Clotted Copper - Robert Helfst

The Boy thought the Fox a good listener, its thin face peeking from heaps of snow all winter like a lonely lit match. Its eyes were clear and its fur was damp and it never took its glassy stare off him when he spoke. He never even saw it move. The Fox was always there, waiting for him to tromp through the snowed-in paths of the woods until he reached the deadfall opposite its den to sit and talk.

That was before the Boy’s chest was gripped by walking pneumonia, a wracking cough that shook his ribs like barn rafters in a storm. There were long days of fever and delirium, but the Boy knew the Fox would still be waiting once he got better.

Maybe it would even talk back.

He pictured it: his best friend, a shy and slinking creature that would open up into the capering rascal he knew foxes could be. He yearned to stroke its sides of silken fur. When he couldn’t sleep for the coughing, he gripped his bedsheets and imagined they were copper orange as he knew the Fox would be.

By the time he was well enough to be outside beyond his parents’ watchful eyes, the spring thaw had taken hold and green buds covered the woods. He hoped the Fox had not left the den and stepped quickly through muddy slush to make his way to the clearing. He held his breath as he stepped around the felled walnut tree, then exhaled.

The Fox was there. But something was wrong.

It lay on its side, eyes still glassy but clouded. Its copper fur was clotted with mud, hind legs splayed downward into a silent den. Its chest gaped, yellow-white bones shimmering with dew like an open mouth while purple and red spilled from it in ropes. He stared, transfixed by the fat mushroom discs like sunsets that grew between them.

He knew then that the Fox had been like this all along, that it could never have been a good listener. The Fox had been dead all winter – his confidante, his friend. He stared and wondered what could have done this to both of them.

***

Robert Helfst's written ravings have appeared or a forthcoming in Gamut Magazine, Chthonic Matter Quarterly, Come October: An Anthology of Autumnal Horror, BULL: Men’s Fiction, and elsewhere. He is the editor-in-chief of Fraidy Cat Press. Robert lives in Indianapolis with his wife and a menagerie of children, dogs, cats, and trees. You can find him at www.roberthelfst.com and on Blue Sky at roberthelfst.bsky.social.