Dark Hedges

The Meat Contradiction

"What can I say?" She turned around and faced the open field in front of them. "Her father taught her well. I'm afraid kindness is a rarity in our family. But I can't say I don't understand Renata. A girl is only allowed to play so many games, and we can make up the rules in even fewer. Cruelty is often a girl's sole source of entertainment. Do you shoot?"

Teddy stumbled on his own words, too distracted by the woman's attitude to fully focus on her conversation. "I don't, I'm sorry."

She tilted her head, momentarily entranced by him, her light green eyes going straight through him. Then, seemingly bored with what she found, she shrugged and turned back to the field. Lifting her gun, she pointed it at the sky and screamed.

"Throw!"

A small, red disc flew through the air. Mrs. Rutherford took her shot but the bullet failed to land on the target. Instead, it merely graced it and the disc kept going, landing somewhere beyond the tree line of the forest that laid on the outskirts of school.

"Oh, bugger!" she lamented as her feet kicked the ground is a small tantrum. "One more time! Throw!"

Another disc crossed the sky and Mrs. Rutherford shot again. This time, the bullet didn't even come close to the flying target and it instead went straight ahead.

"This is useless," Mrs. Rutherford said, throwing the gun against the floor and releasing a loud grunt. She turned to see him, eyes squinted and mouth pouted in anger. "I need a real incentive. Bring out the ducks!"

As she bent to pick up her gun, three men appeared on the other side of the field, each carrying two large cages. Inside, a group of ducks fluttered their large, brown wings, moving around their confinement, loudly quacking, unsettling the roar of the wind. A short, plump man took the out the first duck and waited for Mrs. Rutherford's signal.

"Throw!" she yelled, her gun already in position.

The man released the duck and the bird flew across the sky, foolishly enjoying its newfound freedom. The woman pulled the trigger and her bullet landed straight in the animal's chest, stopping it mid-fight. The duck exploded in a cloud or smoke and crimson dust before falling to the ground, cold and meaningless, never to fly again.

Teddy's entire body shivered at the sight of the dead bird. His desire to throw up, now more powerful than ever, threatened to collapse him right there, in the middle of the field, but once again he pulled whatever strengths remained in his body to resist. His face must've contorted in an expression of disgust, because when the woman turned to see him again, her eyebrows meeting in the middle of her face.

"You don't hunt?" she asked, scratching the back of her head with the gun's muzzle. He silently shook his head, too nauseated to speak. "You disapprove."

"I dislike unnecessary animal cruelty," he replied, not wanting to disguise the contempt in his words.

Mrs. Rutherford snorted, throwing her head back. "Are you a vegan?"

Teddy frowned. "What?"

"Are you a vegan?" she repeated, her tone signalling impatience's arrival.

"No," he answered, momentarily forgetting his defiance.

"Then you're a hypocrite," she exclaimed in victory. "Have you ever been to a slaughterhouse? Do you know how the cows are treated? The chickens, the pigs? They're killed worse than this. Yet you don't care because you don't see, you just feast on their remains. But when Mrs. Rutherford shoots one lousy little duck, she's the fucking cruel cunt, huh? She's the one with the problem, she's the one with the gun and who on Earth let her have a gun in the first place, huh? Throw!"

Another duck left the cage and the woman fired twice in a row. Both bullets landed on the bird, disintegrating its entire body, leaving behind only a rain of feathers and blood.

Mrs. Rutherford cheered and turned back to see him, her features now loose, her body relaxed. She smiled again, kindly, softly, her demeanour back to its initial state.

"You seem like a sweet little boy," she said, approaching him and putting a comforting hand on his shoulder. "I was a sweet little girl once. The sweetest. Then I came to this school. Sweet doesn't last too long in here, sweet boy. You know what you should do? You should watch Old Yeller. You ever seen that film, Old Yeller? It's about this stray dog, Old Yeller, who's owned by this poor, sweet little boy named Travis, right? And they go on all sorts of adventures, they chase racoons and Old Yeller steals meat and cares for the cows. They're one fine pair. Throw!"

Still facing him, her green eyes growing bluer by the second, the woman fired without even looking. The faint last quack of the bird let Teddy know her bullet succeeded in finding its target.

"So this one day," Mrs. Rutherford went on, "a rabid wolf attacks Travis and Old Yeller bravely defends his owner but is bitten in the neck and so it too gets infected by rabies. Travis is then forced to shoot his Old Yeller and kills it."

She stopped talking, allowing silence to reluctantly spread through them. Her eyes went to the floor. Feet fidgeting, she played with the gun, her hands gracing and exploring every inch of the weapon.

"You know, when I first saw that film, I cried for a week. I couldn't believe the dog died. I mean, what kind of sick fuck kills a dog? I thought that perhaps I missed something, right? Some crucial fact that explained Old Yeller's death. So I saw the film again and found nothing. Only a dead dog in the end. I refused to accept it and so I watched the film a third time, foolishly believing that if I prayed long enough, I might be able to change the ending and the dog might survive the end of the picture. It didn't. And I just kept crying and crying and crying. And crying."

The whisper of the wind surrounded them, lifting every hair in Teddy's exposed arms, frosting his blood and bones, rattling him. He might've disappeared, had Mrs. Rutherford's domineering eyes, now back on him, not been nailing him to the ground.

"So you know what I did?" she asked, her voice warm and velvety.

He shook his head, his jaw quivering, tears reaching their arms out of his strangely unmovable eyes. "I don't."

She smirked, another grunt leaving her mouth. "I watched it again. And again. And again. And again. Until one day I watched it and no tears left my eyes." A smile, colder, terrifying, spread through her entire face and she turned back to the open space, pointing her gun again. "What we love kills us. Remember that. You are a sweet boy. The kind that chases after stray dogs, thinking that you can save them. But you can't. And you won't. So cry now, cry today, cry every single tear that you can. When you wake up tomorrow, a huge weight will have lifted from your body. And the next time you feel like you're about to cry, you'll see there's no need to. It's just another dog getting shot. Throw!"

Wings flapped and the delusion of freedom spread through the air, only to be stopped by a well-timed bullet. His eyes went to the ground but his nose couldn't avoid the smell of powder. Still, he didn't need to see to know what happened.

Another duck getting shot.