The Fourteenth Sign

Martha lets her Great Pyrenees out, but regrets it and shouts for her dog to come back, but it's too late; Kumquat has already found it.

Lush overgrown green pushes through the fence at the farthest reaches of the acre lot that lays flush against the oaky woods. That's where Kumquat sniffs at it, and Martha shoos her away.

"Not again," she mutters.

Half a deer. Its body hangs slack over the fence as its head presses into the ground. Martha leans over the opposite side and notices its hind legs and midsection missing as flies buzz around, vibrating the air. The deer looks like it died mid-jump.

"It seems the hip thing to do nowadays," Greg calls out, her neighbor, "is to get high, run around naked, and eat deer."

"You saw what did it?"

"Not a what -- who."

"I don't understand," Martha says. "How could a person do that?"

"With what I could see from my spot lights last night, it looked like George's eldest."

"Simon? But he's in seminary," she says.

"Drugs make you do crazy things."