The woman found a little sneaker among the bloody remains. She had been roused to waking by the clipped off cry of a hoot owl. “Who cooks for you who cooks for you all-whooo.” Prior to that sound its cries formed a pleasant background to her dreaming. Seventeen seconds later the sun rose ushering a gentle wind through the woods toward the distant seashore. It being autumn, the summer’s teeming chorus of crickets, frogs and toads had fallen nearly silent and prior to the rush of air at the break of day, a single noise disturbed the peace; a sound made by the fauna. Percussive notes from a known inhabitant though one not indigenous to New Jersey, something quieter though more violent. The woman was vaguely aware of sounds whose source she dreamt yet unaware; the pop and crack of bones yielding to teeth, and the liquid pattering plop, plop of the ejaculation of a jet of blood from the neck of otherwise motionless felled prey. It soaked the woody foliage of the cove of Mountain Laurels that hid the scene forty yards from her bedroom window.

She lay fitfully trying to return to sleep for an hour or so, until the sun filled her bedroom. She rose dressed and brewed some coffee before descending the steps of her front porch. She strolled through the tigers that dozed in the tall grass of her yard. She walked along the dirt road that lead from her house through a field and into the woods. Before coming to the turn in the road that approached the gate that accessed her property from the County Highway she waded into the bushes that grew in the pine woods. Startled by the sudden unfolding of a Turkey Vulture’s wings as it took flight she tripped and toppled to the ground. She turned her ankle when her footfall landed unexpectedly upon what she assumed to be a stone. In anticipation of the pain that would be caused by putting her full weight upon her ankle she let herself fall. Before her eyes, now level with the object that tripped her, where her head rested upon the ground, next to where her coffee cup landed, she noticed a child’s empty sneaker glistening wet. The dark substance dried in places the color of rust of the turned oak leaves that littered the ground. She rose immediately and swiped at the wetness on the front of her dress. Not coffee, but a gluey liquid, rich smelling and viscous stained her skirt and hands. Blood.