An Unsated Thirst

An Unsated Thirst

S.W. Campbell

Published by Shawn Campbell

Cover photograph taken by Mallory Anderson

An Unsated Thirst

Copyright © 2018 by Shawn Campbell

All rights reserved.  Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. 

ISBN: 978-0-9977105-8-8

To my friends, the ones who say what I need to hear rather than what I want to hear.

Preface

Within the pages of An Unsated Thirst are forty-one of my earliest written short stories and other writings, with the majority penned between August of 2010 and March of 2013.

I first started writing when I was a kid, the late childhood and awkward adolescent years, writing mostly fantasy stories filled with orcs and wizards and Star Wars fan fiction, which was exactly as good as you would imagine it to be.  It wasn’t really anything anybody would want to read, but I enjoyed it, so I filled a couple dozen spiral notebooks with a barely legible scrawl.  I grew up in the middle of nowhere, about a twenty-three mile drive from the nearest grocery store and a two hour drive from the nearest town of any significant size, so I had a lot of time by myself to think up stories.

I kept it up until I started high school, and then promptly abandoned it to unsuccessfully pursue hormonal urges and rather sad attempts at being cool.  What little writing I did do were rather sad attempts at poetry which I’m glad to say I burned upon turning twenty.  In college I had a short resurgence and the first hints that maybe writing was something I was actually good at.  After turning in a story called Golden Tears for my English 102 class, I was rather surprised when a friend in another class told me that my instructor had read it in front of them as an example of what a good short story should be.  The instructor never said a single thing about it to me, but it left me with the sense that this was something I could actually do, though not the want to actually do it.

Aside from a few essays, which though creative have no business being published, the only thing I wrote during this period of any merit was the basis of what became the story On Top Of The World.  I also wrote half of the epic history of the fantasy world I had created in my childhood in a fashion similar to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Silmarillion, but luckily for us all, it met its final fate with a single click on the word delete.  Such thoughts of writing died with it, and so ended what I thought of at the time as nothing more than a childhood fancy.

I didn’t really start writing again until the end of the summer of 2010, mostly because I was going through a bunch of crap revolving around a relationship gone bad, which looking back, now seems like a really bad cliché.  The writing at first was exactly what you’d expect to come from such a start, but over time it evolved into something other people would actually want to read.  Many of these early stories were nothing more than venting, which later led to several failed attempts to write a book, the remains of which make up most of the very short stories contained within this collection.

The first short story to be written independent from these beginnings was The Colonel in August of 2012, which was based on a conversation I had with a friend.  What followed was a veritable explosion of writing of both the independent and angst-ridden variety.  To be frank, it felt great to get things out of my mind and onto paper, by which I mean on a computer screen.  Since the writing of The Colonel I have written at least one short story a month up to the present day, and to date have written 182 stories.

I first started sending my short stories to literary reviews in early 2013, after my friend Adrianna, who somehow convinced me to let her read my stuff, talked me into it.  It started with just a few writing contests, but when I got back some really nice reviews, I decided that maybe I had some stuff worth getting out there so I jumped in whole hog.  I got my first acceptance for the story Doing What You Have To Do after thirty-eight rejections.  However, the accepting literary review soon after went out of business before it could be published. It took another 140 rejections before I got another story approved, The Heartbreaker (which is not in this collection), and actually published.  Though today I have close to 1,500 rejections under my belt, I also have fourteen stories published, including four presented in this collection.  In addition, I have self-published a full-length novel entitled The Uncanny Valley, and two bathroom books called Professor Errare Presents 45 Jerks And Counting and Professor Errare Presents 40 American Jackasses Worth Knowing.  While my writing certainly has not led to any riches, it has certainly been one hell of a ride.

They say that an author’s first stories are their most raw, which is something that I most certainly agree with.  Re-reading through many of these old stories I found myself cringing, not just at the quality of the writing, but also at the subjects chosen.  It took me quite some time to decide to include many of the stories presented here in An Unsated Thirst.  Angst is the word that comes to mind with several.  However, in the end I decided that they were all worth including.  I know that how many of them are viewed will be dependent upon the mood of the reader, with the emotion ranging from a feeling of connection to an over exaggerated eye roll.  But in the end, I hope that it’s remembered that even the most cringeworthy of the stories in this collection are ones with which we can all identify.  Though we try to forget such parts of our lives, they are an important part of the whole.  Hence their inclusion in this of what will be the first of many short story collections.

I hope you enjoy An Unsated Thirst as much as I have enjoyed writing and putting it together.  Some of the stories are biographical, some are fictional, and some are a combination of the two.  I’ll leave it to the reader to decide which is which.  However, for the sake of my parents, who have shown me nothing but love and support, I’ll state right now that the story Major Wilkins Comes Home has absolutely no basis in my own life.  Happy reading.

Angst

I have been told by some people that you do not understand why I am so upset and hurt over this whole thing.  I am upset because I fell in love and cared deeply for you, and you hurt me more than anybody has ever hurt me before.  I am upset because I gave up things I enjoyed to be with you, things that I cannot get back.  I am upset because you claim you want to be friends, but friends provide comfort while you only give me pain.  I am upset because you treat me like someone you only went on a couple of casual dates with, not someone who shared a lot of personal things with you and listened to many of your own very personal things.  I am upset because I should have walked away when the problems first began, but I loved you.

Most of all I am upset because I do not understand, and you do nothing to help me understand.  You will not talk with me, and only get mad if I bring it up. The start was like a dream, and at least to me, everything seemed to be going great.  At the time I would have done anything for you, and accepted you no matter what you may have told me, but then I left on my trip and without warning, silence.  

Upon my return I found out about what had happened at the campout.  You tried to break up, but let me talk you out of it.  But you never would tell me why, beyond saying you had anxiety.  It was like an excuse, never saying what you felt anxiety about.  What thoughts were pushing you into such a state.  I did everything I could think of to try and help you, but it is impossible to deal with a problem when you don’t even know what the problem is.  I’ve never talked to someone for so long, about so many things, without ever once talking about what needed to be talked about.

I was, and still am hurt and confused.  I could do nothing but watch as your silence filled me with anxiety and depression, eroding my self-confidence and light-heartedness until there was nothing left.  Watching as day by day you became less attracted to me, your silence destroying the things that you were originally attracted to, an attraction that once amazed me with its intensity.  Each day seeing the sadness in your eyes, and feeling the same in my own, knowing I could do nothing, waiting for you to talk.  Finally letting you push me away.  Hearing your excuses of anxiety and no longer being attracted to me, never learning how things had gone so wrong.  I would have accepted anything if it was explained to me, but was never given the chance.  Instead I was given silence, and contempt for needing more, for having emotions.

I am upset because you promised to try and instead used that time to make leaving me behind easier for you, only adding to my pain.  I am upset because I once believed you cared about me, but yet seem not to care how cruel your actions were.  I am hurt, and neither time nor people offer me any comfort.  I do not know what happened.  To me it is like a switch was flipped.  

You offer me no comfort, no closure, you do not help me understand.  You have made all my fears, fears that kept me from relationships in the past, come true.  I am upset, because you want me to move on, act like nothing ever happened between us, but give me no way to move on except hating you.  I am upset because I still care for you.  I did nothing wrong, but have been severely punished. I am in hell.

Doing What You Have To Do

The boy sits on the tailgate of the pickup, dangling his feet and kicking them back and forth, pretending the furtive motion pushes the machinery and metal forward on its slow journey up the road.  He sucks in a deep breath, feigning to take a drag from an imaginary cigarette, and blows out, his breath steaming forth through the frigid air.  A soft bump on the rough road jolts him slightly.  He clutches tighter to the precious cargo sitting on the tailgate next to him.  The feeling of it makes his skin crawl.  His hands feel dirty and he desperately wants to wash them.     

An old black angus cow walks behind, steam intermittently blasting from her nostrils.  The cow walks with her head low, her ears drooped, and her shoulders slumped.  When they found her in the pasture that morning she had been standing in the same spot for some time, refusing to move from her place of grief.  Even now she feels drawn back toward it.  She stops moving, and turns to look back up the road from which they had come.  The boy lets out a soft low, a plaintive cry that is carried by the wind.  The cow turns back and her body regains some of its old shape and stature.  She lets out a deeper copy of the boy’s call, a pitiful moo tinged with hope.  The boy lows again and the cow raises her head and trots to catch up, her oversized bag flopping between her legs, her great belly bouncing with each lumbering step.  The boy feels bad for tricking her.  

The pickup drives through a gate into a small pen.  The boy jumps from the tailgate to the ground slowly passing beneath his feet, and quickly steps aside to let the cow pass before moving back to close the gate.  He lifts the loose collection of three wooden posts held together by four strands of barb wire and stretches them across the pen’s entrance.  His small skinny arms strain beneath his coat as he struggles to loop a wire over the end post to secure the gate.  The wires groan and stretch, but not quite far enough.  The boy’s father gets out of the pickup and calmly walks back to his son at the gate.  He reaches over the top of the boy and helps push the post close enough to drop the loop of wire to over it.  He turns around and signals for the boy to follow.

The boy walks behind his father, his face red with shame and embarrassment, glad that his father is not looking back at him.  He is eleven now, he should be able to close the gate without help. His father steps beside the tailgate of the pickup, his face expressionless, and reaches for the precious cargo, grabbing it by one of its legs.  The boy rushes forward to help, grabbing the other leg. He has to prove that the gate was just a fluke.  His father gives him a look.  The boy knows his father does not want him to be there.  The boy ignores the look and together they pull the mass from the tailgate.  The dead calf falls to the hard cold earth.  Father and son drag it toward the nearby barn, its grieving mother following, mooing softly.

Calving season is one of the most beautiful and magical times on the ranch.  The baby calves are dropped unceremoniously into a strange new cold world which they explore with delight and wonder.  Despite all the new hardships of life outside the womb they frolic and play, delighting in just being alive.  The boy smiles at the thought of the calves playing, a yearly reminder of how special and miraculous life is.

But life can be cruel, and things can go wrong with neither rhyme or reason.  The calf they drag through the snow had once been just like all the others, full of life.  Now it lies dead, its body stiff and cold, its once shiny black coat matted, its tongue hanging from its jaw, its eyes staring without sight at the world around it.  Maybe the calf had become sick and they had failed to notice until it was too late.  Perhaps the calf had been born with something wrong with it, a genetic defect for which nothing could be done.  The boy hoped that it was the latter.  It was best not to contemplate the guilt of knowing that you had failed something that depended on you.  These things happen, there is little that can be done, but the boy knew his father would still blame himself for not doing enough.  

The pair deposit the dead calf on the dirt floor of the barn’s shadowy interior, the only light from the big doorway, and move away from the corpse.  The cow moves past them and stands over her lost offspring, sniffing at the thing that once was.  She lows softly and her grief crosses the divide of animal and man.  

Wait here, I’ll get the stuff and be right back.  

The boy’s father walks out of the barn and back to the pickup.  The boy waits, looking out at the steely clouds marching above the gray hills covered by the dark shapes of junipers and dirty white skiffs of snow hiding in shadows that the sun does not touch.   His eyes shift back to the dead calf and saddened mother.  The cow looks up at him and her eyes seem to communicate a desperate plea to make things better, a hope that in her ignorance she is mistaken, that things can be set right.  The boy looks away back out the barn door, watching the dust motes dance in the muted sunlight.

His father comes back with several lengths of baling twine. Together they grab the calf by its hind legs and drag it into a small side enclosure, shutting the gate behind them so the cow cannot follow.  She paces back and forth, unsure.  Both man and boy take off their warm cotton gloves and heavy overcoats, stripping down to the hay covered sweatshirts they wear underneath.  

The boy’s father pulls out a large pocket knife and opens it.  The blade does not gleam in the dim light from the barn doorway, it’s too old and worn, covered in rust and grime. He takes a rod of steel from his belt and rubs it along the knife’s edge, honing the blade, bringing back some of the old sharpness.  The boy pulls out his own knife, feeling the weight in his hand.  He opens the blade slowly, careful not to cut himself on the razor sharp edge.  It is bright and shiny, flashing in the soft light.  He holds the knife like the treasured item that it is, a Christmas present from only a few months ago.  

The boy’s father leans over the dead calf and with a quick thrust creates a hole in one hind leg between the tibia and fibula. The boy watches as his father puts the bloody knife on the ground and loops the twine several times through the hole.  A knot secures everything together.  The boy’s father stands and, reaching above his head, throws the twine over a low rafter.  The boy grabs onto the other end as it falls back to earth.  Together they pull the calf upward until it hangs completely off the ground at eye level.  The boy’s father holds the calf in place and the boy secures it with a few twists and knots around a nearby post, his hands moving slowly, nervous under the watchful eyes of the older man.   

The man picks up his knife and moves back to the calf, he looks at his son, and the boy can again feel that his father does not want him to be there, does not want him to witness what comes next.  With deft sure strokes of the blade he cuts the skin just below the knee of each hind leg.  He yanks downward on the loose skin, pulling it away from the muscle beneath, his knife cutting the sinew and tissue.  The boy moves forward to help. His father stops his work.

Be careful to not cut through the hide.  

The boy nods.  Together they slowly peel the skin from the dead calf's legs, a morbid fruit hanging in the barn.  Things feel dark and grotesque, a macabre scene.  The body of a young victim slowly mutilated as its worried mother stands on the other side of a gate.  The boy has helped skin and dress deer and elk before, but this somehow feels different.  There is none of the joy of the hunt in this moment, no elation in this desecration of the dead.  The boy tries to tell a joke he heard in school.  His voice sounds small, the words far away.  His father only grunts and points with his knife.  

Make sure you cut so the tail is attached to the skin.  It only works if you have the tail.  

The boy nods and the two continue working.  In his left hand the boy grips the hide, one side cold and covered in black hair, the other side warm and slick.  He pulls the hide downward, away from the body.  The boy’s right hand holds his knife, which separates the hide from the muscle and fat with slow slicing strokes, applying enough pressure to cut sinew, but not enough to cut through skin.  Naked, the calf is a yellowish white, streaked with the red of veins and exposed muscle.  It stands out starkly in the shadows of the barn.  Blood does not flow from the body.  It has been too long.  

The boy does not want to be here, he does not want to be part of this terrible spectacle.  He keeps his mind blank, his hands working automatically.  He does not want to think about what the thing he is skinning once was.  He does not want to