from “Vague Predictions & Prophecies”
Daisuke Shen | Vague Predictions & Prophecies | CLASH Books | August 2024 | 248 Pages
The Pasture
Everyone agreed that the South was a terrible place to live, but an even worse place to die. The worst part is that there was no way out, at least none that we could see. We were doomed.
That’s why from the time we were seven until now, we had decided, “fuck it.” Life fucks us, so we’ll make it just as miserable as we are. We got all the easy stuff out of the way early—dine-and-dashing, knocking over mailboxes, challenging kids at school to fight Griff for the low price of $5. If they didn’t want to fight, we would hold them down and dig their wallets out from their pockets and grab whatever we could find: $10, Zaxby’s coupons, GameStop gift cards from moms and aunts and grandads. We had even gotten a couple of GameBoys out of it. Most kids chose to give us the $5, and Griff would wail on them until they were gasping and puking up blood on the sidewalk outside.
None of the teachers wanted anything to do with it. They were pussies and scared and so was every other adult in this town. They went to the grocery store and bridal showers; church and Bible study, where they would pray that God would handle it. Handle us. And one day he did.
Last Monday, a woman that Christian’s family knew had shown up on their doorstep, telling them that she was considering reporting all of us to the local authorities. Her son Joseph had been one of Griff’s victims two weeks ago at school, she said, had come home sobbing with a dislocated shoulder. Apparently, he had kept his mouth shut for a couple of days before naming us: Christian Forrester. Danny Wyatt. Del Thomson. Griff Abel. Rhett Collins. Fucking snitch had told her everything about us, the fights, the bets, all of it. Mr. Forrester almost killed Christian that night after he found out, held a gun to his head and asked if this was how he raised his boy, to be an ugly little bitch that wasn’t good for nothing except making himself feel better about his sorry self by whooping other kids.
So we laid low after that, hoping the lady wouldn’t tell. Christian was forced to apologize to Joseph and then was sent o" to boarding school somewhere in Rhode Island. The rest of us were shit out of luck, because she ended up telling on us anyway. Lucky for us, Danny’s dad was the sheriff. Or so we thought.
“For a while, I told myself that y’all were just doing kid stuff, it was fine. Needed to get it out the system,” Sheriff Wyatt had said to the four of us as we sat in the living room at Danny’s house, trying to hide our smirks. “But y’all went too far, and it don’t do me or anyone else no good to keep pretending. Your momma,” Sheri" Wyatt said, pointing at Griff, “don’t need another one of her sons in jail. How do you think it made her feel to #nd out about this?”
“She done told me how it made her feel,” Griff said, his face unmoving. He never showed any emotions at all, never laughed or cried or nothing. The only time I ever saw something human in him was when he was fighting, a strange glint flickering in his eyes that I didn’t want to understand.
“And what’d she say?” Sheri" Wyatt asked, leaning forward on the couch.
“She told me she didn’t care if I lived or died.”
A silence blanketed the room. Sheriff Wyatt coughed.
“Well, now. I think she must have just been...emotional or somethin’. Life ain’t been easy for her ever since your daddy passed. But that’s besides the point. Starting on Saturday, y’all will be working y’alls little asses at the soup kitchen. Community service might do some good for you.”
“Aw, Dad, don’t get your panties all up in a wad,” Danny complained. “It was only five bucks.”
“You live a very privileged little life, boy. And if you don’t do as I say, I’ll make sure you end up somewhere, just like Christian. ‘Cept where I send you won’t be anywhere near as good.” Danny lost his smile real quick.
After that, we stopped with the fights and tried to make nice with all the teachers and losers at our school. They weren’t buying it. Del’s mom told him she was proud, that working at a soup kitchen would put the kindness back into our souls. Truth was, I don’t think any of us ever had any to begin with. Me, I didn’t have anyone telling me nothing. My mom was so looney and out of her mind that she couldn’t even register my face sometimes when I walked through the door, so when I confessed all of our sins to her, all she did was smile.
“My baby,” she crooned, patting my head. She wasn’t even looking at me when she said it; her eyes were focused else‐ where. She pointed at the wall beside the kitchen door, slanted with afternoon light. “You see that angel, son? I see ’em. I know you can’t, which is why I’m telling you. And me and you, we’re angels too. And God will take us home, and then we’ll come back to be in other people’s kitchens.”
I had no idea what the hell she was talking about, so I just nodded. After a while of patting my head some more, she went over to the wall and started talking to the angel, saying all sorts of crazy stuff about the splendor of the universe and how honored she was that we had been chosen. I slunk back out the door and dipped my head low into the dark.
•
The next day, we went to the soup kitchen. We spooned out instant mashed potatoes and chili onto people’s plates as they walked in, emaciated or pock-faced or just plain sad. It was slow work, and I kept looking at the yellow clock on the wall tick-tick-ticking to see when our shifts would be over.
“Y’all heard about the pastures?” Del said as he dumped chili on a man’s plate, splattering some of it onto his shirt. The man was so old and looked up at us with hollow eyes, not even blinking as he moved his tray along. A lot of people looked like that here, a corpse going through the motions. Some of them even looked like my mom, acted like her, babbling and motioning to stuff no one else could see. I hated those women the most.
“What pastures?” Danny asked. He was so quiet when he talked it was funny sometimes how scary he could be. The type of guy who would break someone’s fingers, slowly, and he would do it for fun.
“The ones with all the girls in ’em. Standin’ there. Just like scarecrows.”
“You even know what a girl looks like, Del?” I asked.
Del slammed the top of counter so hard that some of the meatloaf juice jumped and spilled over into the green beans. I waited to see if one of the adult volunteers would come out from the back and give us a scolding, but nobody came.
“Shut the hell up, Rhett. You better watch your damn mouth before I shove this meatloaf down your throat.”
“I ain’t gonna shut up and you ain’t gonna do nothing about it.”
Del’s head whipped around and I was sure he was going to hit me until Griff spoke up.
“My uncle said he used to go there as a kid. Those pastures behind Reverend Michael’s house. Him and his friends would tip ’em over, watch ’em lay there squirming, not able to get up. Said he felt real guilty about it.”
“I’ll go,” Danny said as he nodded at a woman wearing a nightgown, inching her way down the line on crutches. “Rhett, you in?”
I turned to look at Griff. Griff was the one who made the decisions for us, everyone knew that. Danny and Del seemed to remember this too, and fell silent.
“Griff,” I said as he placed a roll onto a plate, and then another, not looking at us. “What do you think we should do?”
He wiped the sweat from his nose and looked at us with his granite black eyes, a thin smile spreading across his face. The one he had when he was #ghting. I realized in that moment why his momma was so convinced he was a monster. She’d beaten him every night as a kid, trying to get the demons out. The welts on his body were everywhere.
The one on his right arm gleamed in the light, pink and puffy, as he continued to place the rolls on the plates. He still wasn’t looking at us, and I wondered if Del had made a mistake.
“We’ll go tonight,” Griff said. And that was that.
•
I don’t know what I was expecting when the four of us arrived at that field. Danny was on a strict probation, but his dad fell asleep early most nights anyway, a bottle of whiskey in the crook of his arm. All of us were wearing caps and black clothing, as Griff had instructed, so that we wouldn’t be recognized so clearly if anyone came by.
As we stood there, listening to the sounds of each other’s breathing and the slow, syrupy sounds of the water from the creek nearby, I realized that I didn’t really want to be here at all. Maybe, I thought as Griff dug out the flashlight from his backpack, cursing as it blinked in and out, maybe that it would just be a joke. That Griff’s uncle was just a jokester and that I could go back home, take a shower, wake up tomorrow and forget that we had ever come here. I knew that in the moment it was important to act tough, though, and so when the flashlight finally turned on, the white light cutting through the dark, I didn’t turn away.
There were all different types of women. Short, pretty, tall, fat, skinny, old, young. Wearing business uniforms or wedding dresses or jeans. Some of them had on nothing but underwear. I felt my face grow hot. Beads of sweat dripped down my face but I didn’t dare move. I had to wait for Griff’s call.
“Are they real?” Del asked.
“’Course they’re real,” Danny said, and though his voice always sounded like a whisper, I thought I heard it shaking. “Their eyes are moving.”
When I looked back up I saw that Danny was telling the truth. They were blinking, wincing away from the harsh glare. Some of them seemed to be waking up, their eyes fluttering, still half-closed. Except for the woman on my right. She was wearing pink, lacy lingerie. Her blue eyes met mine and didn’t look away, and inside of them, I saw a terrifying, haunting thing.
The rest of us watched as Griff hopped the fence, holding our breath as he tipped over a woman who looked like a flight attendant. She fell onto the grass, her limbs unmoving at first. I thought that maybe she had died; but then again, how was I supposed to know if they were alive in the $rst place?
“Fuckin’ spooky, man,” Del whispered. Danny elbowed him and told him to stop being a pussy.
“Shut up, faggots,” Griff said.
As soon as he said it, I saw a shudder go through the woman’s body before disappearing again. I saw Danny’s breaths, white and wispy in the cold night air, grow faster with anticipation. Suddenly, her neck shot up with a crack. She stared at us, her gaze hollow, as she began writhing on the ground like a centipede, her limbs grasping at anything, anything on the ground around her that might be able to save her.
Her movement broke the spell of silence. I could smell everyone’s sweat and excitement as Del whooped and jumped over the fence, Danny following after him. They’ve fucking lost it, I said to myself as I watched them, fighting to see who could push all of those ladies over the fastest, laughing as the women rolled around on the ground, unable to speak, their mouths open like dumb animals gasping for air.
“Come here, Rhett,” Griff said. He was pointing to the woman wearing the lacy bra and panties, who was still staring at me, now her eyes were huge and full of fear. “Seems like this one wants you.”
I should’ve said no. I should’ve just left right then and there, but I knew that if I did that, Griff would want to hurt me the next day. I had to obey. I placed my leg over the fence, then the other.
“That’s it,” Griff said, and then I felt his hands on my back as he thrusted me toward her. I fell right into her body, my face landing between her breasts.
Griff laughed. I couldn’t breathe. She smelled like powder and gardenias, her skin cold against my cheek. I fell backwards as Griff laughed again, his flashlight sweeping across the pasture. Now I could see all of them at once, though I really wish I hadn’t. They were tugging at the women’s clothes, trying to see what would come off. Del removed a woman’s stockings with his teeth. From my right, I swear I could hear the sound of a belt buckle snapping.
“Stop,” I said as Danny ripped open one of their blouses, his hands burrowing into her body. “Stop, stop, I don’t like this.” My voice didn’t sound like my own, and it rang hollow in my skull.
“You want to do it too,” Griff said, and I saw that he was on the ground, his hands tugging at the flight attendant’s skirt. He took off his t-shirt. In the false light, his collarbones looked so smooth and delicate; the fine, soft black hair of his stomach. A flash of remembrance sparked across my mind: the rare sight of Griff’s smile, the slight gap between his teeth when we’d happened upon a turtle in a pond. He’d held it so gently. I’d never thought he was capable of such kind touch.
“Don’t you?” He called, and the memory was spurred back into time, and I was again in the horrific now. “You ever seen a pussy before?”
“No,” I said, “no,” and then I stopped as I heard shrieking.
Griff paused and turned his flashlight toward the right. Danny, clutching a piece of fabric in his hand, screamed as the woman on the ground unhinged her jaw further as she worked to devour the rest of Danny’s body, his waist already disappearing into her mouth. Another howl came from the middle of the field, and Del was trying to claw away from the woman whose stockings he had removed, her long acrylic nails digging into his shin. Danny cried again as she continued her slow puncturing up and down his body, a shrill note that dipped into guttural moans before picking up again. Pockets of blood erupted everywhere.
My mind couldn’t make sense of anything. I stepped back‐ ward, once, twice, as Griff yelled at me.
I realized this was the first time I had ever heard him scared. “Don’t you—”
The flight attendant wasn’t motionless any more. She was on all fours, hissing, and the flashlight dropped onto the ground right as she pounced on his chest. There was a loud crack, sick and hollow—the sound of splintering bones.
I couldn’t see anything but I could hear that the pasture was now moving, alive with women. I started to run before a hand stopped me, landing across my chest.
The beautiful naked woman was looking at me, smiling. Her eyes were so sad, all the empty rooms in the world gathered inside of her irises. I remembered at that moment what my mother had always said about angels, being divinely chosen, and I wanted more than anything for that to be true.
“Please, ma’am,” I said. “Please—”
She looked at me with something like sympathy, her mouth pursed and glossed with pink. And then she opened her mouth and screamed.
The scream merged with the sound of a distant truck, its steel body grating against the guard rails before the driver angled it back onto the road. I stood, stunned, unable to move. A terrible pain in my right ear, something singing inside of it. Dizzy, I stumbled over the field of women, unable to take my eyes off of her. I realized that even though I could still see her screaming, I couldn’t hear anything anymore, and that both my ear drums had burst.
I jumped over the fence and didn’t look back. I ran for what felt like hours through the dark, unsure of where I was going until the sun came up and I collapsed, exhausted and sobbing, onto the road. Eventually, I picked myself up and headed back home, where my mother was sitting on the sofa, waving at me when I opened the door before rushing over to hold me.
“Baby, what’s wrong? You can talk to me. I’m right here.”
I leaned against her, sobbing. I realized that the smell of the other woman had been familiar to me, although I hadn’t recognized it at that time—Ma smelled just like gardenias and baby powder. But I must’ve forgotten. It was the first time I had allowed her to touch me in eight years.
•
My hearing came back, but the other boys’ never did. People went out to look for them, and I told Danny’s dad everything: the pasture, the women, the ripping of the clothing. But when they got to the pasture, everything had been wiped clean. On the news, I saw a reporter speaking to a woman who claimed to have lived at the exact location that the pasture had been for the past decade now. Her eyes, bright and blue, seemed to sparkle a bit when she said she hadn’t seen any boys, no, none at all, and as she bent over to pick up something she had dropped, a flash of pink winked back at the camera from beneath her shirt. The interviewer stuttered, embarrassed, and the woman laughed. Despite myself, I started laughing, too, until I was bent over holding my sides, laughing so hard that my stomach hurt, thinking about all the evil in the world and how I had and would always be a part of it. Ma, who had been asleep on her chair, woke up and saw me laughing and started laughing along, too. Our voices ricocheted around the walls, creating a chorus of angels: Ma’s dream come true at last.
From Vague Predictions & Prophecies by Daisuke Shen.
Copyright © 2024 Daisuke Shen.
Reprinted with permission of CLASH Books.