Bastardville, USA: population 465, plus one Beast.
The mini-forest is the only place in town you can find any trees. Plant one elsewhere, it uproots and runs down Main Street and into the mini-forest. The Beast can be heard to roar from its confines every night. The whole thing is surrounded by houses on all sides.
We manage things.
At home, my Mother is, for the second time this week, baking cream pies and smashing them into her own face. The streets belong to the Mothers at night, and they like it that way. In the mornings they make eggs, and you want to think you’ll never be poisoned, but you never really know for sure. My own Mother is no different. In Bastardville, you marry whomever the Mothers think you ought to marry. They get together, and draw names out of a hat. It’s about that time for me. I’m sixteen, but my Mother hasn’t done anything about it. I’m supposed to move forward into my role, but in truth? I want a different role.
I don’t want to get married at all. If I thought I’d really have to, I’d walk into the mini-forest. I think the Beast might be preferable to Phil. Or anyone else I know. My Mother tried this too, but the Beast didn’t take her, and so she married my Father. Now we’re the only Family in Bastardville whose Father hunts the Beast full-time. My Father moved into the mini-forest about three years ago, with his pup tent and a few cans of tomatoes. He passed me a book called Survivalism: A Primer, shook my hand, and walked into the trees without once looking back. The Beast needs to be hunted. It doesn’t feel satisfied unless it engages in conflict. Sometimes someone fully commits. Not women. Men only.
I don’t see Billy Beecham again until Saturday night. My friends and I are doing our usual pack wander. Normally, we do a few laps around the mini-forest, and then crouch on the play equipment outside the grade school, and wait for something more to happen.
The Beast roars, but we pay it no attention. It’s just talking to itself.
We’re just at the point of looking for something to destroy, when Billy Beecham comes out of the mini-forest, wearing a suit. Glasses, tie, briefcase in his hand, and a huge smile on his face.
Nobody smiles in Bastardville. Our Beast, I will say it again, is nothing collectible. Why is the collector smiling? And why did the Beast roar? Maybe it was talking to Billy Beecham. But if it was, I don’t know why the collector is smiling.
I can feel the blood boiling in my body, and so I take off running, leaving the rest of my group behind.
Sometime in the middle of the night, I worry about myself. What if I belong here?
The next day, I catch a glimpse of my Father. I haven’t seen him in months. Every other Father in Bastardville can be found next to their refrigerator at 11 P.M., staring forlornly into the condiments, sometimes dipping a finger in the mustard, or lapping at a jar of jam. Disgusting as that is, it’d be nice to know where my Father could be found at night. All the other Fathers attend their children’s weddings. They get raving drunk at the reception. They’re supposed to have at least one dance with their designated Mother, who is, in turn, supposed to trip in her high heels, and, as evening falls, go viciously at the Father with her handbag and her martini glass.
All Fathers except mine.
When I see my Father, he’s standing on the edge of the mini-forest, at the same place where Billy Beecham emerged. He’s staring into space. He has a red helium balloon in one hand, and in the other, a bag of fertilizer.
“Hey!” I say, but he takes off running.
It isn’t fair that in this town of wrong, my family is wronger than everyone else’s.
I run after him as fast as I can in my uniform’s stupid little pink heels, but by the time my eyes adjust to the dark of the mini-forest, he’s out of sight. I have, however much I don’t want to think about this, a feeling. It’s creepily possible my Father is in love with the Beast. Isn’t that why people move out and leave their Families?
I can see the balloon bobbing, and I chase that, until there’s a bellow, and a loud pop. Then there’s nothing but dark. I’ve never been this far into the mini-forest before. The bellows of the Beast are nothing you really want to hear. Particularly when you aren’t wearing anything resembling stalking gear, you’ve never managed to read any of Survivalism: A Primer, and you are completely, idiotically alone.
The bellow happens again, all around me. I get ready to leave my Father to his Beast, but Billy Beecham appears, wearing a trench coat, and scraping a moss sample from one of the trees. There’s another bellow, this one startled.
“Angela,” he says, and winks, like it’s a pleasant surprise to see me in the middle of a mini-forest.
“Leaving,” I say. “You should too. The Beast is about to be on the move.”
“Did you see it?” he asks.
“All the time,” I say.
From somewhere nearby I hear my Father’s voice, beginning to sing “Happy Birthday.” I assume it’s to himself. The Beast’s birthday is anyone’s guess. I guess you could figure it out, but you’d need a chain saw.
Could things be more pathetic? I straighten my uniform and walk out. In the direction I think is out, anyway. Which it isn’t. That is, of course, implausible, because of the one-block-by-one-block factor. Nevertheless. I’ve gotten turned around. I feel like things are spinning. I feel like the trees are taller than they were. I note the fertilizer at their feet.
Billy Beecham is smiling at me when I return.
“Lost?” he says.
“What is it you do, anyway? You can’t just be hunting this one Beast,” I ask, making the best of a bad situation.
“Collector,” he says. “Began with butterflies, now assigned to beasts.”
He pulls something out of his pocket. It keeps pulling and pulling like a magician’s scarf. A net, but large enough to catch a whale in. Not big enough. Poor idiot.
“It’s not like you’ll catch the Beast,” I tell him. “No one can. You’ll end up living here on the edge, and you don’t want to, believe me.”
“How do you know?” asks Billy Beecham.
“No one wants to live here,” I tell him. “We just do. We have to. We’ve been here a long time.”
“Happy birthday to you,” sings my Father from somewhere far away. I hear him blowing out his own candles, and the mini-forest gets as dark as a mini-forest surrounded by streetlamps can get. The mini-forest also gets larger. I feel it happening. Like it’s taken a deep breath.
Billy Beecham grabs my hand, and takes off running, and I’m flying behind him like a streamer. He’s making some sort of call with a whistle. A honk.
The Beast has never honked. My backyard borders the mini-forest, and if anyone’s heard the voice of the Beast, it’s me. The Beast roars.
Billy Beecham stops, and I crash into him. He’s swinging his net around over his head. This is not what you do with our Beast. Our Beast is uncatchable.
“Here, Beast,” he croons. “Beast, Beast, here, Beast. Does it need a virgin? You’ll do.”
I look at him. He doesn’t even have the grace to blush.
“It doesn’t need a virgin. It doesn’t care about virgins.”
“Not what I heard,” Billy Beecham says, and resumes his clucking and net swinging. He has no idea how to call a Beast. I decide to show him.
How do you call this kind of Beast? It’s the kind of Beast that responds to one hand clapping, and so I clap against a tree trunk. It’s the kind of Beast that hears when a tree falls in the mini-forest and there’s no one around. I feel it beginning to move. There is a tearing sound, and a racking sound.
It’s not like our Beast doesn’t have a history. It used to be a much bigger Beast.