Maneater
“The winter’s thawing, isn’t it? That’s how you two found her.”
Taissa says this while leaning against the outer plane. The fact that she can lean against the plane at all without being too cold is proof of the thaw.
Everyone looks at Lottie, as though Lottie is a weather forecaster. In fairness, she was once told that she has the looks for it.
She opens her mouth to tell them that she doesn’t know, but is beaten to it by Misty.
“Yes, obviously it’s thawing,” Mistry proclaims, bobbing down and sticking her finger in the snow. “You see this? This was up to my wrist three days ago.”
“How can you tell, you’re choosing how far to put your hand in,” Mari drones.
“I’m holding it parallel to the rough part of that tree!” Misty points to a tree that looks particularly sad. “It’s thawing!”
“You could’ve just shown us on the tree, and not on your hand,” Melissa sighs.
“It doesn’t matter how she showed us, what matters is that it’s thawing,” Taissa interrupts. “This is a huge problem.”
Gen says: “But…isn’t thawing a good thing? It’ll be warmer, and they’ll be more game -”
“We’re storing meat from two bodies in snow that’s about to melt,” Shauna says, giving Gen a pointed look. “Do you wanna see what happens when it gets warm enough to rot?”
This information settles into everyone. The thaw, although pleasant, presents a logistical problem in the form of meat that will soon be impossible to store. This creates panic. Although Nat and Travis can hunt, nobody wants to waste meat.
Van cuts through to ask: “Look! What should we do? We need to decide now, before it gets any warmer!”
The group is split between looking at two people. Lottie keeps her gaze carefully on Nat.
“We have a feast,” Natalie says. “We fill up on the bodies now, before the snow melts and they go rotten. If we overeat, it’ll keep us going until Travis and I can find some new game.”
“We need you at the camp, though,” Akilah says. “Travis should go hunting alone.”
“It’ll be less likely that you all eat if I go alone,” Travis says. He is morose as he says this, as he has been for a while. He hasn’t been the same since he was forced to eat the brother he just got back. Lottie notes this down.
Lottie’s visions were at their strongest this winter, before they were snatched away. She is concerned that the thawing of winter is the Wilderness setting a time limit. That once the snow goes, the chance at connection will be gone forever.
Shauna complains at length about having to prepare a feast for everyone, but she does do it. Van helps Mari hold the meat over the fire.
Lottie is certain. She needs to reconnect to the Wilderness, and for that, like for everything, she will need to make a sacrifice.
Gen brings Lottie’s share of the feast over.
A sacrifice…
“No, thank you,” Lottie says.
This garners the attention of the entire circle. One does not refuse food when starving.
“I’m not hungry,” Lottie tells them.
“How can you not be hungry?” Van asks in disbelief.
“Didn’t you hear what Nat said?” Taissa pushes Lottie. “We’re running out of time. We need to eat now.”
“We are running out of time,” Lottie confirms. “For me to make a sacrifice and reconnect with It.”
“Are you insane?” Nat asks flatly.
“No, I think that It wants me to do this. If I show that I’m willing to give up my fair share, it’ll reach back out. I know it will.”
“The meat’s already cooked,” Akilah says nervously. “You can’t change your mind.”
“If you’re not hungry now, we’ll hold some back for you,” Mari says decisively.
Lottie declines: “Eat my share. I’ve already made my decision.”
Nat stands up. “Lottie, we’re gonna have a private chat in the plane.”
The plane is dark. Creepy. Lottie feels that they have abandoned this plane, a bit. It should’ve been their temple from the start, the thing that brought them here, the proof that they weren’t always here.
Nat hisses: “What the hell are you doing?”
“What my heart tells me to.”
Nat explains like Lottie doesn’t already know: “We have to eat these bodies before the thaw. Once they’re gone, we don’t know how long it might take to find something else.”
“Exactly. I’m putting my trust in It.”
Nat shoves Lottie’s shoulder. “You’ll die, stupid! Either you starve, or one of the others sees that you’re an easy target.”
“Fine. If that’s what’s supposed to happen.”
“It’s not, Lot. You think that I should be the bigshot commander? I command you to eat your share of the feast. To eat any of the feast!”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You’re the one who put me in charge! You’re the one who made me make the decision to kill Coach! And now you won’t eat his body? Now you won’t listen to what I tell you to do?”
“I guess so.”
“Whatever you end up seeing won’t be visions, it’ll be hallucinations, because your body will be so fucked up that it can’t take it.”
“I disagree.”
“I say this with the utmost sincerity: you’re crazy,” Natalie announces. Lottie shakes her head.
“It’s not craziness. It’s faith. I have faith in the Wilderness even if it seems like It’s abandoned me. Especially then. Look: if it turns out I’m wrong about needing hunger, then It will send food. Everything will be fine.”
“And what if it isn’t real?” Natalie asks. Lottie stares her out.
Lottie needn’t worry. She has no doubt at all that It is real.
She does have a little, nagging doubt that It does not care if she starves to death.
Maybe she doesn’t care either.
At the campfire, where Shauna is carefully monitoring how many chunks of human meat each person takes, Akilah rises upon seeing Lottie and Nat return.
“We won’t it eat either,” Akilah says. Mari looks torn. This is because Mari is torn. See, she wants to show her devotion to Lottie, but she also doesn’t want to starve to death. It’s a tough decision. Akilah goes on: “We can’t let Lottie be the only one who doesn’t eat.”
“None of you aren’t eating!” Natalie commands. “This isn’t the time to make a statement, this is life or death. These people died for us! Don’t let their sacrifices be in vain!”
Mari comes to the silent conclusion that there is no way Lottie will encourage them all to starve with her. It’s simply a case of putting on an air of being willing to do so, to win loyalty points. This is why she says to Nat: “Oh yeah? And how are you going to make us eat?”
“You’re all being ridiculous,” Taissa puts in.
“And unfair!” Shauna cuts in. “I butchered bodies for you lot, and now you’re saying that you’re not gonna eat it?!”
“Feel free to eat my share, Shauna,” Lottie says. Shauna falls silent with the face of someone who really, really wants to eat someone else’s share. “You’ve more than earned it. But I can’t allow anyone else to copy me. This is something I have to do. Me and me alone.”
She sits back at the campfire and stares at the food she will not be eating. Coach’s body and Krystal’s body. Chunks piled together like this, it is impossible to tell which is which.
--
“Simone’s awake,” Taissa says when she’s strode back into the room. “And my job’s about to start, and I have two days to see my son or Simone’s parents won’t let me see him ever again, and I’ve got a shitload of questions to field about whether or not I ate people. So, that’s how my life is going. What have you two been talking about?”
“Lottie thinks we need to swear unyielding devotion to Shauna,” Van says. “So, just another day in the life of the Yellowjackets.”
Taissa looks doubtful. “And how is that going to help with the situation?”
“It might reward us,” Lottie offers.
Taissa doesn’t like this option. “It’s okay for you two, you’re off the grid. Some of us have whole states depending on us.”
“I’m off the grid because I thought something like this might happen,” Van explains. “And I kind of hate humanity.”
“I do have to wonder how my community will react,” Lottie admits. “I never shared with them that I’ve consumed the flesh of others, because I was hesitant how they might react.”
Van raises a brow, understanding her meaning where Tai doesn’t. “With disgust, or with the other extreme?”
Tai looks disgusted. “You think they’d get off on it?”
“I think they’d hear me talk about the completeness of it, and wonder whether they should do it,” Lottie says loudly. Her hands shrug helplessly. “Lots of my followers are very unwell when they arrive. I came to see what we were doing as a spiritual thing, as well as a necessary one. If they heard me talk about it, one of them might offer themselves up. So I kept it between me and my therapist.”
Van and Tai look disgusted. “You told your therapist?” “Are you crazy?”
Lottie lifts her chin: “A therapist is bound to confidentiality and this one was paid more than fairly for his expertise. If he’d gone to the press, his next stop would’ve been prison. I had to talk to someone.” Other than my own hallucinations. “None of you were there. The only one I had contact with was Travis, and he had his own struggles. In case you haven’t noticed, it isn’t me who’s caused the leak.”
The reminder that this is real, that this is happening, settles in each of them. It isn’t as bad as it could be – Akilah’s book doesn’t mention selected killings, doesn’t mention the cult, doesn’t mention hunting and trapping and slaughtering of their assistant coach. But it’s a slippery slope. People know they cannibalised. People will wonder why they didn’t just say so in the first place. People will look at them with disgust. Akilah might slip, might admit to more.
“I have to deal with this,” Taissa says. “The cannibalism cat is out of the bag, but I can run damage control. I have to run damage control, if I want any chance of winning the re-election when it comes up. I can’t believe this is happening now. Can you imagine a more hellish first week? Cannibal rumours confirmed, wife in a coma, links to cults, dead good friend!” She is getting a little hysterical. “It’s unbelievable.”
“At least you have years to sort it out?” Van offers.
“The whole world is gonna know my name,” Taissa groans. It’s obvious what she means. Her dream has become her nightmare. She needs support.
“Having a big platform can be used to your advantage,” Lottie tells her. “It might seem hard now, but you have a lot of power in this situation. You’re already in office. Use that.”
“What about the wife I almost got killed?” Taissa demands. Seems a little unfair, considering Lottie wasn’t even in contact with Tai when that happened, but she gets that Tai is stressed.
“Go see her. Talk to her. If she loves you, I’m sure she’ll forgive you.”
The way Van looks at Tai makes Lottie think that Van loves and forgives Tai. Good. What will be will be, but at least both routes for Taissa seem to hold love.
--
Lottie’s dress has been through the ringer. It used to be her favourite, worn for every restaurant trip and family picture.
It’s gotten caught at the bottom and now it’s unravelling. The dirt, while matching the flower theme, has changed the colour so much that it no longer suits her.
She is trying in vain to fix the bottom. If she loses this dress, that’s one less outfit to wear. She’s already had to dip into Laura Lee’s clothes, but they lost so much clothing when the house went up. The thaw will make it warmer, but Lottie has a dark feeling that the warmth won’t last forever.
She’s hungry. It’s been 24 hours since the food went on the feast. 48 hours since she’s eaten at all. Her body regrets not eating, but her mind doesn’t. She has to do this.
Taissa sits beside her. Lottie remembers meeting Taissa for the first time. It was a few years ago. It feels like a previous life.
Taissa reaches into her pocket and removes something gross. A chunk of saved human flesh.
“Look,” Tai sighs. “I promise, if you eat this, I’ll keep it between us.”
Lottie is genuinely, unbelievably, offended. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
Tai grimaces. “If you need everyone to see you sacrificing yourself, fine. If you want to eat a little less, that’s okay. But if you don’t eat anything and then we have a bad start to spring hunting, you will die. Do you understand that?”
“Of course I understand that! It wouldn’t be a proper expression of my devotion if there was no risk!”
“We can’t survive without you!” Tai shouts. She looks around, paranoid, before lowering her voice: “I get that you want to feel connected again, and I’ve gone through enough to believe that there are forces beyond us. But this shit? Starving yourself? Haven’t you been through enough? Haven’t we been through enough not to have to watch you do that?”
“What else am I supposed to do, Tai? I need Its guidance. What am I without it?”
“Our friend who we care about,” Tai says. “Isn’t that enough?”
You all cared about Javi, too.You were glad to see him safe. And then…
“I need to know why we’re here,” Lottie replies. “We still don’t know why the plane crashed. Why Krystal fell. How the old man died. I had the deepest connection to It. If I get that back, I can get answers.”
“Planes crash all the time, Krystal got lost in a blizzard, and the old man died of old age.”
“Don’t you want to know what your other self knows?” Lottie asks. Tai’s lips press.
“I don’t think I’m gonna learn what she is from you starving herself.”
Lottie hums. “I notice you’re using ‘she’, and not ‘it’. It sounds like you accept her as part of you.”
“Don’t change the topic from yourself,” Tai snaps. “Eat and we won’t have to worry about losing you.”
“I can’t,” Lottie tells her. Tai takes the longest breath ever.
“Okay. But you need to come to the team meeting. I have a proposal for everyone.”
The proposal is making huts to sleep in during warmer weather. She suggests beginning this process now, while they’re full from the feast, to make it easier for their later, potentially starving selves.
“What if we time it wrong?” Shauna asks. She is vehemently and vocally against this idea, for obvious reasons. “Don’t you remember what happened last time one of us slept outside in the cold?”
“Of course we remember,” Van retorts. “But it’s not practical to sleep in the plane forever. It stinks of farts, and if something like the shack happens, we’ll be trapped like rats. If we’re still here when next winter comes, we’ll move back into the plane.”
“The rest of you can’t think this is a good idea,” Shauna says, turning to the group. Guilty shifting.
“It would be nice to be more comfortable,” Mari says.
“And to have our own bedrooms,” Misty adds. Mari gives her a dark look.
“It’s how people survived before houses, right?” Akilah asks. No one seems sure if she is right, but everyone decides that she is.
Van and Tai want to share a hut. Shauna wants one to herself. Mari wants to be in with Lottie, as does Gen, as does Akilah.
Natalie decides they will begin by making six huts – most people will double up, and someone will get the single. They will do a draw to decide who gets the single. Those who don’t care to get a single can remove their names.
“I’d share with Jackie or my baby if I could,” Shauna snaps. The circle is tense. “I should get one to myself.”
“And I’d share with my brother or dad if I could,” Travis bites back. “Natalie said there’ll be a draw. So there’ll be a draw.”
--
“Any of you two get a really terrible cold when we first got out of there?” Van asks. She’s driving, because stressed Taissa’s stressed other self recently crashed a car, and Lottie can’t drive.
Tai says: “What happened to not wanting to casually reference it?”
“I’m not referencing it, I’m referring the aftermath of it. I got a stinker. My whole nose was blocked for two weeks. My sinuses hated me. One day, I coughed, and what looked like chewing gum came out of my throat. But it couldn’t have been chewing gum, so I don’t know what that shit was.”
“Hardened mucus,” Taissa informs Van. Van’s face makes Lottie think that it is a shame Van only watches TV, instead of being on it.
--
Lottie goes into the airplane toilet to meditate. It is the only way, in the current circumstances, for one to be ‘locked in’ somewhere.
She ends up curled around her stomach. This early in her sacrifice, and she’s already hungry. Things will only get worse from here. But it wouldn’t be sacrifice if it wasn’t hard, right?
She ends up making a hut with Travis. He is absent-mindedly staring at each stick. You’d think he was the one who hadn’t eaten.
“Are you alright?” Lottie asks, snapping him out of whatever daze he’s entered.
“Is that a serious question?” he retorts. It pains Lottie to see him hurting so much, but, well. Dead dad and brother. He doesn’t look completely out of the daze, actually. “I know a lot has happened, but Javi only just died. I’m not gonna get over it just like that.”
He puts a log on another with such force that it breaks.
“Talk to me,” Lottie says. “Let it out.”
He takes a deep breath, equally wanting to fight her help and give into it.
“He was my little brother,” he says, choice made. “I was supposed to look after him. And now he’s dead. He almost died the day he was born. I thought he was dead during the crash, I didn’t even look for him because I didn’t want to find his body. Why didn’t I let him sit next to me? Why did I mess up looking after him so bad that he ran away? Was it because he wasn’t with us those months that everyone thought he was disposable? I told him to look after her. Was she more important to me than he was? I don’t know. If I’d been there, I don’t know what choice I would’ve made. I should never have agreed to that card game. None of us should. We should’ve stepped in and said that it was wrong. And now, even if we’re found, I won’t even have a body to bring back to my mom. If we’re ever found. You have any wisdom to sort that out?”
The last words are sarcastic, but Lottie hears them for the plea that they are.
She’s been thinking about this. “We eat animals, but we don’t know their names. When we eat the people we know, we are respecting their lives. They had stories, and we aren’t blind to that.”
“You’re saying it’s good to cannibalise, now?”
“We don’t know how things were meant to play out. Maybe Javi was on borrowed time. Maybe he should’ve died when he disappeared, or in the crash, or when he was born. This way, you get to keep him. He’s inside you. He saved you.”
She holds her stomach. Travis looks alarmed. “Are you pregnant?”
“What?”
“You look – you’re holding your stomach – is that what you meant by sacrifice, you’re starving yourself to get rid of it -”
“My body’s had sad attempts at periods since we slept together,” Lottie interrupts. It’s true. “And since we started eating again. Don’t worry. My sacrifice is only mine.”
“Oh.” Is it her imagination, or does he look disappointed? “You’re hungry, huh?”
“It’ll be worth it.”
“We’re gonna go hunting again as soon as these huts are built. I’ll go tomorrow. You’ll be okay.”
“I know,” Lottie says.
“I think Nat should’ve gone today, but they wouldn’t let her, since she’s the leader. And they wanted me here to lift logs.”
“It’s fine, Travis. Better to hunt when the thaw’s come in more. That way you won’t waste energy, and there’ll be a higher chance of catching something.”
“We will catch something,” Travis says. “It will send us something. I know It will.”
--
Outside of Shauna’s house is a gaggle of reporters. Lottie should have predicted this, but she mentally slaps herself for not coming up with a navigation gameplan.
At least one is a protestor, holding a sign which reads Tell the Truth on one side and The Truth Will Set You Free on the other. Lottie happens to agree with the latter, but she doesn’t see why lambasting the truth to the perverted public would be a necessary step.
She walks through as though nobody will know who she is, which hopefully they don’t. She hasn’t been in the public in a long time, and the pictures of her were all blurry, so there’s no way –
“Charlotte Matthews?” a voice says. Detective Fawkes. What is she doing here?
That gets the reporters excited. Lottie forces a smile. “Excuse me.”
It’s Callie who opens the door. Lottie now has reporters behind her. The sacrifices she makes for It…
“I’d like to come in before I’m mobbed to death,” Lottie tells Callie, stepping inside. She accurately trusts that Callie will close the door behind her.
“Mom!” Callie Sadecki calls, face looking just like Jackie Taylor’s once did before she left to sleep outside. “Mom, the crazy one is here!”
“We try not to call people crazy,” Lottie chides.
Dashing footsteps clatter down the stairs.
“You’re the one who ran a cult,” Callie says. Her expression is just like the one Shauna makes. “How is that going for you?”
“It only looks like a cult to those who don’t know what community looks like. Which says more about you than its members. Where’s Shauna?”
“Right here,” Shauna says, dashing in and putting herself between Lottie and Callie. “You, out!”
Lottie is slightly bored by this reaction. “If I thought you’d be happy to make a scene in front of reporters, I would.”
“Did you talk to them?” Shauna accuses, like she’s sure the answer is yes. “Pull an ‘Akilah’? You’ve already broken our promise to make sure no more of us died, what’s one more broken promise?”
“The only words I said to them were ‘excuse me’. Was that too much for you?”
“What is she doing here?” Callie asks Shauna.
“How should I know?” Shauna snaps back. “Why did you let her in?”
“You told me to let in any of the Yellowjackets!”
“That didn’t mean Lottie! It meant Tai or Van! While we’re on the topic, no Misty, either.”
“I was only just with Tai and Van,” Lottie informs, looking around the house. It’s a nice house. Cosy. It doesn’t feel very ‘Shauna’, though. “They send their love. They wanted to come, but, well, lots going on in Tai’s personal life. I’m guessing you’ve had other visitors?”
“Other attempted visitors, yeah,” Shauna answers, taking a second out of hating Lottie to hate Akilah. “We’ve had reporters, we’ve had Detective Fork or whatever her name is, we’ve had Mari’s nieces. Mari’s nieces never even met Mari, but they wanna know if Akilah is telling the truth.”
“And what did you tell them?”
“To fuck off,” Shauna announces, before taking Callie’s hand and shepherding her through the kitchen door. She closes it behind them. Lottie stands alone in the entrance hall.
So dramatic.
“I’m not going anywhere, Shauna,” Lottie says through the door. “Might as well let me in so we can work through things sooner.”
“I would’ve burned this house down before letting you set foot inside it,” Shauna returns. “Can’t you just go away?”
“We need to talk.”
Callie and Shauna have a whispered conversation that is hard to keep track of. Shauna has put a chair behind the door, it scraped. Lottie is fairly sure the layout of the house would allow her to enter this kitchen from the other direction, but it’s the principal of the thing. She’s learned from dealing with difficult new followers: let them guide the confrontation. Don’t insert yourself unnecessarily.
Lottie quickly gets bored on not inserting herself unnecessarily. Shauna isn’t a new follower, she’s an old begrudging co-operator.
So Lottie comes through the kitchen the other way. Shauna is holding a knife at her. Callie looks more embarrassed at her mother’s reactions than any child of a cannibal should.
“I brought you a gift,” Lottie says, pulling it out of her bag. “It’s a scented candle. Honeysuckle. It’s not the most advanced scent, but for a beginner, it can work wonders.”
“A beginner of what?” Callie asks. Seems the bitchy teen girl stereotype holds water.
“Spiritualist,” Lottie says, as Shauna says, “Psycho.”
Lottie gives her a disapproving look. “Shauna. Don’t distance yourself so hard.” She tries to communicate with her eyes: I’ve seen you act like a complete maniac. “We were all in that place together.”
That place, of course, carrying multiple meanings.
“Callie, go upstairs,” Shauna commands.
“But Mom -”
“Go! And go through this door. Move the chair.”
Callie goes. Lottie is pretty sure the footsteps of her heading upstairs are all on the bottom stair. Shauna is also sure of this.
“Go upstairs properly,” Shauna calls. A pause, and this time the footsteps move. “Now. As for you. You need to get out. At this point I don’t even care if the reporters see you. Let them uncover your stupid cult.”
All so dramatic. Lottie puts the candle on the island.
“You know why I’m here,” Lottie says. “You pulled the Queen of Hearts.”
Shauna’s knife doesn’t shake. “So you’re here to kill me, is that it? What happened to the Wilderness choosing?”
“It did chose you. Just not in the way that you think.”
Lottie steps closer. Shauna holds the knife out.
“Don’t come near me,” Shauna hisses. “Another step, I don’t give a shit, I will kill you even if It starts existing just to punish me!”
“Fine,” Lottie says, and gets on her knees and prostrates.
Shauna sounds thrown. “What are you doing?”
“Shauna Shipman,” Lottie says, then remembers, “Sadecki, I swear fealty to you as our new Antler Queen. I will follow whatever you choose.”