Monsters

Tammy Peacy

A pile of last season’s hot peppers, snow-bled and sun-blanched, sat in the field like a mouthless set of prehistoric teeth. It convinced me a minute I was seeing something that wasn’t. Once the crawling feeling between my shoulder blades passed, I put the bottom of my boot to the top of the pile and the husks came apart with the same startling satisfaction as the hollowed bones of a baby bird.

I pulled aside a few of the pepper shells left intact and placed them in a row. Choosing the biggest two for canines.

My brother appeared, head to neck to chest, over the ridge between this field and my shed. I nudged my toe at the mud and when I looked back to the ridge my brother’s whole self had arrived and his right hand showed that he’d took our daddy’s rifle from up over my wood stove.

“Looks like you got monsters in your field, brother,” I said.

He just never stopped looking at me.


Tammy Peacy lives and writes in Wisconsin.

Comments

  1. Carol Ciavonne says

    Wonderful and chilling.

  2. yes, very wisconsin

  3. Sandra Church says

    As always awesome

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