Credence

I watch him walk past the large stone fireplace, down a long hallway,
and eventually I hear a screen door slam shut somewhere at the back of the
house. He’s going to find a horse tonight?
“It’s dark so I’ll show you around the property in the morning,” Jake
says, walking off to the right, “but here’s the kitchen.”
He trails around the island in the large space, but I stay back.
“Of course, help yourself to anything,” he explains, meeting my eyes.
“We’ll be making plenty of runs to town before the weather starts in the
next couple of months, so we can stock the pantry with any food you like.
We’ll be doing some canning, too.” He closes the fridge door I’m guessing
his son left open and informs me, “We try to grow, catch, and kill as much
of our own food as possible.”
It makes sense why I thought I saw a barn and a greenhouse among the
other structures. With getting snowed in for such long periods of time, it’s
smart to rely on grocery stores and the town as little as possible.
He gestures for me to follow him, and I join him as he opens a door off
the side of the kitchen.
“If you need the washer and dryer, it’s out here in the shop,” he tells me,
flipping on a light. He descends the few stairs, and I see another truck
parked in the bright garage, this one red.
Jake picks up a wicker laundry basket off the cement floor and tosses it
back onto the top of the dryer, but as I take a step, something catches my
eye, and I stop at the top of the stairs. A buck hangs by its hind legs off to
the right, a small pool of blood gathered around the drain the dead deer
hangs over. His antlers hover a foot off the floor, swaying just slightly.
What the fu…? I hang my mouth open, gaping at it.
All of a sudden, Jake is standing next to me on the stairs. “Like I said…
grow, catch, and kill.” He sounds amused by whatever he sees on my face.
“You’re not a vegetarian, are you?”
He’s gone before I have a chance to answer, and I back away from the
garage, step into the house again, and close the door. I’m not a vegetarian,
but it occurs to me I’ve never met my meat before it was meat.
I swallow a couple times to wet my dry mouth.
“Living room, bathroom, TV,” he points out as I follow him. “We don’t
have cable, but we have lots of movies, and you can stream as long as the
Internet holds out.”