She had wings that sprouted out of her back, dripping a sticky mucous-like substance, and two antennae that curved upwards from her temples. Otherwise she looked like a regular girl. She leaned against the old horse fence, her arm hanging over the side. “You never read Proust?” she asked me. “No,” I said. “Never had the time to learn to read yet.”

She regarded me, her antennae pulsing slightly. “What do you do then, go to movies?” she asked. “Naw,” I said. “I feed the pigs and horses and then go fishin’.” I looked out across the fields toward wall of trees that hid the creek.

“Show me where you go fishing,” she said. We walked across the field, the wind blowing the grasses in waves. She stretched out her wings as she walked- the sun shone through them and I could see the veins.

When we reached the little bridge where I’d sit to fish she had me describe the whole process from start to finish. “Then you whack their heads to kill ‘em and string ‘em up so you can carry them over your shoulder,” I told her. She seemed suitably impressed. Then she took hold of my face and the antennae touched my temples.

When I woke up it was dark and I lay naked in the mud down by the stream. My temples hurt to the touch like they’d been burned. I got up and rinsed some of the mud off in the moonlight, the stream babbling away. I looked around but my clothes were gone or lost somewhere in the dark. I shivered a little in the cold as I crossed the bridge, hugging myself as I walked up the path to the field.

With the moonlight the field was light as day. I crossed back towards the barn, breaking into a run. When I got there I lit a kerosene lamp and wrapped up in a wool blanket. I took the rifle off the wall, loaded it and laid it across my lap. Then I sat there, staring at the barn door, and waited to see if she’d come back.

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