Unnatural Creatures

9

MARIA DAHVANA HEADLEY was once a non-fiction writer, and then she shifted her career and started making things up instead. I loved her recent novel, Queen of Kings, about a very scary Cleopatra. She was the assistant editor on this book and did everything that I couldn’t do.

And here she tells a story about a Beast in a forest.

There’s a Beast in the mini-forest, and everyone knows it, especially Angela, whose father hunts it full-time. She has no interest in anything to do with the Beast, until a collector arrives in town, attempting to use her as bait….

IT’S LATE ON A THURSDAY AFTERNOON when I meet the guy who turns out to be the Beast collector. I’m not expecting anything life changing from anyone walking in the door of the Bastardville Dreamy Creamy. I got over Possibility when I was seven, right along with Santa Claus and Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy. All I’ve got left is Suspicion.

Then Billy Beecham shows up at my job and changes everything. I work in an ice-cream shoppe. The two p’s are on purpose. It looks like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting, but it’s well known in these parts as the worst ice-cream shoppe in the history of the world. Not that the ice cream is bad. It comes from the same delivery truck that every other town’s ice cream comes from. It’s frozen. It’s quiescent. The bad isn’t in the ice cream. It’s in the attitude. Just like every other ice-cream shoppe employee anywhere, I wear a pink smock and a visor, and I scoop as though my life depends on it. Then I hand over the ice cream, and say, “Have a miserable day.”

Tourists get a huge charge out of it. They want me to say it again and again, but unless they order something else, it’s not in my job description. On the day in question, the guy in question comes up to my counter and orders vanilla, which is already against my rules. Then he continues.

“I bet you have a nice smile,” he says.

“Do you know how many people have died trying that?” I ask him, and adjust my visor. The answer is very zero.

“Only takes one,” he says. “You look like you want to.” I do not.

“Come on,” he says. “It’s been a hell of an afternoon, hunting out there in the mini-forest. I just need to see a pretty girl smile.” He checks my name badge. “Angela. I’m Billy Beecham. I’m a Beast collector, with the—”

“Have a miserable day,” I tell him, except that miserable is not the word I use. I use a rather more explosive word, a word we all know is a breach of protocol, but he’s breaching too. Billy Beecham leans over the Plexiglas barrier, and tries to kiss me.

He’s facedown in a tub of Peppy Ripple before I even know what I’ve done. Every girl in Bastardville takes a semester of self-defense in second grade. I hadn’t realized the neck-pinch skill was still part of my physical vocabulary.

“What do you mean, Beast collector?” I ask him, but he doesn’t answer. His face is covered in melt. His pith helmet—yes, he’s wearing a pith helmet—has sprinkles stuck to the top. He grins, licks the ice cream from around his lips, and walks out of the Dreamy Creamy like he’s done nothing wrong.

“There’s only one Beast here,” I yell after him. “And that Beast isn’t collectible. Just so you know.”

It’s not my fault. I’m doing a good deed. I’m trying to save him. People are stupid sometimes.

“I’ll see you later, Angela,” the collector tosses over his shoulder. I’m apprehended by my supervisor, Phil, who drags me into the supply closet and says, “No swearing, Andrea. Bastardville is a family town.”

Phil can’t remember my name, even though he’s my age, and has known me since kindergarten.

“All towns are family towns, Phil,” I say.

“You’re not a nice person,” says Phil. “You shouldn’t be around the ice cream.” He backs out of the supply closet. “Stay in here and think about the error of your ways.”

“I don’t have to be a nice person,” I tell Phil. “This isn’t a nice place.”

My town started about a hundred years ago as a Utopian community in a beautiful forest. The forest got littler, and we got bigger, and the whole Utopia thing began to melt down. By the time people realized that the woods were shrinking, we’d become a town surrounding a one-block by one-block mini-forest. But obviously, by that point, we’d figured some things out, and it was necessary to stay.

The Chamber of Commerce sent out a survey nine years ago in an attempt at attracting tourists, and that was when we renamed ourselves Bastardville. Second runner up was Awfulton, and third, the under-twenty-one favorite, was simply Suck. We weren’t allowed to name ourselves any real swear words, because maps are G-rated. Now, we’re visited by adventure backpackers, and the occasional Japanese vacationer. Some of them decide to stay. Some of them stay forever. The Beast stayed too.

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.

It used to live in Scotland, and it came across the ocean on a ship it took over by talking to the planks. We keep it under control. That’s why we’re here, on all sides. Bastardville stands guard over our Beast. The last time it got loose, it took over half the Rocky Mountains and created a whole army of pines before we got it back.

Billy Beecham is staring at me.

“What?” I ask.

“Are you trying to poach my Beast?” he says.

I have already discovered that I don’t like him. Forgive my momentary delusion. He belongs with his face in a tub of Peppy Ripple. He belongs here, in the mini-forest.

“It’s not your Beast,” I say. “It’s its own Beast. We just keep it boundaried.”

The Beast starts to walk. Billy Beecham sits down abruptly, his face drained of color. I see my Father peering out from behind a tree, the bag of fertilizer still in his hand. He’s grinning at me as the forest tilts and lifts us up. He gives me a thumbs-up. I’ve never seen fit to participate in this, but along with the neck-pinch skill, girls get some training early on in Beast Management. Maybe this is my calling. Maybe I’m a hunter. Maybe I’m a gatherer.

We’re on the move. I think about the houses on the eastern border of the Beast. This is a bad little forest. It moves around. Those houses just went back up again, but thankfully, they’re empty at present. The Beast tends to like to walk toward the sunrise. We’ve learned some things over the years. Mostly the Beast only moves a few feet, but today, it’s really shaking. The birds that have been hanging out in the Beast’s hair scream insulted screams and take off.

I can see a little bit, through the trees. We’re way above the streetlamps now, and the Beast is maybe twenty feet in the air, walking on its taproots.

Billy Beecham’s mouth is hanging open.

“You know what the Beast eats?” I ask him.

“I don’t,” Billy Beecham says. “Let me down.” After a moment of looking at me, he increases his pitch to the high whine of someone being picked up against his will. “LET ME DOWN.”

I feel a little bit of sympathy for him, but he is also the person who kissed me without an invitation. Collector. I don’t like being collected any more than the Beast does. Don’t come in here, thinking you can collect Bastardville’s Beast. Just be calm, go into the mini-forest, and let the Beast have a snack. You’d think people would learn.

Some people called us tree huggers here in Bastardville, back when we were Utopian. Some people called us weirdos, some people called us pagans, and we were those things too. We’re part of an old tradition, Beast Managers, and this kind of Beast requires a lot of maintenance. It needs pruning and fertilizer. It needs exercise. It needs the occasional blood sacrifice. It’s no big deal. That’s what tourists and collectors are for.

I wrap Billy Beecham’s net around my hand and sling it over him, using the neck-pinch skill. I wrap one end around a tree and tie a knot. I wave at my Father as I walk out of the clearing, so that the Beast can do its Beast thing.

“Are you going to let me be eaten?” Billy Beecham looks stunned.

“Don’t you know that sometimes Beast collectors get collected?” I ask him.

“But you’re a virgin.”

“Virgins were never sacrifices,” I say. “Not to this kind of Beast. Virgins are collaborators.”

And the Beast moves like it hasn’t moved in a hundred years. The Beast dances, and I turn my head as Billy Beecham sinks into the gaping maw of the mini-forest.

“Are you happy now?” I ask the Beast.

The Beast roars and slows its walk, dropping down into place only a little way from where it was crouching. After a moment, the birds return, and the breeze winds itself back into the Beast’s twigs. The streetlamps come back on. The Mothers resume their night patrol of Bastardville’s streets. My Father shakes a little more fertilizer on the Beast’s roots, and the Beast sighs in satisfaction.

I lean back against one of the Beast’s trees, and kick off my Dreamy Creamy high heels. I put my head back against the Beast, and listen to the Beast’s giant heart beating.