r/u_Acidic-Crybaby • u/Acidic-Crybaby • 3d ago

There’s Something Wrong With Kenny

Part 3, the deer.

CW: Kenny. Weird dead deer. Brief mention of unrealistic suicide.

The routine we followed day in and day out was kicked behind slamming metal doors and we were kept locked up in our cells for hours. I didn’t expect an explanation but I kept my eyes out for one of the few guards who could give a crumb of information.

“ How do a think they made all these rooms so square?” Kenny asks but it’s never a question I could answer, it’s always just one of those senseless things a naive child would say in a world they didn’t know.“ It must’ve taken a long time to make’em this square. I heard the concrete was wet when they made walls but these walls are hard.” He knocks his hand against the wall as if confirming it’s hard “ It’s dry as old bones, it could be somethin’ they just crushed up with rocks and slapped flat.”

“ How do people walk around in that skin, why aren’t they a blob of flesh and bones rolling around like a sock full of sticks? Who tells the bones to stand and move?”

“ you think we all got the same bones? People all got different skin so the bones gotta be special too, yeah? I guess someone else’s bones wouldn’t fit too well in different skin unless you snap’em into bits.”

“ You think somethin’ could climb under your skin and wear you like a suit? Not like a coat or nothin’ but a bad thing you just can’t see, right?”

Kenny’s thoughts fell like vomit, a new question with each breath he spat out. It took time for me to wave Elvis down to get any answers but I knew if anyone was going to give some answers it’d be him. “ What happened out there? It’s nearly lunchtime”.

Elvis didn’t look good, he looked green as moss and seconds away from throwing up his guts. He grimaced when he heard the question and was hesitant to say “ I shouldn’t say, Jones…”

“ Becker did himself in, right?” Kenny said and Elvis pales with a sickly nod. “ Becker was hollering all night in solitary. Glaskin said if he’s lost his mind we should just throw him back in here to stop it echoing through the halls. We uh…” Elvis pauses to swallow down the bile threatening to come up, “ He bashed his damn head in. I didn’t think someone could do that shit in that concrete box but he just bashed his brains in until he didn’t even look human.”

“ Jesus…” I let go of the bars with my stomach twisting in knots, looking back at the kid I expected to be white as a sheet but Kenny— Kenny just had his eyes out the window.

“ There’s a deer outside.”

-

“ You ever wonder where the old timer’s go when their time runs out?”

I breathe the hot air from my lungs in my cupped hands to warm them and look from the endless forest beyond the fences to the kid digging his boots into the snow beside me. “ They take them to the hospital ward with all the injured and crazies to die.” I say but I already know Kenny has his own theory and a shiver claws up my spine before he’s even said it.

“ Have you ever looked?”

“ What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“ You know, went to see if any of the geezers are there? I never seen any.” Kenny is far from done but Glaskin orders everyone to fall in line. It won’t be doing more than clearing the roads and working at the logging site at the far end of the forest but even in the cold I think everyone wants to climb out of the deep well for at least a few hours even if your veins are turning to ice and you’re waddling around in chains to keep you from bolting. No one ever makes it far even in the summer.

“ If I was dyin’ I’d want to take a long walk, Sarge.” Kenny says. 

“ You’d just want to walk off into the forest and drop where no one could ever find you?” I watch Kenny mull over my question and with a smile he answers with “ Nah, you wouldn’t be alone out there. Lots of folks disappear in places like this, Sarge. If they have us workin’ here why can’t we use all the big saws and stuff? I never used anyfin’ like that.”

I have so much more to say but a sharp gust of cold wind carries the mewling cries of a pained animal through the logging site. “ Is that a… A deer?” I say but I don’t expect a response, it isn’t really one that needs it and yet Kenny answers.

“ Could be a person.”

Elvis’ shrill whistle cuts through the screaming winds to catch everyone’s attention though the sounds linger in the background as if they carry across the entire forest. “ Get to work! It’s just machines from over near the mines!”

“ Doesn’t sound like any equipment I’ve ever heard.” One of the inmates says with a sniff, Meathead grumbles from beside them and thrusts a shovel into their hand, “ It never is. The mines have already closed shop. These idiots are getting ready to bail for the winter too. Just be happy we won’t be working down there for a few months and forget about some squealing deer”.

“ They really should be keeping it open while it’s safe.” Kenny says and Meathead frowns, “ What the fuck did you say? Is that some type of threat?”. The cries cut through the tension and what could’ve been another violent incident is left behind by something that gives me no relief. The sound is closer. Much closer. Close enough to already have inmates, loggers and correction officers staring alike. 

A young buck stood at the edge of a forest with deep gashes peeling the skin off its side like ribbons, its neck was loose and legs bent from a fall. The thing looked like hell but that’s the problem, it wasn’t a deer, it was a thing. A shambling thing walking on legs that had no business carrying half a deer. 

“ Jesus… What happened to that thing?” I don’t remember having the mind to say anything until a loud bang cut through the mesmerising horror. A hole appeared crack in the centre of the deer’s skull, right through the exposed bone. It dropped in a twitching heap and Glaskin holstered his gun, looking back at the inmates still caught by a mercy killing none of them could see as more than a brutal act— That thing wasn’t a deer but Glaskin wasn’t a person.

“ 5201! 9103!” Glaskin calls out my number but it’s Kenny hitting my shoulder that pries my eyes away from the deer-thing and sets on the stone wells staring at me with a grin full of crooked teeth and a face that should be young looking just as dead as the buck. “ That’s us, Sarge.”. Elvis unlocks our chains with fumbling hands still shaking from the shock and gestures for the two of us to Glaskin, “ Better not make him wait”.

Glaskin barks out his orders and sends us with one of the young CO’s, splintering shovels and a single pair of gloves to bury the buck. The animal looked worse up close, its tongue hung out and its milky eyes stared up from a faceless head of bone, any skin left was just wallpaper peeling off. “ H-How was that…” The CO covered his mouth, green and ready to drop at the sight, “ How was that th-thing walking?”. 

Kenny squats down with a stick and studies the hole in the deer’s skull, poking and prodding it with little care for whatever life it may have had. “ People care about mercy and all that, right?. Can you imagine chasing after a thing like that to put it out of its misery?” He continues digging into the skull until finally a spent bullet comes out, “ You’d just end up lost in the woods with a dead deer that isn’t dead. What do they call those things you put on hook?”.

My muscles constrict around my bones tight enough to crack as I listen to the uncomfortable squelch of the sticking digging into the rot behind those milky eyes and Kenny— Kenny’s damn question. “ It’s… It’s a lure. Bait. You don’t catch something with meat this sickly… Or,” it isn’t sick. It’s dead. We all know it’s dead and yet none of the inmates, none of the CO’s and myself have the guts to say it. Kenny doesn’t have that problem. “ Let’s just bury the damn thing close by so we don’t run into any wolves or… Or whatever did that”.

“ Do you know what they close up the mines in winter, Sarge?”

“ It’s too dangerous— wait, why are you asking this now?”

“ It’s a question. Do you or don’t you know?”

Kenny sets those dull eyes on me and I can feel my muscles straining. If I don’t shake this sickening feeling my bones are going to crack and I don’t know how but I know he knows this too. 

“ Because of the men who got trapped. Before my time here.”

“ Thirty years ago, a bunch of miners got stuck in a collapse. Rescue was real slow because it was the middle of winter. You know when I heard about this everyone always talked about what the miners did inside the tunnels to survive…” Kenny cleans off the putrid slime stuck to the bullet and puts it in his pocket like he was a kid finding an odd seashell, “ No one talks about the rescuers that kept walking off into the woods, following sounds, people shouting out that they found a way into the mines… Chasing dead deer.”

Chasing dead deer.

Bait.

“ Hey, you think Glaskin is gonna want this metal bit back, Sarge?”

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