Page 1 of Tourist Season
EROSIONHarper
I’M SURE NOBODY GOES ONvacation expecting to be dismembered and put through a woodchipper, but some tourists are just assholes and deserve their fate.
Like the guy in the Buoy and Beacon Pub last year who cornered Selma Dayton by the bathrooms. I was there. I heard her tell him no. When I came around the corner from the bar, he was trying to kiss her and slide a hand up her shirt. Piece of shit.
Woodchipper.
Or the guy who got drunk and high and crashed through a fence at Dale Linden’s farm and then proceeded to chase his horses through the field. They panicked, of course. One of them fell and broke a leg. Dale had to put it down. Even though he called the cops, Sheriff Yates was too lazy to do anything more than write a police report. As usual.
Woodchipper.
Or the man whose dismembered hand I’m holding now. Mr. Bryce Mahoney. I saw him at Carnage Country Grocery, trying to take pictures up women’s skirts with his phone. When Istole his wallet and looked him up, I found he’d already been discovered and charged with the same crime in two other states. And yet, there he was, traipsing around Carnage like he fucking owned the place, barely concealing the fact that he was up to the same shit yet again.
Definitelythe woodchipper.
I hum to myself as I examine his palm, the skin pale, like a wax imitation of the real thing. It’s cold. Heavier than I expected, especially with such stubby fingers. I turn the severed hand over and trace the network of veins that weaves over the bones. They were full of life only hours ago. He knew their pattern. He could probably tell me how he got the jagged little scar over one knuckle. I’m sure he had a story about how he got the stitches that marked his skin with dots of scar tissue. Maybe I should feel guilty that I took those memories from him.
“But I don’t,” I say as I toss his hand into the hopper of the blue woodchipper. Cookie Monster has been my faithful tool through twelve tourists now, including Mr. Mahoney. And he’s always hungry for more. Just like me.
The pitch of the chipper drops a few notes as it chews through flesh and bone, spraying it onto the tarp I’ve set up next to the flower bed.
Maybe once upon a time, I would have felt remorse. But I left that person behind when I came to Cape Carnage four years ago. When I started a new life. When I promised to keep my past hidden and protect this sanctuary of secrets.
And I’m not about to let anyone like Bryce Fucking Mahoney ruin my town.
I cast my gaze across my garden. We’re in that in-between time of year—not spring, not quite summer. Only the daffodils andtulips and snowdrops have bloomed. And yet, the tourists have already started to come. They’re chartering fishing boats. They’re renting equipment and booking tours of the sunken HMSCarnageour town was named for and the numerous other shipwrecks hidden off the rocky coast. They’re exploring the museum. They peruse the artsy and quaint and quirky downtown. They trek up the one hundred and fifty-two steps to the Cape Carnage lighthouse. They head to the local distilleries and vineyards to sample whiskeys and wines.
It might be odd. A little macabre at times. But to me, it’s a paradise.
Our little town only has a few thousand permanent residents, including me. When the height of tourist season peaks with the Taste of Terror food festival at the end of the summer, we’ll be wildly outnumbered. And I get it, I really do. With a moniker like Cape Carnage, it makes sense that the town wants to leverage its unusual name and history to attract vacationers. These short, precious summer months will sustain us in the depths of winter when no one will come. So, I take my role in keeping the town beautiful very seriously. Just like I do keeping itsafe.
I return my attention to the bloodied plastic bag at my feet. I’ve saved the best for last—Bryce Mahoney’s lower leg. There’s a cheap tattoo of a trout on the waxen skin beneath thick hair. Just a single hideous fish hiding a flat scar. I crinkle my nose and then push his leg into the hopper, readying myself for the deep sense of serenity that will inevitably wash over me as every last inch of flesh and bone is consumed by the machine.
Except that’snotwhat happens.
The chipper screeches and whines. My hands fly up to cover my head. The smell of burning rubber floods my nostrils. It’s anassault on my senses. Deafening and pungent and confusing. It takes an instant too long for it to click that I need tomove. I hit the kill switch on the fender of the tractor to stop the PTO shaft, but not before there’s abangso loud that my ears ring.
I turn off the tractor engine and stare in shock at the chipper.
“Jesus, Cookie. What in the ever-loving fuck?” I hiss. Breaths riot in my lungs. I stare at Cookie Monster as though the woodchipper has personally wronged me. But when I finally open the panels and access the blades, I find the problem wasn’t the chipper at all. The problem is fuckingBryce, mocking me from the afterlife. I yank his mangled leg from the machine. The bone is shattered, half of it gone. The other half is fused to a titanium plate with surgical screws. Part of the trout’s tail is still intact on the torn skin. I clearly underestimated the scar hidden beneath the blacks and grays and greens of the tattoo. It never occurred to me that the asshole might have metal plates beneath that fuck-ugly trout, and I know this simple mistake is going to chew away at my thoughts until the end of fucking time.
I drop the leg on the plastic bag and heave a weary sigh. “Motherfucker.”
Before I can spend too much time imagining Bryce’s smirking face from beyond the grave, I trudge to the shed to grab replacement shear bolts and my tools. It takes me nearly half an hour to remove the broken parts and replace them. The blades are damaged, but they’ll work well enough for now. I use my hatchet to cut Bryce’s bone above the titanium plate and de-flesh it, and then I start the motor back up and toss the rest of the leg into the hopper. This time, it goes as planned. But I’m still too rattled from the near-catastrophe of a badly broken Cookie Monster to feel much peace as I watch the last remnants of Bryce Mahoney’s body splatter across the tarp.
When nothing further flies from the curved spout, I turn everything off. As I kneel next to the pile, a familiarcaw cawdraws my attention to the tree near the garden gate. I glance toward a black shadow hidden among the branches. “Om nom nom.Feed me,” the raven demands.
“Give me a minute,” I say. But the raven only caws and repeats his request, his voice a near-perfect replica of my own. Turns out, when you hand-raise an orphaned raven, it’s incredibly easy to train it to speak with a little fresh meat. The only downside is that they’re very persistent when they spot something they want. “You know it’s coming. Settle down or you’ll attract the gulls.”
With a gloved hand, I scoop up some of the mess and take it to the bird feeder, a black platform with Gothic pillars to hold up a peaked roof. I made it just for Morpheus, who hops down to the stone wall that surrounds the garden to watch my every move, his inky feathers glistening in shades of black and indigo and deep forest green. I deposit the ground flesh and bone on the platform. I’ve barely taken two steps back before Morpheus lands on the feeder to dive beak-first into the muck. There’s harmony in it. A shitbag person nourishing a wild creature. There’s something in the closure of that loop that brings me a moment of peace.
I turn back to the pile that was once Bryce Mahoney and pick up my shovel from where it rests beside the tarp. One shovelful after the next, I unload the slop and shattered bone into the holes I’ve dug in the garden bed, pausing to plant flowers that aren’t yet ready to bloom. Rhododendrons. Irises. Dahlias. Lilies. Before long, the body is gone, buried among the young plants. It will feed them, just like it’s fed Morpheus. Just like it feeds something in me, something that grows hungrier with each season that passes. Something that never stays sated for long.
I clean up my mess. Put away my tools. Spray down the woodchipper with Piss-Off!, which I’m just going to assume works for blood since it bleached my outdoor plastic furniture when I used it on the cat pee from Doug, the neighborhood stray. I take the remaining piece of Bryce’s leg bone inside my cottage, wrap it in tinfoil, and place it in the fridge, and then I head upstairs. It’s not until the shower is on and heating up that I get a good look at my reflection. There are smears of blood and dirt on my face. There are bits of Bryce in my hair, gleaming among the dark strands. I look feral. Much like I did the day I got away from that house of horrors where the vultures watched from the tree. I was all wild eyes and broken heart. I might be more settled now than I was back then, less haunted by fear and raw grief, but there’s still something reckless in my reflection. Like I could take off at any moment and run into the untamed corners of the world, never looking back.
But I’m determined not to. This is my safest place. Stumbling upon Cape Carnage after trying and failing to wander away from my grief was like discovering a magical portal to a land where I could become whoever I wanted to be. Maybe not a fresh start, but as close to one as I could ever hope to find. It’s my home now. And I’m needed here.
I lean closer to the mirror, closing in on myself until my breath fogs the glass. I press my bangs back from the fair skin of my forehead. There’s a thin band of lighter hair before it transitions to brown so dark it’s almost black. Blond roots. Sometimes, it feels as though my body is fighting who I’ve decided to become.
