Issue One
What Scares You?
October 2024
Not So Porous Borders
content warning - animal death
Hunter A Allund
Chulem’s over there on the Always Rock. It feels bad to leave such a cunning and brave raccoon on the side of it. He was always the first one to figure out the new locks on the cans the humans put their food in. And now, I guess, he’ll have to be put in one or the coyotes will sneak over and carefully drag him back, looking both left and right as they slink back under the bar that guards the Always Rock. I hope the coyotes get to him first. We’re not supposed to bring back any of us who die on it. The elders always tell us we leave them as a warning, but I know it’s because we can’t lose any more of us.
Hul is what we call milk, and Chulem is what we called my brother because of the white spot on his back paw. Like he stepped over a spill carefully with his front paws and got his tail all wet with carelessness. It was a family joke to pile on him with the other kits and try to gnaw the spot off.
That’s how I know it’s my brother I’m looking at.
original artwork -writer’s own
He told me he was going to scout out a new home. He said he knew the patterns of the things on the Always Rock, but I never noticed anything like that really. Except for when the metal carriers go slow and stop on the side and humans come out with water on their faces. Maybe they ride it, like how Chulem used to climb on my back when he was a little kit. He’d sit on me and I’d prance around like the humans do with horses. I guess they leave the carriers on the Always Rock too.
No one seems to know where it ends. There’s just that grassless distance about three grown trees long from our wood to the wood on the other side. There are more humans on our side every day. That means more food in the cans for us, but it always means less of us, eventually. That’s why Chulem wanted to get across. He said there aren’t humans over there.
I’m not like Chulem, I don’t see a pattern. And the carriers go too fast, even if I did see one. During the light, I’ve seen the carriers change course to hit other creatures who try to cross. They try to keep us from the other side, so there must be something there. The carriers come from both sides. But there’s an island in the middle with another guard that the carriers can’t go through—I’ve seen them try. Carriers also come from the other direction on the island’s other side. Have to remember that. Sometimes deer get across, but I never see them again to ask about the other side. Sometimes they never get there; in the middle of crossing, it seems as if a new light itself comes from the dark, totally off schedule. I think it’s the confusion that gets them. And they just fall there.
Like Chulem.
But sometimes even that part of them never makes it to the side and the carriers leave pawprints in them. It’s hard to know when the carriers run without the false light, so I wait for the dark.
The first time I try I become very scared, but I look over at Chulem for courage. I will do this for him. We need somewhere safe. I wait until the decoy light, a human light, can’t be seen from many trees away.
The dark is quiet. I take all of Chulem’s speed with me as my paws slap slap slap across the Always Rock onto the island. I'm halfway to crossing. I wait. The brightest false light I’ve ever seen almost tricks me into thinking I’m home, and I get so close to scurrying over to meet it. But I hold my tail until it’s time to cross, the same trick I always use to remember my plans. I look back over to Chulem. I want to clean him, he is so dirty now—he always found a way to be dirty, and I always clean him. It’s not time. Now is the time TO CROSS! My paws sound like fast water as they slap against the Always Rock, and it sounds like running still when I’m on the other side.
It’s not safe to wander in the dark in new places. I sniff around and find a creatureless tree to rest in, far away from the Always Rock and Chulem. The sounds of the carriers—giant squeaky bird noises and tall trees falling over—feel so close.
I wake up with the true light. This wood is the same as home, except it goes up and up a hill. I hold my tail, thinking. I will go to the tallest tree at the very top of the wood. I will find a new home.
The light is always busy at home, but the light in this wood is very quiet. No birds say hello or ask me why I’m out in the light like they normally do. No skittish groundhogs jiggle with hurry into their hole and flash their big silly teeth at me. They can live anywhere it seems, even with humans.
At the top of the hill I stand up and sniff, not wanting to climb up the wrong tree. The one I climb up is crunchy and very thick, like the home tree me and Chulem used to live in. I climb and climb—not wanting to look up, not wanting to look out—to the very top until there’s no more room for paws. I don’t want to disappoint Chulem, but it’s very hard for me to look. My eyes find the bottom of the valley and I’m glad none of my family is around to hear the sound I make.
The humans are here, too. My brother was wrong.
Hunter is an emerging writer living in Providence RI, where they are an MFA candidate in fiction at Brown University. Hunter lives with their partner and two cats, who have all been very patient recently with the paint drying in the sink.
