Better Alone Together

K. A. Roy

The Hermit

There were five instances where my companion came screaming out of me in all her glory. Red and luminous, pulsing with hunger, and so, so angry.

The First: Jimmy thought I was meek, that I existed only to please him. The moment I couldn’t stave her off happened after he entered the kitchen behind me, took a deep whiff of the seasonings peppering the air, and groaned. “Again?” was the last word he ever said. She danced out of me, cast iron in hand, swinging with choreographed ease.

The Second: My supervisor, Eva, scoffed one too many times at the work I’d been doing. A nothing job, a meaningless way to pay the bills. Again, she slipped out and dragged me along, chained to her as she stalked the middle-aged woman, thin as the pipe in my companion’s hand. The pipe’s rust spread along the shaft, more with each swing, collecting bits of gristle like ornamentation.

The Third: Another lover. He was fine. His name was Scott and he never raised a hand to me, but I think my companion was restless, and one night I let my guard down. While I slept, she escaped. I woke soaked in the remains of him; his insides hung limply across me, a patchwork quilt. I usually kept quiet when she arrived, but she had already receded. This time, I screamed.

The Fourth: This one hurts. This one I don’t want to talk about. But it’s also the reason I’ve come to this cabin, and so, in the end, she did me a solid.

I moved out here when I realized I couldn’t control her anymore. Scott was close to the last straw but I gave her one more chance, a chance I’ll always regret. The cabin was in the will, listed just for me. No time share, no “split the sale between so-and-so.” All mine.

And hers, I guess.

It was an adjustment at first. Not that I’d call myself social on a good day. I didn’t much care for company and company didn’t much care for me. I loved the natural silence, the isolation of a wood cabin in the middle of nowhere, a marked difference from the quiet of a single-bed apartment. I stocked up on canned fruits, vegetables, beans, and condensed soups before trekking out. The cabin shed was stocked with hunting supplies: ground traps, rifles, and cage traps I didn’t know how to set and looked rusted with disuse.

Her excitement vibrated deep inside as I set out a few spring-loaded traps, hiding them from view with fallen leaves. I didn’t know what I was doing but she guided my hand, heating my veins with instruction. Warm when I did something right, cold when I didn’t. We lived together that way, in some semblance of harmony. Sleeping when the sun went down beneath layers of clothes and scratchy blankets, rising with the sun and checking traps, setting new ones. We fell into a pleasant rhythm.

We loved the silence. No mindless chatter. No politics. No demands to live in a society we didn’t agree with or suit. I wasn’t sure when, exactly, I’d begun to think of us as “we,” but it was easier to accept her existence when there was nothing to kill but wildlife. Which wasn’t wasteful. Sustainable death was far more acceptable. It was the way we were meant to live. Not bent over keyboards entering useless data, not a slave to the whims of an audacious man. No, we were wild and free in the woods, living off the land and canned food. I had seeds and plans for spring so, eventually, I wouldn’t have need for store-bought items.

We were in the middle of lathering some wild rabbit with oil for dinner when a knock stilled my hands. My fingers grew cold but as I turned toward the door, my steps hesitant, warmth flooded through them. A second knock made me jump. It was the first time in weeks I’d missed anything from my former life. What I wouldn’t have given for a peephole to see what waited beyond the heavy wooden door.

“Open up,” a man grumbled, his words sharp and demanding.

Oh no, I thought. She stirred in my gut. Her claws dug in, climbing.

“Go away,” I said, but the words stopped in my throat, held in her clutches. They barely reached my own ears.

“I know you’re in there,” he said. A warning. “Now go on and open up.”

The Fifth: I opened the door and she sprang. The man had his hand on the butt of a gun sticking out of his waistband but he wasn’t fast enough. She went for his throat, claws and teeth and blood spraying every which way. A real firework show of human pieces: flesh and veins, tendons and bones. Instead of pops and booms, the silence filled with screams, then gurgles, then nothing at all.

We dragged him from the door around to the back, brought him right into the shed. We hung what was left of him on a hook meant for drying meat and closed the door behind us. Every inch of me felt hot like fire and I knew it was praise, it was pride.

We returned to the rabbit, not bothering to wash him from our hands, massaging herbs into the flesh.

I thought moving to the cabin would change her, but the elegance and grace and efficiency with which she dismantled the man that came knocking, his intent clear … I couldn’t keep her locked inside.

I could let her out.

I could face the truth.

She was me and I was her.

We were us.

Us was me.

There were five instances where I shed my mask and let the real me free.

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Author’s Note & Bio

I wanted to write a story about reflecting on one’s self, particularly in a place where they feel the most free. It was important to me that the reflection ended with accepting all of one's self, including and most especially the darkest parts.

K. A. Roy haunts the suburbs of Chicago with her family and three cats. She attended Columbia College Chicago for Creative Writing. Her work can be found at Malarkey Books, an undisclosed anthology set for spring 2024, and a horror novella set to publish in 2024 through Black Hare Press. Her first horror novella will be on submission in early 2024.