Other Blegh

[ArchieTheFel]

❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀

Your beauty astonished me.
You were a goddess among people, drenched in an aura of sunlight,
and bestowed with a crown of Black-Eyed Susan's.
And I wanted to worship you.

You took heed of my offerings, allowed me to feel your grace.
There is no fur or feather softer than your skin.
No smile could match the light that yours brought to my soul,
And no voice could captivate me more.

But you misused my offerings, and my efforts were in vain.
I grew sick from my efforts, but I gave to you, though my soul was withering.
And when I finally stopped, and asked you to heal me, you took my offerings and left.
But I don't have the right to be angry.
Your offerings were gifts, and my sickness was my own.
But I still wish I could take back all I had offered to you,
The goddess whom I'll die, missing.

​

 

[ArchieTheFel]

It was all she could do to keep from retching on the spot. Louise pulled open the large, sliding doors to her cow-barn only to be greeted by the putrid smell of rotting flesh. She stumbled backwards, doing her best to keep herself from losing her breakfast. When she gained control over her stomach again, she took a large breath of clean air, pulled her shirt over her nose, and walked bravely into her barn.

Four of her best heifers lay dead in their pens. The situation was unsettling enough, but what made a chill run down Louise's spine was the apparent nature of the cows' deaths. All four cows were gutted, their bowels laid out before their bodies, blood soaking into the straw and dirt on the ground, and making an unholy sludge of mud. But the most horrifying detail was how clean it seemed the cuts were; from their chests down to the base of their bellies, it was almost as if someone has taken a surgeon's knife to them. And no parts were taken, the cows were otherwise completely intact.

Louise racked her brain, trying to find some logical explanation. Obviously, it wasn't an animal that had done this. It was too perfectly executed, that and any animal large enough to kill an adult heifer couldn't have gotten into Louise's barn if they tried. But Louise knew to lock her barn doors at night, and they were definitely still locked when she came to let her cows out this morning; nobody could have possibly gotten in. The more she thought about it, the less she wanted to.

The police took their time coming out to the ranch. Louise knew that it wasn't an immediate emergency, but the fear made her bitter. She did her best to keep her snappy remarks down when the police finally arrived, but the overwhelming sense of relief saw to it that the frustration was soon put behind her.

She led the two officers out to the barn, her still living cattle staring at them curiously as they made their way inside. The stench was even worse, the humidity and heat doing no favors to the rotting corpses. The bugs had come to stake their claim, flies were buzzing excitedly around the bodies. One of the officers scowled and backed out of the barn, his face turning pale.

"When did you discover them like this?" he asked Louise. Louise did her best to keep from gagging, swallowing hard before she could answer.
"Just this morning."
"And you're certain the barn was locked when you came here this morning?" Louise nodded. She turned and pointed inside the barn, towards the direction of her dead cows.

"It had to be a person, right? No animal can cut open a cow that cleanly." She searched desperately for reassurance. The officer shrugged.
"There's no bite marks, no signs of anything eating off the cow. The only signs of animals on those things would be the bugs." The officers walked back to their car, Louise following them apprehensively.

"So what do you think I should do?" she asked, desperately.
"Set up some cameras, see if you can catch whoever did it. There's nothing we can really do about it since there's nobody to blame." They got into the car and drove off, leaving Louise right back where she had started; alone, scared, and unsure.

Louise did the only other thing she could think of at the moment and called her girlfriend, Danielle. Danielle lived at the neighboring ranch and had much more experience than Louise at dealing with dead cows. Louise almost collapsed in relief when she heard Danielle pick up the phone.

"Hey, baby, what's going on?" Danielle's voice came softly from the phone. Louise started breaking down in tears as she explained what happened.
"Hold on, Louise. Just take some deep breaths, I'll be right over."

(To Be Continued...Unless I forget!)