Normally, there was the sound of children playing and running about. They would greet him as soon as he opened the door. The smell of dinner would also be wafting out of the kitchen. But there was nothing to greet him when he came home today. No wives. No children. No food.
Worry settled over him and he tried to quickly finish his shower. Once he was dressed, he ran downstairs to investigate. As he rounded the corner to go into dark the kitchen, he suddenly kicked something. It was probably another one of the soccer balls the boys left out. A wet soccer ball too. Looks like Grizelda and Jane will have to do some extra cleaning tonight when he finds them. He found the light switch and turned on the light.
To his horror, the soccer ball was not a soccer ball at all. It was Jane's head. As well as blood smeared all over the kitchen. The rest of her body was nowhere to be found and the head looked as if it had been burnt. It also looked as if someone had chewed her head off with sharp and jagged teeth. On the table, however, there was a plate of food. He cautiously came closer and realized that the food was in the shape of little bears. They were not just any bears, though. They were two of his little boys.
He ran out of the kitchen while being overcome with shock, despair, disgust, and sadness. He drove straight to the police department and told them of what happened. They didn't believe him at first, but he brought them to his home. A couple of them ended up having to go outside to hurl.
The police confirmed that the body parts found were of his first wife and children. But they didn't know he had another wife and another pair of twins. He couldn't really tell them that because polygamy isn't really a thing these days. So while the police investigated, he set off in hopes of finding the rest of his family.
He searched all night and was about to give up until he drove across a river and saw a body floating on the river. The shape looked familiar and he hoped it wasn't true. But it was. It was the body of Grizelda floating on the stream. She had drowned in the river.
He looked around for his children, but they were nowhere to be found. The children rarely left the sight of their mothers and they should have been around the area. Oddly, he came across a bridge and there was a woman named Elaine guarding it. He asked her if she saw two little deer children come by. She denied seeing anyone. He continued to search for days for the boys, but the search came up fruitless. Where could his children be?
Two fawns.
Photo by Erin Shipley. Source: ErinShipley.
Author's note: For this week, I retold the story of Marriage: Bear-Woman and Deer-Woman. In the original story, there were two wives: a bear and a doe. One day, they were out and the bear wife decided to kill the deer wife by biting her head off. She brought the head home and threw it into the fireplace while watching it burn. One grotesque detail was that the heat caused the eyes to pop. The children of the deer wife realized that it was their mother's head and decided to kill the bear children. They brought the bear corpses home and gave it to the bear wife and she unknowingly ate the children. A chase ensued with the bear wife ending up dying with the help of a crane.
My story was sort of a continuation of the original story. The father was nowhere to be found in the original story, so I decided to have him come home to find his home in a disastrous state. I also gave the wives names: Grizelda was the the bear wife and Jane was the deer wife (because Griz- resembled Grizzly and Jane Doe resembled Doe). I also gave the Crane a name, Elaine. I wanted to show a dramatic, yet modern scene of what would happen if this had happened in the human world.
Bibliography:
"Marriage: Bear-Woman and Deer-Woman" by Stith Thompson from Tales of the North American Indians (1929). Source: UN-Textbook.
