Aunt Claire & Remember

The first time I met Aunt Claire was when I was seventeen and she came to support us after my mother died.

My father and I came home from our camping trip, my father's attempt at a transition between our home with my mother and our new home without, to find her waiting on the front porch, a long smile on her face.

She didn't pretend to help us as we moved in.

She just spent the whole visit silently watching.

The entire time, she kept that smile that never shifted in the slightest.

But what stuck out the most to me, the thing my father always claimed he never noticed, was the sickeningly sweet and somewhat foul smell that clung to her clothes.

Or maybe it emitted from her flesh.

Either way, I recognized it easily from the night before.

I'd snuck away from our campsite after my father had fallen asleep.

I can't remember why.

Maybe I heard a sound.

But something had me walking through the woods until I found that bear's nest.

It was a hole dug in front of a boulder that was too shallow for the bear sleeping inside.

Black fur stuck out and caught in a bit of the light.

It was enchanting.

I was already halfway towards it when I noticed the rest.

Surrounding the boulder and me were half-eaten carcasses, deers, rabbits, and coyotes.

I had no idea that bears even ate those.

The decaying meat mingled with pale organs and stripped bones, forming a perfect circle.

I gagged.

I ran.

And the smell from that was what poured off of Aunt Claire.

Her visit lasted for two days.

I only knew her for forty-eight hours.

But that was enough to make it so that when the police showed up looking for her three years later, I wasn't surprised.