age fifteen
Night of the Crimson Eclipse
Adirondack Mountains, New York
Summer of 1855
It amazed me that even with my face covered, there was a desire within me to cloak my emotions, hide my strangeness, and push away all the things I was capable of. After so long, this desire had become a part of me, much like the grain sack had—like an organ I could not survive without. It was the only thing that kept me human.
Chayton’s pet never returned. I hadn’t told anyone about the dog resurrecting from the dead. If Chayton or anyone else found out what I had done, they would surely think of me as something of the supernatural. A reason to take my life, or perhaps Mother’s for birthing such a thing.
A complete moon cycle had passed since the strange event, and the parody of my mask had only worsened. Compared to the other tribes I’d stayed with, the people here were quite different.
Here, they negotiated with settlers, exchanged land and weaponry, took the gods for granted, and glorified a man though they promised to worship the sun. I noticed a change in Mother and how she routinely shooed me out of the hogan during the night as English men came and went. This tribe was splintering, fading, and falling apart, and my plan was to take her away from here and leave at sunrise before leaving turned difficult.
I sat beside a blazing fire, drawing the same face that had always haunted me. Full, youthful lips that were familiar to me. Feline eyes I’d become intimate with. Every empty space was filled with delicate jawlines, lashes, and cheekbones I’d never touched yet somehow known—a collection of a girl who lived in my mind and my mind alone.
I would often find myself stuck in the details, overcritical of my drawing because no matter how many times I drew the face, something was amiss.
A freckle. A dimple. A wrinkle.
Her face was too perfect for the likes of a monster.
Around me, elderly men smoked tobacco from wooden pipes as I waited for the English settler to exit my hogan. It was what nighttime was for, Mother had once said, in fear of shaming the sun. If one were to fuck during the day, it would give the impression I love thee more than the light of the sun, and the sun was supposed to come before all. In this tribe, however, Chief Etu and his brother, Bly, were revered as gods.
I had thought about asking Chayton to come with us. He hadn’t spoken to me since that night, but if he let me, I could teach him how to hunt, read, and speak other languages, among other things. I could protect him from his tyrannical father until he could learn to protect himself. In return, he could be my brother.
I had brought the idea to Mother, but she was against the idea.
“A boy stays with his tribe,” she had said.
“Then I should find a tribe to belong to as well.”
“You do not belong to a tribe, my son. You belong to the trees. You belong to the earth. You do not need anything more.”
The flames licked my ankles, and I wondered what it would feel like if I lay upon the fire. If it burned me up until I turned to soot and absorbed into the earth—the place she had said I belonged. It seemed like an eternal paradise for a monster. A coffin made of sticks and stones for broken souls, allowing the elements to take me. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
It was the first time I thought about disappearing.
Perhaps here was where hope was born, a dreamt-up reason to go on when all the real reasons were gone.
All I had left was the face I drew and the spiders, with their skittering legs like whispers speaking to me in a way that said to hold on and that the time was almost here. So, I pulled back my leg, and a burn in the shape of a web blistered across my ankle bone.
Moments later, a distant scream floated upon the leaves, bolted across swaying branches, and stabbed the night surrounding me. I cocked my head to the sound, not surprised no one else heard it. Most were in their hogan for the night. The rest were naïve to what the earth was trying to tell them.
I walked to the hogan the sound had come from, leaves crunching beneath my moccasins on the far side of the land. A nightly summer wind ruffled a cloth curtain hanging from a carved-out window. My ears were filled with the pulse of my heart as I peered in.
A flame lit from a single wick glinted off William’s face.
He had a young, spirited woman on the dirt-covered floor. Both her wrists were bound by one of his hands, his other palm clasped forcefully against her mouth. Her clothes were torn, dirt stained her skin. Tears shot down her frightened eyes and sliced her cheeks as he forced himself onto her.
William managed to pry her legs open with his, and he jolted his hips forward until his manhood disappeared inside of her.
In a brutal instant, they were connected.
Two people joined in an act I’d only read about.
I’d never witnessed fucking. Most tribes I’d crossed hardly allowed anyone to speak of the act. We were told boys succumbed to urges; men controlled them. I’d been able to control them as well until this moment.
Not due to a lack of interest. I’d often wondered what it would have been like each time I drew the pair of eyes imprinted in my mind. But with every face I’d crossed, I’d never found the woman in my drawings. The one worth risking everything to speak to.
But the longing, the scene playing out before me, and the lust-filled appetite snaking inside me made my cock come alive in a way that it hadn’t before. I didn’t have to peer down to feel the tightening of my testicles, the stiffness of my manhood, the friction against my trousers. The desire to be connected with someone as well.
William held her down until all the color left her forearms. Then he plunged himself inside the girl again. I imagined it to be me inside my unknown girl, the one from my drawing, warm and connected. The monster and his masterpiece. Two people cracked open to let each other inside.
My hand slipped into my trousers, and I grabbed my cock, squeezing tightly and tugging it. Everything inside me felt heavy, as though I was drenched in a warm, comforting embrace.
The girl repeatedly cried for him to stop, but a grotesque grin stretched along William’s face. Perhaps this was the way it happened, I thought. Though was it always pleasurable for one yet painful for the other? No wonder most women were always reserved and didn’t engage in promiscuous behavior. This was why men, too, must learn control.
The young woman’s breasts bounced out of her torn clothing from the jerking movements. William grabbed one, and my head fell back to stare at the starry sky.
A buzz shot up my spine, wrapping its hot fingers around it. My body spasmed, one more iron-grip jerk, then hot semen filled the palm of my hand. The sensation was fleeting, but I felt peace, happiness. If only for a moment.
My shoulders sank. My entire body melted.
William’s harsh stare cut through the window’s opening, and our eyes locked. I ducked beneath and pressed my back against the hogan.
I shouldn’t have watched. The act was too intimate, only for the gods.
My breath came out sharp and loud.
Then a door slammed, shaking the exterior walls.
Seconds later, William was standing before me, peering down.
“What do we have here?” His harsh words echoed into the night. “Do you think you are a man? Do you consider yourself brave enough to endure a woman and fuck her? You will learn!” He towered over me, spit flying against my cheek as he launched forward and snatched my arm in his fist. He yanked me off the ground, but I pulled away from him and stumbled back.
“You cannot escape this,” he seethed. He was right. There was nowhere to flee, and nowhere to hide. If I resisted, it would only make the situation worse for me, disobeying Chief Etu’s sworn ally. So, we stared at one another until William’s laughter chilled my core. “I will take you to Chief Etu. It’s time for your Rite of Passage.”
Words clung to my throat, but nothing would come.
Don’t speak, don’t say a word, Mother reminded me from within, a chant inside my head as I followed William across the land toward the fire.
The commotion pulled tribal members from their hogans. One by one, they gathered while flames from the fire painted a glow across their questionable expressions.
Chief Etu broke through the crowd, with Bly following close behind.
“William?” he called, but the Chief’s dark eyes were on me. Chatter and hushed words scattered the land, and Chief Etu held up a palm to quiet them.
Mother emerged from our hogan, wrapping a cloth around her sweaty body. “Stone!” she cried. “What happened? Chief Etu, please! What are you doing with my son?”
“All this time, our assumptions have been correct. You have a monster living among you!” William shouted, and the people I’d been walking with every day exchanged glances. “A disgusting, wretched wendigo. You cannot trust him with your women. I saw it with my own eyes. Only moments ago with Dezba.”
Tribal members gasped.
“My daughter?” Bly shouted in his native tongue, his jowls shaking.
Scowling faces turned to me with spears and arrows in their eyes. A tell that what I had done was damning.
I’d imagined my Rite of Passage by circumcision many times. Becoming a man and a part of a tribe was always something I desired. I knew it would be painful, I had witnessed many circumcisions before me when other boys had become men, but this was not how it was supposed to be done.
Fear catapulted inside me. I looked at the ground. It was all I could do.
The string of events happened too quickly. I was snatched up off my feet, and the grain sack’s thick twine was pulled tight around my neck and hooked to a tree. I hung there with my sack cutting into my flesh, unable to breathe. The toes of my shoes scraped dead leaves, trying to find ground as I clawed at the twine for air.
Bly pulled a knife from his leather sheath.
Mother’s sharp cry echoed off the branches.
Hot flames reflected off the dagger when he hovered it over the fire. My trousers were yanked down, and linen piled around my ankles. Then he waved the sharp dagger in front of me, causing my body to freeze in fear. A cool summer breeze made my skin shiver, but I hung deathly still in the cold.
It happened instantly. Fast. A swipe of his hand, a slice across my flesh.
Warm blood sprayed the inside of my legs as he slashed my thighs.
The burn was intense and paralyzing.
It engulfed me like a massive hot flame.
He slashed me again and again and I prayed for the twine around my neck to kill me faster, but it didn’t.
I prayed for the shock of the pain to numb me, but it didn’t. So, when he was done with my thighs, he moved to my cock, and I felt everything. A soul-slicing burn. I bit back a cry, piercing my bottom lip with my teeth.
Holding back my cry was easy when there was no breath in my lungs. No air.
It had all been stripped from me.
Hot, rich blood pooled in my mouth and dribbled down my neck.
Hot, thick blood slid down my thighs. Tears slipped from my eyes.
I was weeping from everywhere.
It was the first time I remembered crying. I let the tears go because no one could see them beneath my mask. The pain was excruciating, but I still understood they could never see them. I may not be deserving of anything, but only the Sun and Moon were worthy of my suffering.
Mother screamed out in horror.
I never made a sound. I did not bless Bly, William, or even Chief Etu with the sick satisfaction of my agony.
William’s laugh was grating and echoing and carried on forever when the next slice came. One that caused me to fade from the pain, and if I were standing, I would have stumbled away from it. But I was hanging.
I fought through it. I didn’t have a choice. I forced my eyes open and my conscience to stay awake because if I faded, it meant I was not strong enough.
William bellowed. A loud and full laugh. “Stone, a monster with a name that does not make a sound.” I heard him, but the voice was muffled, coming from behind the pain. The earth was spinning, failing me.
Mockery ensued, then, “Get on your knees, wendigo.”
A knife cut through the rope in one swipe, nipping my neck.
I was freed from the tree.
My legs buckled as I collapsed, my knees hitting dirt.
Kneeling at his feet, I gasped for air. A dry heave that never seemed enough. Oxygen clawed the walls of my hoarse throat, scratching down with hesitance.
I heard Mother’s cries. They’d come from far away, from another time, a forgotten place, where things were no longer the same. I heard her, but I could not look at her. I could not face the horror mixed with the shame she had for me.
“Do you pray to a sun that isn’t here to protect you?” Bly shouted into the night. “Or do you pray to me?”
“Enough!” Chief Etu shot a disapproving glance at his brother, but I already felt myself changing from the rage, torment, and humiliation flooding inside me.
I felt it as I understood it. Was I so desperate to become a part of them that I was blinded by their thirst for power?
My head lowered, and I gazed at the ugly thing hanging between my legs. Blood mangled flesh. My vision dimmed, the pain taking me in waves. It was summer, but I was freezing. My entire body was trembling in the aftermath.
Bly grabbed my covered jaw and lifted my head.
I looked into his eyes. I looked deep into them.
“Pray to me!” he demanded.
I swallowed a mouthful of blood. “Never.”
He fisted the grain sack, the very thing that had become a part of me, like an organ I could not survive without, like my beating heart. And once my heart was gone, I was nothing more than the monster they claimed me to be.
Above, the blue blood moon passed through a rare eclipse, lighting the sky in a crimson glow as though the night had popped a vein and was bleeding too.
With his fist full of my grain sack, I inhaled a rich breath and faced the eclipsed moon hanging in the night sky. I thought of the face my mind had created, desperate for comfort, for my fictional thing to hold me. On my knees, I didn’t look away from it, shutting out the rest of the world until it was only us two, my only friend and me, and I thought to myself, could she see me, too?
Don’t let me go, my mind whispered.
Then he ripped off the sack.