wildscape. literary journal

Film it next time
by Samantha Backlund-Clapp

        The gun clicks, he turns away. Grabs a Tart Cherry from the bowl. Flicks the stem on the ground. The gun clicks, he doesn’t notice. Looks out the window. Waits for me to pick up my shirt. The gun clicks, over and over again, metal caviar on the soft sponge of my tongue, over and over again, nothing happens, I’m trying at the doorknob, the gun is clicking, saltier than the sea, and it’s more embarrassing for me than it is for him. He has not failed at anything. He brought indifference to a knife fight. I am drowning in bullets. He’s like, see you later, and licks my teeth. He pulls back, mouth glowing like the fur stained red around a mountain lion’s hanging jaw, heart beating for one thing, to devour-

         Do you remember how I’d cower in front of you like I would a viper. Anticipating the strike. You can yearn for someone and still feel like prey.

         There is the holy second, this rock and roll drip drip into the IV of dopamine centers lighting up the brain, this holy second in between the lash out and the contact, when the action has been taken and the outcome inevitable but nothing has actually happened yet, the ghost of a moment when his hand is atoms away, when every molecule in my body is screaming to run but I cannot, the holy second when, as prey, you have accepted your fate or what have you, accepted death as a friend, and his teeth are bared and there’s such a fire in those eyes that it could only be murderous, you know his intent and the way your skin will soon become bleeding ribbons on the floor,

          Do you wonder if in nature, prey is ever confused about its relation to predator? The worm to the hawk, the salmon to the bear? Is there an instance of dawning disappointment when the rabbit is met with the fox’s eyes, staring up its snout like the barrel of a rifle, and its hackles are rising to pounce, and the rabbit has every opportunity to move but is cemented by hopelessness, black eyes seeing all, looking into the open mouth like it’s a cracked door home, like it’s a promise or a ring or the rising sun, wondering paradoxically what it will feel like when the jaw closes, when the bones crack, how it will feel to be consumed and digested, thinking idiot, I thought it’d be different this time,         

           He is done, wipes his mouth. Carnage.

     

about the author // Samantha Backlund-Clapp