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“Wait, how did you kill it?”
March 13th, 2024 08:22 pmThis chapter of Sometimes The Mountain Buries You contains mild sexual content.
This chapter also contains my favourite paragraph in all of Sometimes The Mountain Buries You. Also, when I do the Big Edit™, stuff about how It works is gonna change for consistency and better how-It-works explanation.
Sometimes The Mountain Buries You is a queer novella about the monster that threatens your attempt at a much-needed quiet life. Check out the about page here.
“Wait, how did you kill it?” You're in Sheppard's bed, naked and lounging after what you'd call this week's quota for cardio if you didn't have the walk back to town ahead of you. You made the journey out at the decided time to check if Sheppard was grievously injured to find him with nary a scratch and the box trap worse for wear.
Sheppard has been idly tracing shapes across your skin, narrowly skirting ticklish areas he's now familiar with the boundaries of. You feel like an etch-a-sketch. Not long from now, when your canvas is exhausted, you're going to toss yourself over him and test his boundaries.
When he tells you he didn't kill it, you stare real hard at the ceiling of his cabin. He can't kill what he eats, he explains insufficiently. This is why he gets so hurt, you posit. It makes him laugh an actual laugh, his actual laugh sounds hollow. He feels in the following silence that you're focusing on the part about eating the things and that the things are alive when he eats them, you can tell. He starts tracing zig zags, jagged teeth on your skin.
You have always been very aware that Sheppard is whatever Sheppard is. He showed up one day holding his guts in, with bloodless hands, spines, poisonous fascia, more anomalous physiology. You had a very long conversation with Dr. Lacey afterwards. Every moment around or thinking about Sheppard, you've been very aware that he is whatever Sheppard is. You take this newest insight in stride—a not-instantaneous process—and then you move on to testing his boundaries.
You're on your way back to town when you meet what Sheppard saw after you brought that person to his cabin.
It's so tall and so hunched over that you're sure from the side it must look like a crescent moon. It has such long talons they could be mistaken for spindly tree branches. You second guess whether or not you could have maybe seen it when Sheppard had, blending into the trees but quite visible. You are pretty sure it's impossible for Sheppard to eat this thing alive.
You're extremely aware of every sense feeding information into your brain. The gentle squeeze of your hiking boots and their well worn in insoles. The rock and earth under your boots' soles, the different rotation of each ankle from the near-even but rock-strewn dirt road and how thin the socks that cover them are now that the other side of winter is near end. The straps of your backpack—one part medkit, one part gear, one part supplies for sleeping with Sheppard—their weight and pressure pressing your shirts against your skin. The horizontal seam of your flannel across your shoulders, similarly present with your backpack's weight, and the lightweight shirt underneath that you always wear on hikes, something easy to sweat in. The outdoor supply store version of the many-pocket pants you wear for work, dubbed 'vet pants' by Sheppard when commenting on the similarity with Dr. Lacey's wardrobe.
It raises a finger, a long talon rising upwards in a smooth slow motion to hover still and dangerously near your neck. There is very little between the talon and your neck, little fabric, little inches. The talon hasn't touched you but you can feel how sharp it is in how the air tastes and the pain in your heart and lungs from the adrenaline.
It's long enough that you don't know how long it's been when it gradually turns around and lumbers away. You don't realize how quiet the world was while it was here until it's gone—you hope this is a sign it's gone far enough to continue down the road—a sudden rush of flowing water, birdsong, little things that rustle distant or minuscule but loud in comparison to what had felt like a universal silence. It had felt like the planet had stopped rotating.
When you get home— Some time after you get home, after a shower and food and scream-crying in the wood pile and a second shower and an early nap that turns into waking at 3am to vomiting in bed and dry heaving over the bathtub while your bedsheets soak in warm soapy water— Some time in the next day or two, you discover the electrolyte chews, anti-nausea lozenges, and anti-inflammatory pills are missing from your medkit.
You dwell on this much of the time, whenever you're not occupied. You live an intentionally quiet life, you are often not occupied. The next time Sheppard comes into town, you fight to keep it from being the first thing you say. You make it through pleasantries and the initial examination of a very deep scrape—river rocks again—and are mid-debriding when you say, "Why did it take those things?"
Sheppard had, apparently, not been pulling thoughts from your brain this whole time—not those ones at least. His entire presence becomes quiet, for a second you could believe he disappeared. The horror in his expression is wide-eyed and his roiling thoughts as all the implications and realizations stack and tumble together are palpable. You don't watch for long before continuing to pick gravel and shale from his hip with tweezers, a wash bottle of sterile water, and stack of paper cloth towels.
"It, uhm," he stops, his breath hitches and shakes, he pinches the bridge of his nose and frowns in thought. "There's not a lot it can consume. What it took was like, vitamin supplements to it, probably."
"It could consume me?" You've been thinking about this for days, the thought is steely and settled in your head and no longer makes you sick. Sheppard's hoarse "yeah" doesn't interrupt your work in the least. "Any guesses why it didn't?"
He doesn't make a half-jest about you probably bringing more supplements in the future. Mostly, he looks like he's going to vomit.
"None?" The hoarse "yeah" echoes. "And do you generally have a decent idea of when it's in the area?" His next "yeah" is appended with a question mark. "Can you meet me at the road then? The service road, not the trail."
He's processing emotions. You've hit him with the proverbial ton of bricks. When he wraps his arms around your shoulders and leans his head against yours, you smell the salt of his silent tears.
You don't ask if it's possible for him to eat it alive, you're pretty sure you know the answer.
This chapter also contains my favourite paragraph in all of Sometimes The Mountain Buries You. Also, when I do the Big Edit™, stuff about how It works is gonna change for consistency and better how-It-works explanation.
Sometimes The Mountain Buries You is a queer novella about the monster that threatens your attempt at a much-needed quiet life. Check out the about page here.
“Wait, how did you kill it?” You're in Sheppard's bed, naked and lounging after what you'd call this week's quota for cardio if you didn't have the walk back to town ahead of you. You made the journey out at the decided time to check if Sheppard was grievously injured to find him with nary a scratch and the box trap worse for wear.
Sheppard has been idly tracing shapes across your skin, narrowly skirting ticklish areas he's now familiar with the boundaries of. You feel like an etch-a-sketch. Not long from now, when your canvas is exhausted, you're going to toss yourself over him and test his boundaries.
When he tells you he didn't kill it, you stare real hard at the ceiling of his cabin. He can't kill what he eats, he explains insufficiently. This is why he gets so hurt, you posit. It makes him laugh an actual laugh, his actual laugh sounds hollow. He feels in the following silence that you're focusing on the part about eating the things and that the things are alive when he eats them, you can tell. He starts tracing zig zags, jagged teeth on your skin.
You have always been very aware that Sheppard is whatever Sheppard is. He showed up one day holding his guts in, with bloodless hands, spines, poisonous fascia, more anomalous physiology. You had a very long conversation with Dr. Lacey afterwards. Every moment around or thinking about Sheppard, you've been very aware that he is whatever Sheppard is. You take this newest insight in stride—a not-instantaneous process—and then you move on to testing his boundaries.
You're on your way back to town when you meet what Sheppard saw after you brought that person to his cabin.
It's so tall and so hunched over that you're sure from the side it must look like a crescent moon. It has such long talons they could be mistaken for spindly tree branches. You second guess whether or not you could have maybe seen it when Sheppard had, blending into the trees but quite visible. You are pretty sure it's impossible for Sheppard to eat this thing alive.
You're extremely aware of every sense feeding information into your brain. The gentle squeeze of your hiking boots and their well worn in insoles. The rock and earth under your boots' soles, the different rotation of each ankle from the near-even but rock-strewn dirt road and how thin the socks that cover them are now that the other side of winter is near end. The straps of your backpack—one part medkit, one part gear, one part supplies for sleeping with Sheppard—their weight and pressure pressing your shirts against your skin. The horizontal seam of your flannel across your shoulders, similarly present with your backpack's weight, and the lightweight shirt underneath that you always wear on hikes, something easy to sweat in. The outdoor supply store version of the many-pocket pants you wear for work, dubbed 'vet pants' by Sheppard when commenting on the similarity with Dr. Lacey's wardrobe.
It raises a finger, a long talon rising upwards in a smooth slow motion to hover still and dangerously near your neck. There is very little between the talon and your neck, little fabric, little inches. The talon hasn't touched you but you can feel how sharp it is in how the air tastes and the pain in your heart and lungs from the adrenaline.
It's long enough that you don't know how long it's been when it gradually turns around and lumbers away. You don't realize how quiet the world was while it was here until it's gone—you hope this is a sign it's gone far enough to continue down the road—a sudden rush of flowing water, birdsong, little things that rustle distant or minuscule but loud in comparison to what had felt like a universal silence. It had felt like the planet had stopped rotating.
When you get home— Some time after you get home, after a shower and food and scream-crying in the wood pile and a second shower and an early nap that turns into waking at 3am to vomiting in bed and dry heaving over the bathtub while your bedsheets soak in warm soapy water— Some time in the next day or two, you discover the electrolyte chews, anti-nausea lozenges, and anti-inflammatory pills are missing from your medkit.
You dwell on this much of the time, whenever you're not occupied. You live an intentionally quiet life, you are often not occupied. The next time Sheppard comes into town, you fight to keep it from being the first thing you say. You make it through pleasantries and the initial examination of a very deep scrape—river rocks again—and are mid-debriding when you say, "Why did it take those things?"
Sheppard had, apparently, not been pulling thoughts from your brain this whole time—not those ones at least. His entire presence becomes quiet, for a second you could believe he disappeared. The horror in his expression is wide-eyed and his roiling thoughts as all the implications and realizations stack and tumble together are palpable. You don't watch for long before continuing to pick gravel and shale from his hip with tweezers, a wash bottle of sterile water, and stack of paper cloth towels.
"It, uhm," he stops, his breath hitches and shakes, he pinches the bridge of his nose and frowns in thought. "There's not a lot it can consume. What it took was like, vitamin supplements to it, probably."
"It could consume me?" You've been thinking about this for days, the thought is steely and settled in your head and no longer makes you sick. Sheppard's hoarse "yeah" doesn't interrupt your work in the least. "Any guesses why it didn't?"
He doesn't make a half-jest about you probably bringing more supplements in the future. Mostly, he looks like he's going to vomit.
"None?" The hoarse "yeah" echoes. "And do you generally have a decent idea of when it's in the area?" His next "yeah" is appended with a question mark. "Can you meet me at the road then? The service road, not the trail."
He's processing emotions. You've hit him with the proverbial ton of bricks. When he wraps his arms around your shoulders and leans his head against yours, you smell the salt of his silent tears.
You don't ask if it's possible for him to eat it alive, you're pretty sure you know the answer.
