The Rot

The day the incident happened, the sun had been so warm, so delicately blinding, that I believed it was bound to be a good day. It started nicely as well, with the dogs barely barking as I got out of the house to feed the animals. The rooster cried out soon after, waking up the rest of the house as it should. More than a great morning, it had been an usual one. Nonetheless, the normalcy was welcomed as always.

As I was having breakfast with the family, I felt a sudden sense of wrongness. The hair on my arms rose as nausea washed over me, and I lurched forwards to retch. Naturally, my mother ran to me and pressed her hand against my trembling back.

"I'm okay," I rasped out. "I'm just fine."

"You sure?" she asked. I gave a nod. "Did you sleep walk again?"

I shook my head and she sighed in relief.

Barely an hour after I woke up, I was in bed once more. The tea on my nightstand had turned cold as I remained static on the mattress, a thick blanket up to my chin. I closed my eyes and I had never fallen asleep so comfortably.

When I sat up on the bed, I quickly realized I was dreaming. It was as if I were looking through a kaleidoscope, the strange patterns at the corners of my eyes shifting around. I got up and felt like a giant, my steps heavy as I exited the room. There was no one home, and when I got to the first floor, there was a giant steak on the dinner table.

The meat was raw, I soon realized. It reeked like a corpse as well, despite there being no signs of rotting. It hypnotized me almost instantly, and before I could stop it, I was taking a bite. Then another, and another. I sank my teeth and ripped the flesh apart, like a foxhound would with its prey. I perked my head up, high enough to catch my reflection on the foggy mirror, and saw my face painted in crimson. I felt nauseous again, my body threatening to exorcise me from my meal.

I woke up in a cold sweat, a silent scream dying in my throat as my senses came back. The rest of the day was a blur up until six in the evening, when I was taking a walk down the creek as one should after such a strange event.

That's when I spotted it. A gray wolf, huge in a way no wolf should be, hunched over something even bigger. I took another quiet step and finally saw what he was feasting on. Cracked wide open like a ground fissure, the fresh corpse of a cow. I could smell it even from where I was hiding, the scent of death looming around me. The animal turned to look at me, snout covered in blood, and I fled the scene.

Yesterday, July 17th, marked five years since this unforgettable memory. I don't live with the family anymore, but I suppose it's for the best. I could tell that after what happened all that time ago, I was no longer welcome in my own home. I've been living in the city for two years now, a place where it's always day, despite of the sun setting down. I use an electronic alarm instead, and only cook breakfast for two. But I would be lying if I said I didn't miss the early scream of the rooster or feeding the cows and horses. Instead of crickets and wolves howling, I had the urban noise to lull me to sleep.

I suppose I felt obligated in a way to visit the old house as a way to commemorate that awful day, despite how it deserved no kind of celebration. I had lunch with the family once more, and the conversation was shallow as always.

"How's work?" my mother asked.

"It's alright," I answered.

"When are you bringing home a wife?" an aunt questioned.

"Never," I said flatly.

At dinner, something tragic dawned upon me. I came to realize that I never told anyone what made the 17th of July so difficult for me, nor why nausea took over my trembling body when the date came. For them, it had been an ordinary day, unaware of the circumstances I went through. And yet, ever since that moment, I felt somehow even more alienated from the family. As if they somehow knew.

I felt a sudden urge, as I took the first bite of my steak, to release the wolf from its cage.

After so many years of bottling up and neglecting the conversation, I finally spoke up. My voice came out just fine, firm and smooth as I struggled to keep it still.

The dinner table was dead silent after I was done. A sudden, ugly sob tore out from my mother.

"I thought you knew," she lamented. "I thought you did it on purpose."

Even as I write this down, I find myself unable to put into words what I felt after she explained it all. The closest I can get to describe it would be 'a slow, sinking sensation'. Of course, I give her credit for speaking so patiently to me, but despite of her gentleness, there was no way to nicely ease me into the truth.

My mother recounted that in the 17th of July, 1973, a cow had gone missing. She was woken up, not by the rooster, but by the innocent animal's cry. She went to shake me out of bed so I could investigate for her, only to find my bed empty.

A few hours later, around the time I believed I had woken up from my nap, my mother saw me coming out of the woods. She ran to me, just like my lucid morning, when I was unaware I was still asleep. I looked like a rotting corpse, she recalled, with clothes torn and soaked in blood. I was sleepwalking, she wanted to believe. I confirmed this to her as I confessed to a memory that hadn't even happened.

"We found the gutted cow the same night," my mother cried. "We never brought it up because we thought that no human being could do such a thing."

I ran to the bathroom as the information sunk in, and the nausea finally won— I threw up my meal before I could even get to the door.