Crossing Over (a dream)
A coyote was killed in a man’s backyard still standing. Lips curled, baring its teeth in a snarl, its ears back and fur on end, and its eyes a reflective black. It stayed there paralyzed, standing with one paw in the air for a few days before it started to dessicate. The owner of the house found the coyote after the gun shots of hunters faded in the woods outside and the last dog had barked its way happily home.
Fascinated, the man explored the corpse. The dew in the grass permeated his shoes and jeans and stood out in droplets on the coyote’s fur. The man felt the animal’s terror glinting from its eyes and saw the strength in his body, rigid and ready to attack but petrified into stone. He began to gnaw on its ears, its skull, its meat, and consumed it raw, gaining its strength and power, until its color turned and the insects crawled inside and invited the rest of the rodents and worms to the feast.
“The only law on messin’ with a dead coyote is you can’t disturb the rib cage,” he told visitors many years later. Presumably he’d looked into this with local authorities, though no one could imagine the savage to have done so, or for any such law to exist. Anyone to visit his place during that time could only see a man turned wild and diseased, haunting the coyote, as if the animal’s spirit had taken him over to destroy the body so the soul, too, could leave. The man stopped chewing when the beast’s insides were roiling with maggots and the snarl had fallen into a pathetic pout. The anger and fear finally followed the animal into death.
The teeth began falling out, but still the man watched his totem decompose and turn into crawling earth day by day. His visits shortened. The coyote fell into a pile, grasses took over the feasting, and slowly the man resumed his daily activities. He invited company over, cooked his meat on a stove, and ate lunch with a fork. Still he had savage dreams for the rest of his years.
Fascinated, the man explored the corpse. The dew in the grass permeated his shoes and jeans and stood out in droplets on the coyote’s fur. The man felt the animal’s terror glinting from its eyes and saw the strength in his body, rigid and ready to attack but petrified into stone. He began to gnaw on its ears, its skull, its meat, and consumed it raw, gaining its strength and power, until its color turned and the insects crawled inside and invited the rest of the rodents and worms to the feast.
“The only law on messin’ with a dead coyote is you can’t disturb the rib cage,” he told visitors many years later. Presumably he’d looked into this with local authorities, though no one could imagine the savage to have done so, or for any such law to exist. Anyone to visit his place during that time could only see a man turned wild and diseased, haunting the coyote, as if the animal’s spirit had taken him over to destroy the body so the soul, too, could leave. The man stopped chewing when the beast’s insides were roiling with maggots and the snarl had fallen into a pathetic pout. The anger and fear finally followed the animal into death.
The teeth began falling out, but still the man watched his totem decompose and turn into crawling earth day by day. His visits shortened. The coyote fell into a pile, grasses took over the feasting, and slowly the man resumed his daily activities. He invited company over, cooked his meat on a stove, and ate lunch with a fork. Still he had savage dreams for the rest of his years.