1. Skin: It peels away easy. Just a few cuts on the arms, legs and chest, and then it's just a matter of elbow grease. Pull enough and the skin comes off without tearing or ripping, in one fine sheet, like taking off someone's coat. The skin makes a sound that is all at once unnerving and strangely satisfying. After the skin, the body is revealed in all its crimson, oozing wetness. Then you take what you want. The edible parts around the thighs, the shoulders, the torso and the back. The red meat slides seamlessly from the bright and glittering knife as it is reflected in the cheep 60-watt bulb hanging from the ceiling. Open the chest and reach for the liver and discover the organs clumped together like candy in a Halloween bag. When all the useful parts have been stripped, you throw the rest away before it rots on the rope it's hung from. The parts all lay on the nearby table. That's all it comes down to. Parts. Stripped down, it all isn't much. Just parts.

2. Meat: He was a 19-year-old boy with dark brown hair, busy reading a magazine in the corner. His name was Milton Felts and a look of boredom was tattooed on his eyes. It was then that Jasper and Wilt hauled in the latest kill.

"We got a big one here," said Jasper loudly and gestured out the door where the two hunters stood next to the truck, the father smiling and the boy busying himself by kicking rocks in the gravel driveway. Milton had been in the middle of an article about the Internet's impact on the prison system and found it easy enough to put down. He headed quickly into the back room as Jasper finished hauling the carcass in. Wilt, as per usual form, had stopped helping to move it after they got in the store and was letting Jasper and Milton do the work while he bullshitted with the customers.

"What do they want?" asked Milton as they hauled it into the room.

"Usual stuff."

"Do they want the liver?"

"No, just the barbeque-able parts."

It took Milton and Jasper little time to hang the kill. Despite what Jasper had said, it was not a very large deer. None of the deer brought in were ever very large, but if Wilt or Jasper felt the customers couldn't tell, they always said they were big. Milton once asked why, and Jasper smiled at Wilt and said, "For the same reason a hooker tells you your dick it big."

As soon as the deer was hung up, Jasper left the room, and Milton closed the curtain. He had been told to always close the curtain. One time he had forgotten and, while he was removing the skin, a customer who was watching from the front room had thrown up.

Taking a moment to prepare, Milton turned on the radio and put on his latex gloves. The room looked like a torturer chamber. Bodily fluids of every variety clung to the walls and covered the floor. Flies inevitably swarmed no matter how much he kept swatting them. Milton put on his goggles and apron and picked up the knife. It was rather unimpressive, small and curved, and would hardly be worthy of a Crocodile Dundee joke, but it was all that was needed. He walked over to the kill and looked up at its face, tongue hung out of its mouth and its eyes were rolled back. It looked stupid and ridiculous. It was dead.

Milton lifted his knife to begin working.

3. Appendix: James Seymour had just finished paying an extra twenty bucks for the pictures Wilt had taken of the deer right after James' son Alec had shot it in the lower neck. They had also shot a smaller deer, which James had shot with pride.

He was forty-three, and every so often he felt a strange and primal part of his brain consistently calling him out for his soft and decadent life, spent mostly typing things on the computer in one form or another. He had done little in the way of fighting or surviving and lived a basically sheltered existence. Every now and then he deeply feared that he would be called out for his safe life by some vague and generalized image that was a composite roughly of John Wayne, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the redneck construction workers (who had worked on his neighbor's house and had made extremely loud noises, and each time he wanted to go over there and ask them to keep it down, he always got nervous and made an excuse). In order to quell this fear, he had decided to do the most masculine and powerful thing he could imagine, which was killing something. And he'd decided that he wished to protect his son from that fear in the future.

However, his son Alec, who had reached a body count of thousands on his PS2, found the experience upsetting and vaguely disturbing. But he held it all in and just stood next to his dad, staring at the ground, trying to look tough and even happy. Meanwhile, he felt the nagging sensation that the creature being sliced apart in the room nearby would never ever come back again, and no matter how many deer Alec would ever see that would resemble this one deer, they would never replace it. He didn't understand why his dad had wanted to make him do this. Alec led a simple life and only wanted to return to the smooth and soft buttons of his controller and continue his harmless, though sometimes violent, adventures. He also wanted Maggie, a chubby, older girl who had taken a sudden interest in him for reasons he couldn't understand. Recently, she had reached her warm hand down his pants and masturbated him several times. He saw no point in shooting a deer, which was cold, hard, and serious. All he wanted was to return to the simple and irrelevant world of his video games and the beautiful folds of her soft decadence.

Wilt and Jasper loved guys like James. They had basically designed the place for men like him. They were both very good at what they did.

Milton exited the back room with a plastic bag full of wrapped up pieces of deer meat. He set this down with the sense of a job well done. He looked at Alec who swallowed hard when the meat made a very faint squishing sound as it was set on the counter. James patted Alec on the back.

"Now we eat our kill, just like the Native Americans."

Jasper and Wilt ran the final credit card through while Milton returned to his magazine. Milton's pants and parts of his face were sprayed with blood.

4. Blood: After washing off the blood, Milton heated up his microwave fettuccini Alfredo in the pathetic motel microwave that always smelled like hot dogs and watched TV while waiting for it to cook. Nothing much was on, but he wasn't picky anyhow. He often wished he smoked because it would give him something to pass the time. At the Pine River Deer Shoot where he worked, he spent a lot of his day trying to figure out things to pass the time before they brought in another deer for him to cut up. There used to be a TV in the main room, but it had gone to stati,c and now he had to make due with a magazine. He had to make sure he brought one himself because the only magazines available at the place were car magazines and ones about hunting, and Milton didn't understand either of them. It would be more then fair to say he hated the place and most everything about it. As someone on TV got shot, he thought about how much he needed to quit. The smell of the back room was beginning to follow him around.

The dinger on his microwave went off, and he got up to retrieve his meal. It didn't taste like much, but Milton ate it and watched a bad movie on TV.

Jasper and Wilt used to provide him with mild amusement, but now the irony of them was beginning to bother him. They fancied themselves real hunters. They were big into it and were quick to lecture about it at the faintest sign of interest. The Pine River Deer Shoot was their joint business. They had started it because they had noticed all the new and inexperienced yuppie hunters coming in from the city becoming frustrated and confused. They also often felt intimidated by the other hunters who would openly mock them. Jasper and Wilt got the idea of making a deer hunt designed to be easy, simple and comfortable. They still mocked the customers secretly. Milton often thought it would be fun to point out to them that shooting a severely under-evolved and stupid herbivorous animal from two hundred yards away with an advanced weapon armed with a scope so good it could assassinate bacteria wasn't exactly a challenge either. The only real challenge was staying quiet, and Milton saw this as no great task. So he remained silent as the two of them made cracks to one another and planned their next outing.

The air conditioner rattled next to Milton, and outside he heard drunk hick kids gathering in the bar outside. He briefly thought of the local bars in Maybrook, where he used to live. He blandly recalled his sisters flirting with the boys while he tried to make time with whatever girl happened to be around, all the while he had to choke back his bitter disdain for the world around him. He knew he wasn't meant for that town, not for the rest of the drones shuffling back and forth between sleep, eating, work, drinking, occasionally fucking and back to sleep. He knew now, with unquestioning certainty, that he had places to go far beyond this. He just wasn't there now. And that was beginning to gnaw at him. He needed to quit soon.

He finished his meal and watched TV for a little longer before going to bed.

5. Antlers: Milton hadn't noticed her. He was busying himself with a copy of People he had swiped from the lobby of his motel. It gave him minimal interest, but it was the only thing there, and it was better then nothing. Had he noticed her walking into the front room, he would have thought that her blond hair had the vague appearance of a wig. It wasn't a wig, and anyone looking at her could see her roots, but it was dyed and did somehow project a faint air of falseness. Her eyes were hidden behind gas station sunglasses, and her lips appeared dry. She was certainly attractive--thin, late thirties, nice hips, legs displayed by cutoff jeans and a tank top that revealed freckles on her shoulders. But she wasn't trying to be attractive. On the contrary, her sunken cheeks were actively and consciously broadcasting hostility with a bit of amused satisfaction. Milton didn't notice any of this from his spot in the corner. Jasper and Wilt noticed most of it, particularly her hips and legs.

Jasper began, smiling his crooked, sparkling white teeth. "Well, hello miss, what can we do you for?" Milton had noted that Jasper frequently changed his style of speaking to overtly rustic when he thought the customer would go for it. Many of the city people needed to be reassured that they were smarter than the hick who would be helping them to kill. In one of his rare gems of conversation, Wilt had said to Milton, "When people come down to this area, things need to be as close to the way they imagine them or else they can get scared away."

Without a change in her composure, she said. "I can kill deer here, right?"

"You sure can, honey," said Wilt from the stool next to Jasper. Usually, they felt that only one of them was needed per pitch, but with her, Wilt had decided she deserved more immediate attention than the Cars Monthly that now rested on his lap.

She ran her fingers along the cool glass of the counter. Beneath it a varied assortment of knives and gun paraphernalia for purchase looked back at her. With the mirrored eyes of her sunglasses it was hard to say if she was looking at Jasper or the knives. "I hear the deer here are pretty easy to shoot. Like, really easy to shoot close up."

"Now who told you that?" Jasper grinned and put his hands up in a soft protest of the truth. "You gotta be at least a decent shot to even stand a chance at popping one of those fast bastards." Milton once laughed at this line, which Jasper or Wilt fed to all the new customers. It was simple brilliance, tell them it's hard and when they find it easy they feel good and want to come back. They want to tell their friends.

She looked him hard in eye, maybe. "I want them to be easy." There was an awkward pause. "I'm not that great a shot, and I want them to be easy to shoot."

Carefully backtracking so as not to admit he was lying while still trying to keep her interest, he said factually, "I think you'll hit one."

"Good." She smiled a strange and mischievous smile, then held out her hand, which was well manicured except for the chewed down nails, which were all blue. "My name is Heidi Packer." Milton had finally noticed her, but what he noticed was that she was announcing her name with a small but peculiar amount of enthusiasm, as if she had just found out it was her name and was pleased.

Jasper took her hand. "Well, nice to meet you. Would you like to make a date so you can come back and shoot that deer?"

The left side of her lip curled up in light hesitation. "Um, I was hoping to do it today."

"Well, we're kind of booked up for today. We usually do this by appointment. We include the hunting permit, though."

"I…" she hesitated, "I really need to do this today."

Jasper's brow furrowed as he tried to brainstorm. Wilt got out the appointment book, and they looked over the schedule. "We got free spot in half an hour, I guess Wilt could go up there with you."

Milton was observing Heidi then and noticed she was looking with some level of concentration at the hunting knives in the display case. She didn't look happy at the noise she was hearing from them, but the site of those knives was definitely doing something to her. He kept watching her until, with a sudden but smooth lift of her head, she appeared to be looking back at him. Milton's eyes darted back to his magazine, and it surprised him.

"Excuse me." They both looked up from the book. "There's one other thing…" She licked her bottom lip quickly. They didn't even notice it. "I want to kill it…the deer. I want to kill it with a knife."

There was a pause, but less than one would expect, before Jasper chuckled a little. "Uh, miss, you ain't gonna be able to get close enough to kill it with a knife. They startle easily."

Her retort was quick. It was then clear she had thought about this. "What if I shoot it in the leg first?" She didn't wait for them to respond. "I'm a good enough shot that if one gets close enough, I could hit it in the leg. Then…after it was wounded, would it be okay if I finished it off with a knife?"

Milton's eyes lifted, almost as a reflex. Wilt turned to Jasper to gauge his thoughts, but Jasper was still looking at Heidi, so Wilt turned back to her and answered. "I think that could be arranged." Then, gesturing to the display case. "Do you got a knife or do you need to buy one?"

A few minutes later, Heidi had bought a knife and was carefully inspecting it. Much to Milton's surprise, she had gone with a medium-sized knife that was probably the best one for the job. Most people who bought hunting knives tended to go for the largest, most jagged one they could find, the one that looked superficially scary and painful but was mostly cumbersome for actual use. Milton found she was beginning to interest him. She was still examining the knife when Wilt got a call on his cell phone. He took the call in the back room and in a few minutes he came back out.

"Jasper," he said, "We got a problem."

Jasper rolled his eyes. "What is it now?"

"That was my mom on the phone. She needs me to get over there now to help her move."

"And you can't do that in an hour?"

"The moving van is already there. What exactly am I supposed to do?"

Heidi looked up from the knife. "What's the problem?"

"We got another appointment coming in a few minutes so I can't come with you, and Wilt apparently needs to help his mom move so he can't go with you neither."

Heidi was just putting the knife in her purse. "Can't I just go alone? I think I have the basic idea of what I'm supposed to do."

"Sorry, but there needs to be someone out there with you, especially with what you want to do. It's for legal reasons, you understand."

Heidi grimaced.

Jasper didn't want to lose a deal. "Tell you what, if you come back tomorrow, we'll give you a discount."

"I really can't. I need to do this today."

Jasper scratched his neck casually, but Milton knew it was his tick when he was trying to figure something out. Wilt leaned in and whispered to Jasper. "Why don't we just send Milton with her?"

Milton heard this and lifted his eyes up from the magazine.

Jasper was thinking it over, and he whispered back to Wilt, although everyone could hear it. "Does he know what he's doing?"

"He's helped me with a few. It ain't rocket science, after all."

Heidi realized who Milton was and looked over to him. They found themselves eyeing each other tentatively for a second before both looked back to Jasper. He was now looking hopefully at Milton with a wide smile.

"Hey Milt, you think you could help us out?"

He rolled his eyes, got up from his stool, and set the magazine on the counter with defeat. "Fine, I'll go."

6. Lungs: Heidi had rented a rifle from the lodge. Milton didn't know what kind it was, but it had a big scope on it. She'd tossed it in the back of the truck they were taking and had lit up a cigarette as soon as she had strapped herself into the passenger seat. The scenic road they had to travel to get there ran by a lake, but no one could ever see the lake from it because on all sides there were tall trees which kept it feeling isolated from the rest of existence. Milton hated this road because it reminded him of how far from home he was. He was thinking about the letter his mother had sent him recently when Heidi started talking in between puffs of her cigarette.

"So," she asked, "you're Milton?"

"Yeah."

"And I'm Heidi."

He was not in the mood for conversation.

"So," she asked, "what is it you do there? You're obviously not a hunter."

"I cut up the meat and wrap it up," he said. He didn't like it when people assumed things about him.

"Shit, that's gotta be gross."

"I guess."

"You're not from here, right?"

Milton shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "No."

Heidi smiled to herself and put her bare feet on the dashboard. Her toenails were all painted purple. She puffed a few extra times, then looked over at him, still smiling and wearing the sunglasses that coated her eyes.

"So where are you from?"

"Maybrook. You probably never heard of it."

She breathed out smoke. "No, I've heard of it. Some kinda suburb, right?" When he didn't answer, she seemed to take it upon herself to keep talking. "Not quite as hickish as here, but kinda in the middle of nowhere, right?"

"I guess."

"You don't talk much."

"I'm not really in the mood."

"No, I mean you don't talk much ever, do you?" Milton didn't look over to her because he believed in always keeping his eyes on the road. "You were sitting on that stool and ignoring them and me. I bet you sit there all day, never saying two words to anyone."

Behind his lips, Milton was grinding his teeth. He was feeling a tension build up in his spine as she continued to dig.

She was lighting up another cigarette. She seemed amused at the sound of her own voice. "What I'm wondering is why you're out here, in this shitty little redneck hole. You obviously hate it, so why settle here?"

"No, I like it." His voice startled him; it wavered and shook, yet still he continued. "No, I used to go hunting with my grandfather around here. Before going to college, I wanted to spend some time up here to clear my head."

Heidi was smiling to herself as she continued to smoke. Her face looked careless, as if the world could be ringing with the screams of children, and she'd still be thinking of inane things to talk about.

"Me, I couldn't stand life in a place like this. I passed a gas station and all these hick assholes were staring at me. It's just that this is the only place I knew where they might let me kill something. I heard about it from this guy I know."

Milton said nothing and just kept watching the road.

"You used to kill deer with your grandfather?"

"Sometimes," he managed.

She pulled the knife from her purse and continued examining it, running her chewed fingernails along the edge of the blade with satisfaction. "You ever kill anything smaller?"

"Like what?"

She shrugged her freckled shoulders. "I don't know, like a cat or a dog."

"No, I've never done that. Why would anyone want to do that?"

"I killed some lizards once. I was about your age."

Milton noticed a road sign. "We're almost there," he interrupted.

She hadn't heard him. "There was this boy, this pathetic little boy…."

Milton spoke again. "We're almost there."

She squinted down the road. "Almost where?"

He answered, "Station Number 12, your station."

7. Liver: The station. The first time he had seen it, he'd thought it was a joke. It looked like a kid's plastic fort, the kind parents set up for their children in the back yard. It was big and dark green, with a small, segmented wheel in the front. Behind it was a ladder so they could crawl into the covered top and wait for the deer. It was a joke that wasn't funny--not that Milton cared either way.

"Here it is," he said. In his arms he held a large bag of deer feed. Heidi came up behind him carrying the rifle, still in its slipcover. She looked at the station with a sneer.

"The fuck is this supposed to be?"

"It's where the deer come." He gestured to the ladder. "You get up there and I'll turn the thing on."

She coughed and headed to the ladder. Milton was eager to get away from her, but still she kept talking as she climbed up.

"So what the hell does this thing do?"

Milton rolled his eyes. "It's an old, old trick. This thing automatically makes a calm buzzing sound and then dispenses food. The deer find it and eat. After a while, the buzzing sound lets them all know the food's coming. So we can draw them to this spot whenever we want." He opened up the side panel and checked to see if there was enough feed still left in the dispenser. There wasn't, so he refilled it.

"Seems kinda unfair. But then again I guess we're smarter, so fuck'em anyway.'

Milton gritted his teeth in aggravation again and used his key to activate the circuit. He then pressed the button and they were soon hearing the calm buzzing noise over their heads. It wasn't even loud enough to drown out Heidi's voice after he got into the top and sat across from her. "Those two guys back at the place, they set this all up?"

"They bought the land and the deer. These stations were already being used at some vacations resorts so they ordered them. That's about it."

Heidi had already unzipped the rifle and was holding it, aiming the scope. She seemed to find it enjoyable. Milton was hot and wanted this to be over. "I mean, I guess it's natural. Using the weakness of other animals."

"I guess."

She shifted herself closer to the opening and placed the rifle barrel through it, pointing it down at the steadily growing pile of feed that spat out from the segmented wheel. Even with her sunglasses resting on her forehead, she kept her eyes close to the scope so he still couldn't see them.

"How long before the deer come around?"

He looked out the back of the station at the woods. "Could be anytime. Usually about fifteen minutes, sometimes an hour."

Her lip curled up again. "I can't wait here too long. I got places to be."

"They always come eventually."

She kept pointing the gun around. "Even though one of them always gets shot here?"

"Yeah," said Milton. "They always come."

Heidi smiled. "Just like people. Mindless sheep. No matter how many times you abuse them, they keep coming back every time you call. Fucking sheep really. Pathetic."

A silence came between them that Milton found comforting. He wished he had brought his magazine. He considered asking her for a cigarette, but that would mean having to talk to her. Heidi was still amusing herself with the gun, aiming it randomly at the forest ahead. Eventually, she started talking again.

"We use animals as our stand-ins, don't we?"

"What?" He had decided to convey agitation in his voice, hoping it would put her off talking to him.

"Animals. People use them to fulfill the things missing in their lives. Like cats that old maids use in place of children. Or like here, we use them to fulfill the bloodlust."

"I guess," he said once more.

For a second she looked angry. Then she returned to her wild, grinning face and started talking again. "I imagine this will be better then killing lizards. I mean, these animals are higher up. Smarter and bigger."

She lifted her head up from the scope, and for a second Milton thought he saw an impression from the scope around her eyes, but she flicked down her sunglasses before he could be sure. She looked to him. "Did I tell you about the lizards?"

"You mentioned them." He folded his arms and tried to look bored.

It did not at all deter her. "There was this boy who lived next door to me. This really pathetic, nerdy boy who had this big-time crush on me, right. And I'd known him since I was a kid, so we still hung out." He adjusted his shirt and settled back. Milton did not like the enjoyment she seemed to take from his discomfort. She continued. "So one day, I'm high, and I'm over at his house, and he's talking about some stupid thing, and then he shows me his lizards. He's got like twelve of them, and they all have names, and they're like his pathetic friends or something. I think it's stupid, but then he has to go pick up his little sister, and I decide to wait at his house." Her expression never changed as she talked. Throughout the monologue she kept the same ingenuine look of glee. "So I start thinking about it, thinking how there's no one else in the house, so I grab three of the bastards and take them out to the back porch and step on them."

Milton reached in his pocket and counted the change, sixty-three cents. Heidi was looking at him, but he didn't notice. She talked a little louder. "The first one I hesitated on, but the other two I just stepped straight down on, hard. It was amazing. They didn't even bleed or even flatten. They just stopped moving. It was like a magic button or something." She smiled an absurd grin. "That's why I want to try this. But it's one thing to shoot a deer from far away and another to really get close and personal." She finished and looked over at Milton again. He wasn't moving and looked like he was thinking of something else. Her lips curled up in agitation. Then she calmed herself and put her eye back to the scope.

"Why are you always so quiet?" she said.

He stirred and didn't want to answer. "I don't know. I don't have anything to say."

She turned and pointed the rifle at him, her eye still in the scope. "How about now?" she said.

Milton felt his whole body, particularly his sphincter, tense up. "What the fuck are you doing?!"

"Getting you to God damn do something. It isn't normal for someone to be that quiet."

A small bead of sweat was finding its way down his forehead. The dead horse eye of the barrel was right on him. "You crazy bitch!"

"Now we're getting somewhere. You're actually reacting to something."

Milton lowered his eyes at her. "Get that gun off me right now."

"Oh, quit freaking out," she said. "It isn't even loaded."

Though he heard this, he continued to shift uncomfortably. In truth, it wasn't the barrel that scared him; it was the scope. Even though she probably could only make out blurs at that range, he felt it on him. He felt the dead stare. He hated being so scrutinized. It made his mind twitch like freshly crushed spider.

"So now," she began, "Why did you really leave Maybrook?"

"That's none of your business," he answered, trying not look threatened, but the bead of sweat creeping out of his forehead gave it away.

"Oh come on," she said, smiling. "Just tell me why, and I'll leave you alone."

Sometimes Jasper and Wilt would talk in the shop about their hunting trips and, if he had nothing else to interest him, he would listen in. They would talk about the deer running confidently into the clearing where their rifles were aimed and suddenly, almost mystically, it would stop and start looking around, as if it knew. Now he felt like that, like a deer in the forest who had the faint, but disturbing feeling that someone was watching them, someone with bad intensions. Someone who knew their weakness and would exploit it. He felt every defense he put on being stripped away by this crazy woman.

He looked to her with utter distain, which seemed to only help her maintain her wild and desperate grin. "I had to, okay?" he let out. "I left because I had to."

She didn't laugh; her smile almost suggested that she wasn't even going to give him that much. Without moving the rifle, she pointed it out to the woods. She then said something so quietly that Milton couldn't hear.

"What?" he said accusingly.

"I think I hear them coming."

8. Stomach: Indignant, Milton whispered, "I though you said it wasn't loaded."

Heidi answered plainly, "sorry," without smiling, but still in a mocking tone as a light clicking sound was heard. "The safety was on." He wanted to leave now. He would have too, if he hadn't still felt some deep and morbid curiosity about what she was going to do next.

The sounds in the distance were a series of light crunching noises of the hooves against the fallen leaves and crumpled grass. They appeared slowly, peeking their heads out from behind the trees. Then, all at once, they moved into the clearing, at first sniffing the feed, then eating, slowly and steadily. He wasn't watching them, but Heidi was from behind the scope, watching them intently and with short and steady breaths.

"They're beautiful," she said very quietly.

About five deer were gathered now in front of the station, three does and two bucks, all of them quietly licking up the pellets. Heidi moved her scope over all of them before settling between the two bucks. One was clearly bigger than the other, but both had some antlers and looked rather serene and graceful.

"I've never seen them this close up," she said again quietly. Eventually, she settled her sight on the smaller one. "They glisten in the sun. They look so peaceful," Milton didn't hear her. The two thin black lines that made up the crosshair were pointed at the deer's head. It almost seemed a farce. Unlike what Jasper and Wilt described, these deer seemed almost completely oblivious to the death eye that was focused on them.

She swallowed and, after a moment, Milton realized she was shaking. Carefully, he asked, with his head held up high, "What's the problem?"

She didn't answer. From her view, the crosshair vibrated around the deer in her sights. Hesitantly, she aimed the scope lower, onto the deer's front left leg. He was still eating the feed as she took a breath. The moment lasted a while. Milton was going to say something when suddenly the gun just went off. The bang it made was loud and seemed even louder when breaking the silence. Heidi pulled her head away from the scope and quickly dropped her sunglasses back into place as she wiped her forehead clean of sweat once, twice, three times, four times. She was shaking a bit.

Milton spoke. "Did you hit it?"

Heidi was still wiping her forehead, so he asked again. She looked out the front. All the other deer were gone, as if the shot had made them all disappear in an instant. "Yeah," she answered meekly, "I…I hit it."

Milton heard a faint honking coming from the ground below.

They got down and approached the deer. It made a light honking noise, tempered by various grunts and growls and other terrible noises. It was a painful noise. The leg where he had been hit was about blown off; the rest of the leg hung from a small string of skin and meat. It kept trying to get up, but could barely roll on its side. Heidi and Milton silently watched it struggle until it apparently became exhausted and collapsed. It made loud breathing noises, but was otherwise silent. Its tongue was flapping in and out of its mouth with every uneasy breath it took. Milton hadn't noticed, but she had her knife out. He looked over and noticed it.

"Are you gonna get to it?"

She swallowed hard and walked to the deer, her flip-flops made little crushing noises as she stepped on the scattered deer feed. As she approached, it kicked a few times violently, and she pulled back. Heidi watched as the deer kicked and struggled before settling back again. Milton watched as she finally kneeled down next to it, almost like she was praying. She cautiously held up the knife, but continued to stare at the deer. Slowly, her free hand extended to the main body of the buck and set down on its stomach. She brushed the pristine fur several times. Its antlers weren't very big, but they were well formed and looked beautiful. Heidi's eyes were still hidden behind the sunglasses, but her lips quivered with something Milton couldn't identify. This was getting interesting, he thought.

"So, what are you waiting for?" he said from behind her. The knife appeared to be vibrating independently in her hand; her bottom lip looked the same. "Aren't you going to do it?" said Milton again with the faint beginnings of a grin on his face. The creature went quiet, but the stomach that moved up and down showed it was alive. Heidi removed her hand and looked at it for a long time. Before Milton could say anything again, she gritted her teeth, and her eyebrows bent down in a vicious point as she screamed and stabbed the knife directly into the deer's stomach.

9. Tongue: After the knife was in, she shook for a second and looked like she might cry. The deer itself made only a little noise, and there was hardly any blood. She gritted her teeth again and stabbed it twice more, muttering and screaming something unintelligible. After that she let go of the knife while it was still in the chest and sat back on her knees.

The anger on her forehead melted down into a smooth wet curve of fatigue and dizziness. She looked like she was going to throw up. "I thought it would make more noise," she said to no one in particular. She looked despondent and vacant. "I thought it would scream or writhe…but it just sort of moaned and then went quiet."

Milton wasn't paying attention anymore. He was thinking about the letter his mom sent him two days ago and the phone call from his sisters. His sisters weren't mad at him. They weren't like him, but they were almost as desperate to get out of Maybrook as he had been. They both talked to him, each from different phones in the house and told him they wished him well and wanted to visit him when he settled down somewhere. They said they were both ready to drop out of school and follow their dreams somewhere else. He couldn't have cared less what they did, but he appreciated their vague understanding of him. They were the only two people in the world he thought might not cringe in horror if they fully understood him. All the same, he wasn't sure if he ever wanted to see them again.

10. Eyes: The deer passed quickly after that. Heidi kept stabbing at it for a while all the same, trying to get all she could from it. The sounds her knife made were wet and reminded Milton of footsteps on mud. Still, not much blood, not even from the stump of its broken leg anymore. She tried gritting her teeth and stabbing harder, stabbing faster, jutting in the blade and running it along the belly, but the moment was over. They both could see it. All she was doing was making a mess. Heidi dropped the knife and stood up, looking down at her kill, its tongue hanging out and its eyes rolled back into its dead skull, the three remaining legs bent and curved like those on a dead spider. Heidi looked up to Milton, who was playing with a lighter from his pocket. The image seemed to stir her as evidenced by the skin twitching just under her sunglasses. Her legs seemed to buckle, and Milton thought maybe she was going to fall until she put her hand against a nearby tree to brace herself. He then heard several sounds that might have been crying and put the lighter back in his pocket.

"We should go back now," he said scratching the back of his neck. "If you're done?"

With a single breath pushed forcibly out from between her gritted teeth, she said without looking at him, "I'm done."

"Good," said Milton mildly. "I need some help dragging it into the truck if you don't mind."

Heidi's breath increased as she abruptly turned to face Milton. Her teeth were bared, almost like fangs. "You know what I fucking need? To have a God damn human being out here instead of you!"

Milton noticed a grasshopper on his leg and brushed it off. "What is it now?"

Heidi came up close to him, putting her mirror-covered eyes close enough that he could see his misshapened image reflected in them. "What is it?! I just stabbed a deer to death, and the whole time you didn't even flinch!"

Milton was beginning to feel agitated again. But in a different way. Before he could respond, she came back, pushing him hard on the shoulder.

"I could kill a fucking kid with a hatchet, and you wouldn't bat an eye, would you!" Heidi pushed Milton again. This time his back hit against the tree. He didn't make any move to stop her or push back because he was no longer afraid of her. Tears were rolling out from under her sunglasses. With that, Milton finally picked up her scent. "The entire world could go up in fucking flames, and you'd just laugh your inhuman ass off!" she continued to yell. He remained as motionless as the deer she had killed.

Milton smiled then. It wasn't a good thing. It was the grin of a hyena when he finds a wounded animal. "What's your point?" he said.

Heidi brought her arm up and tried to make it look like she was going to punch him, but Milton didn't move. He just kept smiling at her, and she felt it stripping away everything. She removed her sunglasses. The eyes underneath were red and almost seem worthy of the description "withered." Below each eye, the flesh was stained purple. She dropped the sunglasses to the ground; her knees quickly followed, and soon she was bawling into her hands. Milton stopped smiling only because it wasn't as funny to him anymore, just pathetic.

"For once in my life," Heidi said between sobs, "I wanted to do something horrible. I wanted to be the monster and have someone be appalled at me, think I was sick and cruel. But instead, I get someone like you!" She punched the ground, kicking up a small amount of dust. "I wanted someone to fear me. But you're just as bad as THEM! Worse! You don't even hate anyone; you're just dead!" Her sobbing began to stop. "Why can't I be like that? I'm so sick of feeling everything."

It was barley audible through the sobs, but Milton heard it, and only then did he step forward. Leaning down and putting his hands on his knees, he spoke with a brilliantly faked, kind smile. Heidi could see through it, but she didn't want to.

"If that's what you want to be," said Milton. "It simple: you just…stop. After that, everything else is easy as pie. You no longer feel pain or sadness for anyone, including yourself."

She turned her head to look at the deer. Even stained with blood, its white spots and beautiful brown stirred in the sunlight. All of its grace and power was reflected against that seamless coat, one which cannot be recreated by any poem or painting. It can only be seen in person. It seemed to Milton that for that moment when Heidi looked at it, she would have gladly given her miserable life to bring it back. Milton didn't wait for her; he wanted to get back home soon. He walked over and grabbed the deer by its legs and began dragging it to the truck. Heidi just stayed there.

11. Testicles: As he pulled the body along the ground back to the truck, the rifle in the sheath hanging from his shoulders, Milton smelled the scent of the dead leaves with the faint odor of mold from the trees and was reminded of home. He briefly thought he wished he could go back home, but knew there were better things ahead. He wouldn't have gone back even if he could have.

Milton hadn't raped the girl in Maybrook because he had no desire to; he had just watched as Gretchen Luke was drunkenly groped and eventually held down by the college guy she had met that night. Milton had watched with a mock curiosity and despite the ratty neo-hippie clothes on the college guy, Milton judged from the expensive watch on his wrist that he was well off and would pay through the nose to stop a witness from coming forward.

Gretchen, whom Milton was going to high school with, was a strong and confident girl who didn't hesitate to go to the cops. And he, who was strong and confident in his own fashion, didn't hesitate to go to the boy's father and offer a testimony fit to order.

He was well paid and now, legally, though Gretchen had been drunk, she had very vocally consented to the sex. Milton was an excellent liar after all, and even the members of the jury who suspected he'd been bought couldn't ignore their reasonable doubt. Milton left town soon after that. Gretchen was very well liked by everyone, so most of the town hated Milton's guts. But he had lied to Heidi the second time: that wasn't why he left. He left because once he had money, he was trying to plan his next move. He didn't have so much money, just enough to get a start anywhere he wanted, which was definitely not here, but here was a good place to stop and think as he prepared for the next place he would go.

It was all so convenient, he often thought. He had been sick of Maybrook and was looking for a way out. Some days, he even mused that it was Providence that he should be so close by when she was raped and abused. If she had been richer, he would have made her buy his testimony instead.

12. Teeth: Milton was having some trouble lifting the whole deer into the back of the truck: he had very little upper body strength. Midway in his lift, Heidi came up behind him. She was holding the knife. Milton paused when he realized she was there and turned around. She was wearing her glasses again, but her gaze was unquestionably on him. The blood was still on the knife and dripping slowly to the ground. Her lips sneered a bit and her eyebrows were bent low. He imagined she had never been angrier than she was now. He smiled at her again with his horrible grin.

When I was younger, I was at a cheap carnival, and I vividly recalled this clown who was walking around the circus messing with the kids and making them laugh. When he came over to me, I got scared and hid behind my mother. For a while, he kept trying to talk to me, kept trying to get me to respond, but I just kept burying my head in my mom's dress, yet still he pursued, honking his horn and smiling. He kept smiling at me, not happy but amused that I was scared of him. And the people around me laughed and smiled at this. I remember that clown's ugly and vicious smile as he mocked my fear and took amusement in my vulnerability.

Milton had a smile like that. And with all her being, Heidi wanted to take it off him.

"You wanna help me with this?" Milton said, gesturing to the hunched-over body of the deer. "It's kind of heavy."

She dropped the knife and helped him haul it onto the truck. It took them a moment. When it was on the bed, and Milton had closed the back, they looked at each other for what may have been a long or a short time.

He spoke plainly because there was no more fun in scorning her. "Are you going to pick up your knife?"

She looked back to the woods, then at the deer. Then she shook her head.

"Let's go, then."

13. Heart: The ride back to the lodge was quiet. Heidi was smoking up a storm as she leaned against the open window. Her sunglasses were still on, but the red and irritated skin on her cheeks was all the evidence anyone needed to know. Milton was too busy with his thoughts to notice. He still felt her utter contempt for him settling in his back, but it had long since stopped interesting him. What he was thinking about was a movie he had seen on TV last night in his motel room. It was about a serial killer who cut people into pieces and ate them. There was a scene in it where the killer's mother recalls to a detective about the time he killed a dog and apparently got a sexual thrill from it.

Milton remembered when he had killed the dog that lived next door. He was fifteen years old and hadn't done it for anything sexual. In fact he didn't do it for anything that personal at all. It was true he didn't like the old golden retriever who lived in the yard next door, but he hadn't really hated it. He had done it simply because he wanted to see if he could, if it would make him feel guilty. A few days ago, it had occurred to him that if his mother, his sisters, and all his friends died, he wouldn't feel bad; he wouldn't even miss them because he didn't think he needed them. So he wanted to test this new thought.

He remembered the killing in purely factual terms: grabbing the hammer, sneaking downstairs, hopping the fence, and beating the dog's head in until it stopped moving. He remembered hitting hard the first time so the dog wouldn't make any noise as he finished the job, and he remembered what it looked like after. Its tongue hung out of its mouth, and its eyes were rolled back. It looked stupid and ridiculous; he might have laughed at it. Bits of skull lay in chunks around its mouth. He couldn't recall any hesitation or doubt. All little parts. All little irrelevant, useless parts. He recalled that he slept like a baby after washing off the hammer and sneaking it back into his mom's toolbox. It was so simple; he'd wondered why so few people did it. There was, after all, nothing stopping them.

For the few days after that, Milton was haunted by a strange realization. He felt no guilt or remorse for what he had done. He hadn't gotten any kind of thrill from it and imagined he wouldn't do it again, but he felt no remorse. It scared him because realizing his own power was scary. He knew soon after that, he could do anything, all the worst possible things, and would never be struck down by pains of guilt or depression. He was free from all the restraints the rest of the world had, and he knew he could have anything he wanted. All he had to do was just pretend.

14. Small Intestine: The truck pulled up to the lodge and Milton looked at Heidi.

"You want the meat, " he paused, "from your kill?"

Heidi looked angry, but she held it back and kept looking straight ahead. "There would be little point in that."

"Yeah, I figured."

Heidi attempted to gather herself and got out of the truck. After closing the door Milton called to her through the window.

"Your name isn't Heidi Packer, is it?"

She almost smiled back at him, but only almost. "No. It isn't."

"And there were no lizards? Were there?"

She did smile this time. "No, there was one lizard. I threw up afterwards and felt so guilty, I fucked that boy."

She turned around and walked to her car, caressing her ass in its cut off jeans. Her blond head was bent forward, and Milton wondered what she was thinking, but only for a second.

He heard Heidi's car pull away. He didn't look back, but instead contemplated what he was going to do with the rest of the deer. It was then he noticed on the other half of the truck's seat the remains of her pack of cigarettes. He picked them up and put them in his pocket.

Jasper and Wilt were still gone. Dragging the kill in and hanging it by himself wasn't easy, but he managed to do it all the same. He hung it by the neck and pulled the string until it was up. He then put on his gloves, his goggles, and his apron and got to work. He wasn't taking much this time, just some pieces along the shoulders and thighs. That was all he wanted. The skinning was made a little difficult by the stab wounds, but he managed. As he worked, he thought about how good he had gotten at skinning these things. When he had come in a few months ago, and they first showed him how, he often made sloppy cuts that tore the skin or cut off oddly shaped bits of meat. Now it all came easy to him, and, if he had any emotions at all, they were the sense of a job well done.

With the desired parts removed, he dropped the carcass to the floor and began dragging it out the back door. The door led outside and down a small path to the drop pit. If the customers thought the back room was gross, they wouldn't even want to know about the drop pit where Milton dumped the remains of the bodies. He pulled the lifeless and dismembered corpse along by its antlers for a while until he got to the pit. It wasn't very deep, but down below were the rotting remains of all the deer people had killed for fun. They often would say "killed for sport," but it made little difference to Milton. In the pit was a sea of blood and fur and antlers. Endless flies buzzed, and a few crows perched on the antlers, pecking at what they could find. They didn't notice Milton as he approached the edge. Twisting the dead deer's neck as he tossed it into the pile, the thing went in rather easily, and Milton felt a moment of what could be considered satisfaction. The crows abandoned their posts as the newest body descended upon them. They flew quickly up and past Milton in a gust of acrid wind.

15. Brain: As the frying pan sizzled and hissed, Milton smiled because he hadn't had a decent meal in a while. He walked over to his bed and lit up a cigarette to kill time as he watched TV and waited for the meat to finish cooking. It smelled good, and he couldn't wait to eat it. He reflected briefly on the day. When Jasper had asked him what happened with Heidi, Milton said she had changed her mind and just shot it. Jasper laughed and didn't question it. Milton was, after all, an excellent liar. He'd then returned to his stool in the corner and picked up exactly where he had left off in his magazine.

He tested the meat with a knife and found it adequately pink, so he set it on a plate and dug in. It tasted excellent. He didn't even add sauce; it tasted that good to him. For a moment, he imagined he could taste all the emotions from that day in its wet, warm, gamey and salty flavor. All the fear, self-loathing, pain, and misery in each bite. It tasted good to the last bit.

Heidi had scared him, but only because he worked very hard to play his part as the unassuming boy standing harmlessly on the sidelines watching other people. His reasoning was that we all play parts. Whether it was convincing people they were good hunters or convincing them that you were a human being, that's all it comes down to. Parts. Stripped down it all isn't much. Just parts. And he was very, very good at his part. For her to have seen through it was momentarily threatening, like an animal thinking he hears a predator. But then her heart had betrayed her, and he knew he was safe. She was just another harmless animal trying to use its shadow to seem bigger than it was.

What Milton was still pondering as he drifted off to sleep was what part she usually played. What role did she manufacture to hide herself? Was she the smiling soccer mom, the devoted wife, the smiling girlfriend who minds her opinions, or did she fake sternness and strength in some other field?

It didn't matter. Milton drifted into a sound sleep. It was a sleep undisturbed by doubt or regret.