This is a short passage I wrote for my WRI241 (imaginative short fiction) class at Lane Community College in 2000. The assignment was to try to write something disgusting. I don't know that anyone else will find this too bad, but I find it extremely disgusting, and can hardly stand to read through it. I can't believe I wrote it! :(
Deer are always jumping the fences around here. Fences around gardens especially. They just don't let those human contraptions of metal and wood slow them down. This is usually pretty good for the deer. They go where they want, they eat our plants, they excite our dogs to a frenzy. What a life.
But sometimes things go wrong.
I was walking down an old trail, hardly ever used anymore because there are better trails now. However, being one who prefers the path less travelled, I was on the old trail. I don't know how long it'd been since someone had been down this way, but by the looks of things, I would guess a month or so.
I came up on it about halfway down the trail, midway between the two pumphouses which supply water for the house up the hill. It was hardly recognizable anymore; nature had had her way.
There were blackberry brambles all around, hiding the area from view unless you were standing right there. The brambles even hid the barbed wire fence in this place, which must have been the downfall of the graceful white-tail doe.
She was still, no longer struggling to free herself from the barbed wire which had captured her left hind leg. It had wrapped around her lower leg when she misjudged the height of her jump. She was young, not quite full grown. Dead.
Maggots were feasting on her eyes in the hot August sun. They crawled around slowly, devouring the black of her beautiful eyes. I could see the bone around the edges of the cavities. The flesh around her captured leg was shredded by the sharp barbs of the fence. I could tell that she had struggled for days, one leg caught and broken by the fence, her body hanging down the northern side. Her entire weight rested on that broken leg. She couldn't have reached the lush green grass inches beneath her head, she would have heard the beautiful sound of clear running water in the creek nearby as she dehydrated in the sun.
Her belly was swollen with rot. Bloated almost to bursting. Out of curiosity, I found a nearby stick and poked at it. It moved like Santa's hearty belly of jelly. I poked harder, shoving the stick into her side. Green and black guts spilled out as her flesh gave way and released her insides. A putrid smell was released as well. A smell similar, but different, to the smell of a sheep who becomes water logged in a deep ditch and slowly rots for months on end.
Feeling good about the path I'd taken, the one less travelled, and finding this fascinating new thing, I decided to escape the stench and return to my walk through nature.