The Sasquatch Hunter's Almanac by Sharma Shields

had seen her bedridden, disheveled image in Eli’s broad red spectacles. It all came crashing down on her again.
    â€œLeave me alone,” she had moaned.
    She had remained inconsolable until they mercifully drugged her to sleep.
    Finally, inevitably, as the hormones and the drugs sloughed off, Gladys stabilized. Her mental health—always fragile, always a little shaky—was mostly restored.
    The doctor declared her barren, and Gladys begrudgingly accepted this as the truth. She told herself she didn’t want children, anyway, dirty, disgusting creatures that they were, and she refused to go to a friend’s house unless their children were safely away at school or with a nanny. She lived in this frozen state for nearly two years following Jonathan’s death, congratulating herself for being a modern woman, but the sight of a stroller on Main Street unsettled her and she averted her eyes from the baby even if it was a friend’s child.
    Rarely, only when Eli begged, she undressed for her marital duty and opened her legs to him, staring up at the ceiling while he grunted and stabbed. Silly, perverted men, she thought. Men would enjoy anything, as long as it was soft and wet and willing. At least her husband wasn’t as bad as some.
    He did annoy her sometimes, with his foot fetishes and his monster-tracking. His obsession with the outdoors, with hiking and camping and watching the trees and the sky, was incomprehensible to her. She enjoyed the smell of a rose or the vision of a pink sunset, just like any woman. But she far preferred the city and its tidy, cheerful shops to the dirt and shadow of the woods.
    Still, he provided for her and loved her, and she was grateful. And now she had so much more to be grateful for: To everyone’s surprise, she was pregnant. Even better, she was far along in the pregnancy, past the point of even Jonathan’s stillbirth. She feared for the baby’s life, but the doctors told her: All is well. Relax, think positively, drink orange juice. If possible, avoid cigarettes and alcohol and especially coffee. The baby would be “just nifty.” When the doctor had said the word nifty, Gladys had stiffened, but Eli had reached over and put a hand protectively on her back, and she knew that this gesture meant, No matter, I’m here for you; I will always be here for you, and all will be well.
    So when her husband called to her to come outside and join him, Gladys went willingly. It was ten-thirty in the morning. She had been polishing the silver at the dining room table, watching him with a droll expression, wondering what had captured his interest.
    Birds, apparently.
    Tedious, Gladys thought, but she looked up, anyway.
    And, admittedly, it was spectacular. Starlings were filthy little birds individually, Gladys thought, but as a collective unit they were magical.
    Hundreds—thousands?—of starlings thickened the sky, forming a dark funnel one moment, twisting into an hourglass the next. They swelled and fell like a black wave or like an impending pestilence. Watching them was spellbinding. It was as though they had tethered her painlessly through the chest and would soon tug her airborne.
    Gladys murmured her appreciation. She rested a palm on her belly and felt the baby surge, as though it, too, were bound to the flock. Eli stepped closer to her, never taking his eyes from the sky. He kissed her distractedly on the side of the head. Then he removed his glasses with their heavy lenses and began to polish them on his shirt.
    The starlings rose and fell, rose and fell. They reassembled themselves into a new shape. Gladys’s brow furrowed. It was as though they were spelling a word. She squinted. Yes, she thought. Yes, they were spelling a word.
    She read the black letters in the sky.
    DOOM.
    The starlings fell apart, the word dissolving. How silly of me , Gladys thought. The flock sharply returned to itself, hanging in the blue as though nailed