Nutria wiggle and twitch like a newly paralyzed man when they're shot in the water. They shake their long rat tail and if the shotgun tore their skin and fat enough they sink below the surface, where they're incredibly hard to find by an amateur. Alex was an amateur, but he still tried to find them. He took off his shoes and waded to the greasy patch of blood that marked where it had been shot and started feeling around under it with his feet. Unfortunately, the texture of Nutria's fur feels like the decayed grass underneath the slough to untrained toes, so Alex was unsuccessful in his endeavor.

" You gonna get yourself some hookworm if you keep on feelin' around in the pond for them that way".

" No man, my feet got a hard layer of skin that I've built up by walking barefoot that's impenetrable to all parasites, annelida or otherwise". Kendall leaned back and pretended to think of what Alex just said. He took a long hit of the spliff he was splitting with Alex and Alex's friend, Luke. He exhaled then passed the spliff to Luke, and said, incredulously

" Sounds like a load of bullshit to me". Alex shrugged then continued pawing the bottom of the slough with his feet. Luke handed the spliff back to Kendall. Kendall puffed and blew the smoke in Alex's direction. It was basically roached so he threw the remains on the ground. Luke started rolling another.

" Hey Luke, you a vet student, right?"

" I was".

" But you know a little bit 'bout parasites, right?"

" Yeah".

" Can you actually build up a layer of skin that can keep them out of you?" Luke licked the rolling paper then handed the spliff to Kendall.

" For you, sire". Kendall lit it, took two puffs, then passed it back to Luke.

" So, can you build up skin like that?" Luke puffed before he answered.

" I've never heard of that".

" Why don't you tell him to wear shoes, then?"

" Well, Alex is gonna Alex".

" And Alexing means not wearin' shoes and gettin' hookworm?" Luke laughed nervously.

" If that's what he wants to do, yeah. He's been like that since middle school".

" He don't listen to anybody?" Luke shrugged.

" He listens to Youtubers".

" No real people though?"

" Maybe one of his moms".

" Shit, everybody listens to their mama". Alex trotted over carrying the torn Nutria. Blood and rotting pieces of grass encased both his feet, and Kendall couldn't contain his look of disgust.

" You gotta wash your feet boy". Alex dropped the Nutria three feet from Kendall.

" Pathogens make you stronger. That's why I never get sick. Just ask Luke". Kendall chuckled and took two puffs of the spliff then handed it to Alex.

" Boy, you gotta be a professional fertilizer with the amount of shit you're spewing". Luke swallowed saliva that was embedded in his mouth.

" There's some truth to that. That's basically how vaccines work. They expose you to a little bit of the pathogen and your body learns how to fight it". Kendall shook his head.

" Ain't nuthin' either of you is gonna say that's gonna convince me that steppin' in shit and blood and mud is good for you". Alex smiled like a dog impersonating its master. He took long puffs and it was roached.

" Modern man has made himself weak by avoiding disease and grime and unpleasant situations". Kendall shook his head.

" Shit boy don't mean we're weak just mean we're smarter". Luke became very interested in the spliff he was rolling.

" Are we?"

" Sure".

" How?"

" Boy, no caveman ever made a computer".

" Have you?" Kendall smiled.

" Matter of fact I did".

" Really?"
" I made a gaming computer with my nephew. You can buy a kit and everythang". Alex sat down and Luke passed him the spliff to light.

" Well, that's just one example". The sun shone and the conversation drifted elsewhere, teetering on hostile on occasion but always straying back to amiable, sometimes even enjoyable. It was one of those fall days that used to be characterized as an Indian summer, when the leaves are falling but the sun is still warm in the afternoon and the residual heat of August and September is still in the river, almost making it swimmable. A sad nostalgia permeated everybody in the valley that day, for though it was warm and beautiful outside the days were shorter and the coastal storms were biding their time, and anyone who was not newborn knew such weather was short lived and soon all would be gray and leafless and desolate and cold.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

" They taste like turkey".

" I wouldn't eat that thing if you paid me $5,000 dollars".

" What about $6,000?"

" Still wouldn't eat it". Alex shrugged.

" Suit yourself. If you're too much of a coward to not eat perfectly good meat, nothing I'm going to say will convince you otherwise". Afternoon had come and the light refracting off the brown grass that lined the slough was pumpkin colored. Beneath Alex, Luke and Kendall a pile of four Nutria had sprung like Minerva from Jupiter's head. They were gruesome and made Kendall feel an old fashioned tragedy as he saw their claws curl and clutch the mud as rigor mortis came. Their black alien eyes were now filled with a dullness and a humanity that they had not possessed in life. Everything dies the same, Kendall thought to himself. He was angry at Alex not just for shooting the Nutria (truth be told, he didn't see the point of killing them, even if they were invasive. By his reckoning more would take their place and Alex killed them from his endowed senses of entitlement, nihilism, and boredom), but also from the sly insinuations that Alex had peppered him with throughout the day. Calling him a coward, calling him dumber than a caveman, other remarks that he felt were snide. Kendall had a low tolerance for insults.

" Just don't want a fuckin' tapeworm in my belly".

" It'd be the same as taking a diet pill. They put tapeworms in those".

" You hear yourself boy?" Alex wasn't a coward. That's what he told himself, anyway. Luke was.

" You guys want me to roll another? Alex, Kendall?" Kendall stood and looked down at Luke. In truth, he felt sorry for Luke, in much the same way he felt sorry for the Nutria. In his estimation, both were the undeserving victims of Alex. Luke's head flicked from Alex, to Kendall, Alex, to Kendall, and Kendall realized he probably looked the same way, twenty years ago. Watching his parents argue before the inevitable divorce occurred. Kendall hated being the cause of pain to the blameless.

" Nah, it's all good, man, I should probably mosey on back", Kendall winked at Luke

" Gotta call my momma". Kendall grabbed his backpack then climbed up the bank, almost slipping before the mud turned to grass.

" Y'all have fun now!" Then Luke and Alex were alone. Time passed awkwardly and it was like both were in middle school again, before life had become predictable, when every moment was charged and the stakes of a friendship rested on a single word.

" Remember when we found that deer skeleton, and tried to put it back together in your basement?"

" Yeah, there was, like, skin still stuck to it, and we used bleach, but then my dad came in and made us throw it out".

" No I don't think we threw it out".

" We didn't?"

" No, we soaked it in that tub of bleach for several days, kind of like that movie My Friend Dahmer".

" I never seen it".

" Oh it's pretty good, pretty good".

" I'm sure it is". The conversation strayed into the inevitable awkwardness of childhood friends who haven't seen each other in half a year. In truth, both had irreversibly changed, but neither could let go of the friendship. There was too much emotion from their childhood that had been chiseled into their consciousness and subconscious for them to not at least try to meet up, and reminisce, and talk. They each knew the other one better than any parent or girlfriend or fiance could ever hope to, even though Alex had completed his life stage of a highschool dropout and had now become a burned out twenty-five year old teetering on the edge of homelessness, and Luke had done extraordinary things out of the valley and was now on course to become a veterinarian. To Luke, Alex was the valley. All the contradictions, idiosyncrasies, meanness and surprising kindness that lived within it. He could never abandon him.

" Nah, I remember now. We soaked it outside for a few days then threw it away". Luke nodded.

" Oh, yeah, so we were both right then".

" Yeah". Silence descended.

" You think we can taxidermy these Nutria?" Luke smiled.

" I actually took a class on taxidermy!"

" Really?" They carried the Nutria (and the rest of their stuff) and walked to the patch of land that Alex lived on. Alex opened the gate and prevented a chicken from escaping with his foot. They pervaded the land and left their eggs scattered like mines along the French countryside. Alex's tent was in a separate fenced area, but occasionally a chicken (or chickens) found its way to Alex's private rectangle and left white shit stains on his rain fly. Within Alex's area were various works of modern art made from peacock feathers and shells and fir needles that surrounded his tent in a formation that Alex assumed pagans of yore used, although the archaeological evidence of this was scant. He set the Nutria down in the chicken's area and they pecked at the shotgun holes and added the fragments of the bullet into their gizzard in the same manner that their dinosaur ancestors would have if they survived. Alex went into his tent and brought out a large, rusty knife.

" Ok, I've watched a couple of videos on this, we start by cutting off the head, right?"

" Yeah". Alex brought the knife down on the Nutria's neck and started cutting it like a chef dicing onions. The blade was dull and even with the Nutria pressed against the stump it took five or six rotations before it finally fell.

" Oh, wait, shit, did you want to taxidermy it or did you just want its pelt?" Alex contemplated as much as he could after six shared spliffs.

" I guess I just wanted its pelt".

"Ok, cool. So, then carefully cut down its belly". Alex did so and irreversibly damaged the fur.

" No problem. Let me try". Luke was no more successful than Alex.

" Shiiit, remember when we tried to make that horror movie?"

" For spanish class?"

" Yeeeahh....you want a rip from the bong?" Luke felt some mild nausea when he pressed his lips to the stem and noticed that Alex hadn't changed the water for at least a week. He was, however, too polite to decline any drug offered to him.

" You want to make a horror movie now? Luke's smile was polite but it could barely hide his desire to do anything besides make a horror movie when he was this high.

" Yeah, I do".

"You have a script?".

" Shit, dude, we could just shoot the opening scene, with the Nutria".

" With the Nutria?"

" Yeah, we could put all their heads on pikes, and have me just standing next to them, looking at the camera, with the knife slipping from my hand. It'd be like Apocalypse Now".

" Man, where do you get all these weird movies from?"

" Public library".

"Hmmm". One by one Alex decapitated the Nutria, and Luke's eyes had trouble focusing on the heads, and he began thinking of how inhuman Alex had to be to kill Nutria and use them as props for a film that would never be, and how Alex's tone was always insincere, and how maybe he only felt that way from the last bong rip. Luke had been a vegetarian at one point, but more for health reasons than ethical ones. He had also been cruel to animals on occasion, especially in Alaska when he raced the Iditarod. He was never cruel to his dogs, but let them be cruel to hares and other rodents they found in that unforgiving climate (although he had done it in the warmest year on record). He supposed that Alex was like one of his dogs; incapable of comprehending his own actions. In that way he reckoned he was worse than Alex, since he was aware of the cruelty of meat and death yet still participated in it.

" Okay, let me get my camera". Alex left the enclosure and trotted to the house and left Luke alone with the chickens and dead Nutria. Luke began tearing up. He saw Alex return and put on the most convincing smile that he could manage.

" They'd look real good on those pikes". Alex picked up the rudimentary spears he had been whiddling for the past month and placed the heads on them in a morbid imitation of Vlad the Impaler.

" Okay, you press this button to start it". Through the camera lens Alex didn't look menacing at all. He looked like a child, surrounded by spears with vague shapes on them and chickens pecking on the ground. When he let the knife slip from his hand in a way that he thought looked intimidating Luke almost laughed.

" How was that?" When Alex watched the footage Luke watched Alex's face change and react to what he saw and Luke saw him as he used to be and as he was now; scared that he would never be anything, pretending that he would be, hyper aware of his own mediocrity but too mediocre to change it.

"It's good, it's, real good". Time passed and the sun was setting.

" Hey Alex, I'll need to head home, but it was great catching up with you".

" Yeah, it was. How long you in town for?"

" I'll be here for awhile, I just need to secure some funding for vet school".

" Okay-I'll give you a call soon".

" Yeah". When Alex was alone in his tent that night he almost cried. He knew Luke thought him a failure, and Luke was one of the only people he respected the opinion of. That's how he justified his tears. If Alex was honest with himself, he would know he respected and was hypersensitive to the opinion of everyone, which was why he slept in a tent, which was why he raised chickens, which was why he superglued peacock feathers and crawdad exoskeletons to plywood, which was why he was as weird and contradictory as possible, because if everyone thinks you're weird and subtly tells you you're weird then you know the opinion of everyone. He watched Youtube and eventually fell asleep. When he got up to relieve his bladder at two a.m. he was startled by the heads of the Nutria. The bland look present in their beady eyes.