Anne Gresham

By the time we finally drag out the sledgehammer, I’m ready to be back in my dorm and as far from my family as I can get. The meat — a middle-aged accountant that wandered into the family store last night — is screaming bloody murder, and I’ve got a splitting headache. All of this — the chainsaw, the blood sucking, the bone cracking — is mortifying me. I find myself wishing someone who shares my genetic material were at least with it enough to know the difference between Descartes and Kierkegaard.

Once the meat’s eyes are sticky and still, Daddy offers me its dark wet liver with a big smile. There’s a desperate hope in his expression that if I take it, it’ll be like nothing has changed. I look around at the dust covering the skull pile on the mantel, the sad flapping of decades-old skins hung up over the rusty, unreliable radiator clanging away in the kitchen, the overflowing litter box serving ten or so resident cats whose odor underscores the coppery tang of blood and bowel. I look at Daddy, his beard streaked with gray, and I see ghosts of my childhood surrounding him, ghosts he’s trying unsuccessfully to resurrect by offering me my favorite treat, ghosts who are content to stay here, who aren’t asking for anything more from the world than to be the family baby forever.

I take the bit of liver and do my best to smile back.

ANNE GRESHAM is a writer and librarian living in Northwest Arkansas with her husband, daughter, and assortment of tiny carnivores. Her work has appeared in Unnerving, X-R-A-Y, and elsewhere. For more, visit annegresham.com or follow her on Twitter at @agresham.