the killing of a sacred deer - carl grimes

EPILOGUE

The war ends on a grassy hill just as the sun is about to set.

Under a tree where painted church windows had been hung to dry and never retrieved, Rick slices the skin of her neck open with a broken piece of stained glass.

She falls to her knees before him, holding her hand over the wound. It is not deep enough to kill her instantly.

"Look what you did." She whispers as she bleeds. "Carl was wrong about you. I'll let him know, maybe I'll see him soon."

Then she lands amongst the weeds, choking. She accepts death happily, she makes no move to preserve herself.

Rick watches her a moment, he's about to turn away and leave her like that. But then it catches his eye: the way her shirt falls over her stomach.

He flashes back to many years before, when he and Lori were young. Too young. How her womb was just beginning to swell with their son.

And he knows.

Rick screams for the doctor.

Not to save her life, but his unborn grandchild's.

-

five years later

-

She doesn't get many visitors.

Half the people blame her for the war, for the people they lost. The other half used to be her men who betrayed her to continue their lives without consequences for their destructive actions. She gets that's why they made her leader. The title coincides with scapegoat. She's the only one in a cell for what happened.

Judith comes. Sometimes.

The little girl sits at the little caged window near the basement cell ceiling. She plays with the grass and tells the older girl about her day. About homework. About things that annoy her. About her younger siblings.

Lucy loves hearing about Judith's younger siblings. Especially Benjamin.

"Ben's birthday is today." Judith tells her. "He's five."

"I know." Lucy responds. "Is Ben having fun?" She likes saying his name. She says it to herself sometimes when she's alone, just to hear it.

"Yeah." Judith doesn't elaborate, her pencil taps the paper in thought. "What's twelve times eight?"

"You know this, Jude. Remember, break it down, two times eight, carry the one..."

Judith scratches this down. "...Ninety-six?"

Lucy nods. "So, did Ben get any presents?"

Judith shrugs. "Yeah, everyone got him something. Aunt Carol got him a new saddle for his horse, which is dumb. He's still too small to ride. We didn't tell Aunt Carol that, because it would have hurt her feelings. Mommy and Daddy say maybe by his next birthday he'll be big enough, though." Then her little eyebrows scrunch up. "Can I tell you something?"

"Of course."

"You know how Mommy isn't, like, my real mom?"

"You've mentioned it."

"My parents were talking the other night when they thought they were alone and... I heard Daddy say... Well, it was something about Ben's horse used to belong to his mom's. His real mom. I didn't know he had a real mom. I thought he was their real baby, like R.J.. They caught me listening and I was all crying and they said they adopted him as a baby. That his real mom was gone."