see. That's why we pick the smallest one capable of the job.  Don't miss, the bird will suffer, you will suffer, and the thrashing will spoil the feathers. Remember to wait for it, the moment."

He speaks as if fevered, pupils big and round with a sheen of sticky sweat across his forehead that although has just appeared, already assaults my nostrils and causes my eyes to water. He steps back, like the tom cat when the mouse is stuck and squirming, as if watching is part of the game.

I close my eyes and offer a hollow prayer. Knowing there is no point perfect, no exact moment  where the death captures life. It's just a small bird waiting to fly, and me wishing to flee. With trembles and sadness I strike, clipping the side of it's chest as the bird screeches and falls to the bottom still writhing.

My greatest sin has crashed upon me, and I stare in horror as it slowly hopes for a release of pain and my own pain comes then, a heady weighted fist across my left cheek. Pain blasts in white star patterns and bounces in my mind and I am grateful.

For two weeks the vision in my eye is blurry and red.  Blood seeps mixed with uncalled tears down my left cheek and swirls upon the surface of the milky white layer long after the purple on the outside fades to pink like the afternoon sky.

We stuff the bird anyway, slowly taking out things that made it live, and stuffing in filler to make it look as if it still could. My hands ache, the stitching, though delicate must be done over again and again until he deems it right. We leave the scar, not a piercing, a hole, uneven and unsightly to remind me. It sits across from my seat at the table, so that I am reminded I did not reach it, point perfect.

Next comes the squirrel, silver like the moonbeams across the forest floor with dancing eyes and long thin fingers that make me think of babies. I don't hesitate, not for fear the pain he will cause me, but because I can't bear to see another creature struggle, the burden of the bird still heavy on my soul, if I still have one.

I shut him out of the work den by the fourth one, the rabbit.  Calling it a gift, I spend hours working alone in the shadowed room where countless years of dust and fur coat my tongue and cover my lungs. The weighted stones, skillfully painted as eyes, lay along the shelves and watch and judge, as if I didn't feel the burden myself.

I take my time on the rabbit, stopping frequently to rub my cold stiff fingers in its deep brown fur, gathering strength and offering homage.  During this time I think of moments and memories of pain and reprimand in search of my father's elusive point. Reminding myself that It doesn't exist, I know this. If it were possible, it would be the blink of an eye, that moment before joy gets balanced by pain and sorrow. No matter how much he has told me otherwise, I cannot fathom a perfect moment.

She's flawless, my rabbit. Her look is inquisitive and her ears stand taut with just a tiny crimp on the end as if she's captured a warning sound, perhaps my own feet the day we hunted her down. Despite the hours of lessons and hard work, I find no joy or warmth in the dead.  Unlike my father, I long for twitching whiskers and thumping chests, that's the beauty to me, the kind that can't be captured or replicated.

I present her with reverence, my pink cheeks tingle and my shoulders lift because I know I've done well. She is the kind of specimen people will pay for. My father knows that to survive despite his failing eyes and clawed hands I must match his skill, reach his point perfect.

"I have no words." He mutters, as tears form tiny crystal pools beneath his chocolate eyes, threatening to spill.

"You've got it, I knew you had the vision, and I was right."

My teeth clamp quickly over my tongue as I bite back the words I want to spew, but won't, as I watch him study the rabbit, his eyes worn and cloudy but filled with a pride I'd never seen before.

That was the moment. Everything clicked into place in an instant. His point perfect. I grabbed his meat knife from the table and plunged it quickly. Seamlessly it slid between the ribcage stopping life and starting death. In the time it took to look my way, that pride filled expression had burned beneath my eyelids. I had finally captured it.

Point perfect.

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Word Count 1,260
Written Just to Fill a Dark Place