Deer Jon

 It's been five hours since I was at the factory 6 am, my wife is going to work as a secretary in the local primary school. I feel sick, a kind of cold sweat. Maybe I'm ill. You'll be fine she tells me as she goes out the door - remember to put the chicken on for when I come home. I get up pull on some slacks and go downstairs to make a cup of tea. The mail has arrived. A letter from the gas company saying they need to inspect our boiler. It packed up last week and I had to call a repairman. 

As he was fixing it, I felt sure I saw something in his eye, some redness there. It's this look some people around town have been getting. The librarian had it. A little distant far away somehow. Like they are talking to you but somehow not you or not quite there.

The toast pops up and the kettle is steaming and it brings me to my senses. I can't get over that feeling that something has changed. I remember the cadavers being rolled off the back of the truck into the factory doors.

In town I go in to the supermarket to buy a chicken for tonight, but the venison is on special offer. I don't know why but I pick it up and proceed to find some other ingredients for a nice venison dish. Potatoes, some red wine, herbs.

I throw myself into cooking it and look up all the ways to make a delicious dish. There is the carving and dicing, and after a couple of hours I've finished. My wife comes home, and somehow I've made it magical, there are candles and wine and we get on. I can talk to her like I haven't been able to in months, and suddenly the tension is gone, we fall into each other and make love. I don't think she knows what has happened to me. I don't think I know, but I sleep for the first time in weeks, the sleep of the innocent. 

The next day I feel like a new man. I'm going to find a job today honey, no more moping around the house. There is a mushroom picking farming up on the Mendip hills and I drive out that way. I heard they were hiring  and you just need to turn up. It seemed like a good opportunity. After eight hours my fingers were stained dark brown with soil and my clothes were dirty. One of the workers Alf talks to me about truffle hunting, and wild pigs in the woodlands. I can feel the cool soil, the wet leaves and smell of the rain on the ground around silver birches.

At the end of the shift I get  in my car and drive home. It has got dark by then, and there is a little rain. All of sudden a stag leaps out of the undergrowth and collides with the front of my Toyota. It careers across my bonnet and its antlers jam into my windscreen. I come to a screeching holt and its thrashing legs are beating the panel of the bonnet. As I climb out it has slid down to the front of the car. I crouch down because its crumpled mass of wet fur and legs is still breathing. It is panting hard, its mouth is open and its tongue lolling. As I reach out a hand to stroke its fur it makes eye contact with me. It fixes me in its gaze and I am transfixed. All of a sudden it rights itself, shakes its pelt and staggers off like a drunk at first and then leaps more confidently. 

I am taken a back and lean on my bonnet and then I look around into the surrounding woodland. The eyes of what look like ten deer are staring back at me. From both sides of the road. Ignoring the damaged windscreen and bonnet, I climb back into the car as quickly as I can and pull away. I race back down the hill to Shepton Mallet.