The Remedy

For my brother, Jackson. I never would’ve gotten this far without you
.

“Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.”

—
Albert Einstein

Dale Preston had always loved fire. But one couldn’t justly label his fascination as pyromania, since he’d never found any perverse pleasure in burning down what others had built. He simply enjoyed being near the sight and smell of blazing wood, losing himself as he stared into the hypnotic dance of the tangled flames. He did this now, guzzling his third beer while sitting at a campsite nestled in the woods of Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. Red Hogan, his hunting companion and brother-in-law, had yet to return. The guy was taking the longest piss in recorded history.

The combination of cheap beer and the campfire’s earthy smoke urged Dale’s mind to drift. As he stared unblinking into the yellowish orange center of the cinders, he reminisced about his senior year of high school, and the night he got to second base with Cindy Burnett, the hottest piece of ass at Embry High. Dale made his move the night of the big bonfire, Halloween weekend. He squeezed the beer can in his hand, remembering how Cindy had gone braless that night, her nipples clearly visible through her white blouse as she perspired from the heat of the fire. When he followed her away from the bonfire into the surrounding woods and ripped away the buttons of her blouse with one aggressive pull, she’d immediately grabbed the back of his head and shoved his mouth to her breasts. His lips attached themselves to those silver dollar nipples and began furiously sucking.

She moaned…

Blam!

Dale’s lust-filled memory vaporized as a gunshot boomed from somewhere within the trees to his left Had Red stumbled upon a prize buck or was he just taking drunken pot shots at passing birds? Either way, the sudden noise had so badly startled Dale that he spilled half his can of beer.

“Ah, shit,” Dale muttered, brushing the liquid off his bright orange hunting vest. “What a waste.” He was referring both to his spilled beer and the memory-induced hard-on that he could do nothing about.

Dale could feel the beer soaking through to his camouflaged sweatshirt underneath, so he removed the vest and turned to grab a nearby rag to sop up the fluid.

And saw the black eyes of a white-tailed deer staring into his own a mere inch from his face.

“Gah!” Dale’s heart nearly beat itself to exhaustion from the stress of two scares back-to-back. But the fright instantly vanished when he noticed the limp tongue hanging from the deer’s open mouth, and realized that it was Red Hogan who held up the animal’s dead body.

“C’mon, Dale! Give us a kiss!” Red’s raspy laugh, the result of years and years of endless Marlboros, echoed through the tall spruce trees surrounding their campsite. The older man lifted up the deer’s hoof next to his scruffy, graying beard and waved it at Dale.

“Fuck you, Red.” Dale picked himself off the ground, fully aware of how close his right hand had just come to landing in the fire’s hot coals.

“Fuck me?” Red chuckled. “Wouldn’t you rather fuck this little beauty right here?”

Dale brushed the deer away. “Would you quit it with that shit? Bestiality may run in your family, but not mine.”

“Ah, what’s the matter?” Red taunted. “Is the crybaby jealous of my kill?”

“Yeah, right.” Dale poked at the fire, embarrassed that he’d been spooked and unable to meet Red’s eyes. “I bet that’ll be the only one you get all weekend. I’m surprised a fat ass like you even managed to sneak up on this one here!”

Red tied a rope around the buck’s rear feet. “You mean the same fat ass that just scared the panties off of you? Hell, I didn’t need to do any sneakin’ anyhow. There I was, drainin’ the lizard, when this sucker just came moseying along. All I had to do was unsling my rifle, and
bam
! Didn’t even put my dick away.”

While Red guffawed again at his own remark and then loudly belched, Dale rolled his eyes and reached for another piece of firewood. “Well, good for you, Red. But we’ll see who’s laughing when we compare bucks tomorr—
aah
!” Dale yelped yet again when a large bowie knife suddenly planted itself in the firewood he gripped, landing a mere centimeter from his thumb.

Dale turned to see Red aiming his hand like a pistol directly at the wood. “Bull’s eye!” he shouted. But before Dale could react to this most recent display of crass carelessness, Red spoke again. “I suppose if you somehow happen to kill
anything
tomorrow, we’ll see how it stacks up to this ten-point puppy.”

Red threw the rope over a nearby tree branch and hoisted the deer’s carcass into the air. After positioning a large metal bucket under the dangling corpse, he pointed to the knife.

“In the meantime, why don’t you make yourself useful and go clean that blade in the lake. You didn’t get to see me take down this buck, but I can at least show you how a real hunter guts one.”

Smirking, Dale yanked the blade from the wood. “Didn’t realize I was in the presence of a
real
hunter.”

Red’s condescending grin finally dropped for the first time since returning to the campsite. He paused, struggling with the right words to retort, but after a moment of his face twitching he simply blurted out, “Get moving!”

Dale resented the idea of taking orders from Red, a man he had never cared for, even though the man had been married to Dale’s sister for many years now. It wasn’t easy walking away from the incessantly annoying redneck while conveniently gripping the handle of a large knife, but Dale knew he’d never actually let himself get to such a point. He would continue to put up with Red’s bullshit for as long as it made his sister, Cathy, happy. That was the only reason he always agreed to go on these trips in the first place: Cathy was the only family he had left and he felt he owed it to her. He had no idea what she saw in the over-the-hill asshole, but as far as Dale could tell, Red treated her well enough.

But if Dale ever found Cathy with a shiner…

He tightened his grip on the knife.
Well
, he thought,
let’s just hope it never comes to that
.

The heavy brush soon gave way and the lake came into view. Neither Dale nor Red knew the name of this particular lagoon, but it seemed like the perfect place to pitch a tent. A quick dip and a pot full of crystal-clear cooking water was just a short walk away, with enough available space to get away from highly irritating company.

Dale squatted at the water’s edge and dunked the blade under the surface. He retrieved a bandana from his back pocket and wiped the dirt and grime away, whistling an improvised tune. Red had managed to get under his skin back there, but in the face of the total serenity offered by this new lakeside view, Dale felt his mood improving. The perfectly still, glasslike surface of the lake reflected the surrounding mountains just like the photography of Ansel Adams, but in color.

Chuckling, Dale stared out onto the lake and the reflected greenery.
And here we’re going to make a happy little tree…

Splash!

To Dale’s left, the surface rippled with the flash of a fish’s tail. Dale twitched in surprise, the spasm jerking the knife’s point into his hand that held the bandana.

“Ow!” Dale yanked his hand up and saw he’d cut a tiny, triangle-shaped wound on the tip of his thumb. “Goddammit,” he whispered, shaking his hand and sucking the cut. He put aside the knife to clean his wound and dunked his entire hand into the cold lake.

Tiny ribbons of blood expanded and trailed off in the clear water. Dale hoped the bleeding would stop before he returned to the campsite—the last thing he wanted was to give Red another reason to give him shit. He looked down and sighed with relief when he saw the blood flow slowing.

But he stopped mid-sigh when he realized that despite the ice-cold temperature of the lake, his thumb burned as if it was on fire.

Dale jerked his thumb from the water. At first glance, it appeared that a scab had somehow
already
formed over the incision. But upon further inspection, Dale could see that it was something else. The triangle-shaped cut was covered with a thick, green coat of fuzz that prevented any further blood loss. The skin bordering the wound had also taken on a green tint, a strange discoloration that didn’t at all resemble the usual pinkish hue of a skin infection.

“What the fuck?” Dale mumbled, staring in disbelief as the fuzz continued to spread down to his knuckle. His thumb simultaneously itched and burned, reminding him of the few times in his life he had contracted poison ivy. This had to be something similar—some allergenic plant-life in the water, or perhaps a weed growing on the bottom of the lake.

Dale desperately wanted to scratch at the fuzzy green inflammation that was now engulfing his thumb, but he knew that scratching only spread infection. Not like this stuff needed any help with that. It was like watching shag carpeting knit itself—thick green fibrous strands that no one would want on their living room floor, let alone the back of their hand. But that was exactly where this fungus was heading as it continued to feast on his flesh.

Dale grabbed the knife and hurriedly made his way back through the trees. He’d have to call off the trip if this rash from hell didn’t stop spreading. Red would be pissed for sure, but he’d get over it. Besides, he had already nabbed that trophy buck. Dale would be the one going home empty-handed, but at this point he really didn’t care—he was more concerned with having hands. He could already picture the doctor’s blank expression as he delivered the news with professional apathy.

I’m sorry, Mr. Preston. Our only option is amputation
.

Dale stumbled into camp, stopping in his tracks when he saw Red standing a few paces from the campsite’s perimeter, his rifle aimed at an unknown target.

“Must be my lucky day,” Red whispered. “Dale is gonna shit himself when he sees you.”

God, don’t tell me he’s spotted another one
.

Dale took a soft step forward and pulled apart the branches impeding his vision. He gasped.

The head of a black bear stuck up from behind some thick blackberry bushes. It stared at Red, but didn’t move.

Red breathed deeply, steadying his aim as he stared down the rifle’s scope.
He must be shitting bricks
, Dale thought as his eyes darted back and forth between the bear and Red.
Well, if he pulls this one off, it should help when he hears the bad news that we have to go home
. Remembering his thumb again, Dale looked back down to discover that the fungus had yet to cease its crusade across his flesh. It might’ve been his imagination, but Dale swore he could feel the fungus growing
underneath
his skin now.

He glanced up again at the sound of Red’s voice saying “Good-bye, Smokey,” to see him grinning like an idiot as he prepared to take the shot. Dale silently urged him to hurry up and do it already; his legs were beginning to cramp from crouching behind this bush. And that was the least of his problems.