Slop

Chapter 1

            Dagna Thorncroft brushed the dirt from her cheek and pushed herself up and off the floor. Her foot tingled as the blood started to flow back into the extremity.  She must have lost consciousness for longer this time.  She winced at the pain and meandered to the bathroom to look at her husband Bartholomew’s latest damage. Her left eye was swollen shut, a dark shadow on her orbital bone. Her nose had bled, causing a trail that slithered down to her chin like a swimming serpent. She licked her split lip and tasted the dried blood crusted over the protruding rim. It tasted like pennies, like copper. She had become accustomed to the taste.

She still experienced trauma from an incident involving her ex-boyfriend and his suicidal threat if she were to ever break up with him. After she had tried to end the relationship, she walked to his house to give him his letter jacket back and what she saw disturbed her, imprinted on her brain ever since. She stood in his bedroom doorway and saw him sitting on his bed with a shotgun barrel pushed so hard against his forehead that it caused an indentation. Not thinking clearly from the bowl of pot she had just smoked, she turned around and walked out. Luckily, he never committed suicide. She ended the relationship shortly after meeting Bartholomew and rarely saw her ex. In fact, she rarely ever saw anyone anymore. She felt alone, isolated. She did not know why but it always seemed like the assholes were drawn to her. Maybe they thought she could be easily manipulated; perhaps she somehow sought them out as a form of codependency; whatever it was, she did not know but ended up in these predicaments more than she would care to admit.

 Dagna leaned on the doorframe to the bathroom and flipped on the light with a flick of her finger. Squinting from the quick change in brightness, she tried to gaze into the medicine cabinet mirror. Sure enough, a dark bruise had already begun, and her eye remained shut like an old window that had not opened in years. She wiped the blood on her lip and cringed at the pain. It looks worse than it feels, she thought to herself.

Bartholomew started to do and say things slowly at first which caused her to second guess herself. Then he would hide his lust for control with a gentle brush on her cheek or tell her that he loved her and just wanted what was best for her. Eventually, Dagna started to believe his lies and think of herself similarly.  She was just another farm animal to be slaughtered.  Another one of his chores. She thought, If I had a better complexion, more symmetrical facial features, weighed 120 pounds instead of 160, took better care of Bartholomew, and kept the house nicer and cleaner, then the violence would stop, and Bartholomew would finally be happy.

She opened the cabinet and pulled out gauze and antibiotic ointment. This seemed like an accustomed routine she held. Doing a quick scan of the rest of her body, she noticed droplets of blood on her shirt and a large red handprint on her arm. She shook her head and said, “It won’t be long now. You’ll see.”  She reassured herself, even if it sounded fake, and walked to the kitchen to pull out a package of venison steaks from the freezer. She held the ice-cold compress to her eye and sighed. After all, she needed the meat to thaw in time for dinner. A hot supper was always expected, no matter what. Dagna lowered herself slowly into her worn chair and closed her eye.

She thought about where she ended up in life and what would be different if she had made better choices. For instance, she had never aspired to go to college, and it was the social norm to get married soon after high school and to be content being a homemaker and bearing children. She had always wanted to have children, but after several miscarriages, she had slowly given up on that dream. The physical abuse started soon after, and Bartholomew would become so violently angry at her for “killing the babies.”  She resented herself for not being able to carry a baby to full term, and she hated her body for ruining her marriage. If only she could mother a child, then her husband would be happy. Dagna just wanted to see him happy, and after all, that was her job.  Wasn’t it? Wasn’t that her purpose in life? She accepted that her sole purpose was to please Bartholomew, and she was not doing an outstanding job. The intense guilt that she felt was the start of her downward spiral.

            Dagna could hear herself snore ever so slightly, startling her awake. It was a good thing, too; Bartholomew would be coming back to the house soon from haying in the fields. She hoisted herself up and walked to her humble kitchen to prepare dinner. Dagna held potatoes in her calloused hands and let the curly skins plop into the large metal slop bucket. This mundane activity must have caused her to enter into a trance because she was pulled out of reality and into an unusually vivid vision. It became an out-of-body experience, and she could still see herself peeling the potatoes at the kitchen table. She cocked and looked at herself for a moment in curiosity until Bartholomew slammed the door open, yelling at her. She could not hear anything he said; she saw his mouth open widely, spit flying out, aggressive posture, red face, squinted eyes, and prominent bushy eyebrows furrowed in the middle of his forehead. For an unknown reason, she was not scared of him.  Not this time, at least.  

A sense of calm washed over her. She knew exactly how to manage this situation. Before he laid one more hand on her, she would act quickly. Pouncing like a puma. Speedy, like a ninja. Taking one giant step towards him, she swiftly clutched the back of his arm, pulling it tight behind his back. She used her leg as a prop to keep him pinned while she brought the other hand up, grabbing the back of his thick sweaty neck. His eyes bulged in surprise, causing her to quickly fawn over this new expression.  She loved the perplexed look. A sly grin spread across her face as she forced his head into the large pot of boiling water. The hot liquid splattered her hand, but she did not flinch. She barely even noticed. The task at hand was more important.  She became enthralled and mesmerized as she watched his face turn bright red and then gawked as his skin slowly started to peel off, first from his cheek, then his forehead, and then a hunk of skin below his right eye. His flesh looked like a very tender piece of cooked meat. Juicy, moist, and prepared to perfection.  Medium-rare.  His screams, stifled by the scalding bubbles, escaped his mouth and became camouflaged by the bursting domes at the surface. The crimson water looked beautiful, stunning even.  It looked like a million rubies glistening.  When she thought he had had enough, she flung his head back and pushed him to the floor.  The bits of flesh that still clung to his face hung there like a hanging animal carcass bleeding out.  His eyes looked like the whites of a hardboiled egg, and the orbs were rimmed with red peeling skin.  Some of his hair had seared, creating a receding hairline.  

“Never again, you pompous sadist! NEVER AGAIN!”

The rumble of an engine pulling into the driveway brought her back to reality. Pulling her from a state of satisfaction and throwing her back into a world of fear.  Dagna looked out of her small window with one slit eye. Calumet, a neighbor who occasionally stopped by to deliver fresh milk. She sighed.  Great.  Just what I need. Bartholomew will beat me into hamburger if he finds another man in his house while he is away.  Just flipping perfect. She continued to peel the potatoes and responded with the friendly Minnesotan tone, “Come on in,” before Calumet even reached for the door with the cracked glass. She heard him wipe his large boots on the welcome mat, and then she saw him peek around the corner in search of her tiny voice.

“Hey there, Dagna. How are you? It’s been a while.”

He held a large mason jar of milk with the cream resting at the top. Fresh milk was always the best. Straight from the udder.  Being a small farming town, the Thorncrofts and most other rural residents bartered for many of their supplies. Calumet supplied the milk, and when it was time to butcher, the Thorncrofts would give him some pork and beef.

“Good. How’re you, Cal?”  she did not return his gaze and continued peeling the golden spuds. Her voice flat, her affect blunted.

“Doing well. Doing well. Those pigs are getting bigger every time I stop by. What have you and Bart been feeding them? Miracle Grow?”  he let out a short chuckle followed by an “H-yuck,” reminding her of Goofy.

Dagna’s face remained solemn, although she tried to force a small smile at Calumet’s silly comment and even more inane laugh. Unaware that she was instinctively trying to cover her bruised eye with her bangs focusing intently as ever on her potatoes. “Just the usual slop,” she shrugged.

Calumet looked down at the slop bucket and noticed a few pieces of raw meat and fat that Dagna had trimmed from the venison steaks and thrown in. “You feed them meat? Dagna, don’t you know that once pigs get a taste of blood, they start to crave it? They go insane for it. They are related to wild boars; you know that, right?”

“I didn’t know they would ‘crave’ blood if they had a taste, but I did know they are related to boars. Cal, I’m not an idiot.” 

“Does Bart know that you feed them some scrap meat? Surely, he would know that it can cause problems. Give swine some blood or meat, and they’ll devour anything in sight, especially if it still has its lifeblood. They can smell it.  I read an article in the newspaper a while back about a farmer who fed his pigs anything and everything, including throwing in the chipmunks he killed to prevent them from re-entering his house.  He noticed a change in them; they started to become more aggressive, first with one another and then with the farmer.  He went into the pen, and one day they just attacked him.  They charged him, knocked him over, and started to bite at his legs and hands.  He is lucky he could fend them off and make it out of there alive.  He was in the hospital for a week, with doctors and nurses tending to his missing chunks of flesh and trying to prevent infection.  The newspaper clip showed a picture of him and what was left of his face and hand.  His nose was almost chewed off, and he only had one finger remaining.  Thank God it was only the top half of his body in the picture.  I would hate to see what remained of his abdomen, legs and whatever else they got at,” Calumet shuddered at the memory of the story.

“Bartholomew doesn’t know many things I do around this house when working the fields. I do my job, and he does his.  That is a unique story, Cal; thanks for the image right before supper.”  A piece of her hair tickled her eye, and she unconsciously flung it from her face creating a perfect view of her bruised and swollen face.

“Gosh, Dagna, what the hell happened to you? Your eye looks like a ripe plum, and your lip’s bleeding. Are you okay?”

“Oh, like an idiot, I fell going down the cellar stairs. No biggy,” she shrugged her shoulders and looked down at her potatoes, causing her bangs to fall into her face again, creating a shield. She always had a story in her mind as a cover to explain her battered appearance.  The neighbors and other locals thought of her as a klutz and as accident-prone.  Over the years, she had fallen downstairs numerous times, tripped over the electric fence, gotten run over by an angry steer, and once, she even said that an anchor had fallen on her head after she had pulled on a rope that led up to the haymow in the barn, which caused it to come crashing down on her.  Dagna sliced and cubed the vegetables and plopped them into the boiling water. She thought about Bartholomew’s face scalding and smirked. Her momentary pleasurable thought was interrupted by her guest.

“Oh, yeah, sure. Those stairs are steep in old houses like this; you ought to be more careful. Maybe Bart can put up a railing?”  Calumet slowly walked closer to Dagna and gingerly swept her bangs aside to get a closer look. “Dagna, are you okay? If something is going on, if you’re in trouble, I will help you.”  Calumet gently lifted her small chin towards his face and looked intently into her eyes.

 Dagna knew that Calumet had feelings towards her, and if she were in a healthier place in her life, she would share those feelings, but now was not the time. After her trances and visions became more frequent, she thought Bartholomew had finally broken her. She began to believe she was going insane, yet she welcomed the images because they gave her a sense of control.

After a few moments of silence, Dagna could see that Calumet was becoming anxious. He held her chin in his large, calloused hand, gazing into her eyes for the longest time. Seemingly longing for a forbidden kiss. He must have sensed the awkwardness, and he started to fidget. His hands became sweaty, and Dagna could see the bulging vein in his neck throbbing.  She saw the thin skin on his cheek drawn in by his teeth as he gently chewed on the smooth flesh.  He quickly pulled his hand back from Dagna’s chin, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. He shoved the large glass jar of milk into Dagna’s bony hands.

“Well, I just, aw, stopped by to bring you some milk. Figured you were about due for more since Bart drinks it like a walleye.”  His face developed a slight innocent blush, and he looked at his feet.

“Yes, he does. Every day at lunch and every night at dinner. Thank you, Cal; I appreciate the kind gesture.”  Dagna tried to smile as best as she could with a split, bloody lip and continued prepping Bartholomew’s dinner.

Calumet smiled, tipped his dirty baseball cap like a gentleman, and headed out the door. Dagna put the milk in the fridge and started searing the venison, and it was then that she got an idea. A terrible, horrible, sinister idea. An idea that brought a huge smile to her face, and even though it caused her pain, she could care less because she was going to get rid of Bartholomew finally, and there was nothing that anyone could do to stop her.