South Village (Ash McKenna) Read Online Free Page A

look up, just clucks to acknowledge my presence, like I’ve annoyed her delicate chicken sensibilities.
    “Fuck you too,” I tell her.
    It’s probably not sanitary to cook in an apron with no shirt underneath while a chicken wanders around the kitchen but I’m a rebel. And anyway, not a day goes by that some goofball isn’t wandering around here naked.
    My stomach roars. There’s a tray covered with foil on the stove. I pull the foil aside and find rows of desiccated brown twigs, glistening with oil, sprinkled with piles of rocky sea salt. Aesop roasted some mushrooms. I love when Aesop roasts mushrooms. He has to forage them; I don’t know which are safe and which will kill me, but he does, and he leaves them in the oven until they turn into tiny little flavor bombs.
    I grab a handful and cram them in my mouth, wipe the oil off on the apron as I chew, and wash it down with the plastic jug of whiskey I keep stashed underneath the sink, behind the cleaning supplies. That helps a little. I refill my flask and stick it into my cargo pocket.
    After a few handfuls of granola, I head into the pantry to pull ingredients for the night’s dinner, not even sure of what’s going to be on the menu, but we’re close enough that I need to get some stuff going.
    What I find is an entire wall of cans, their labels torn off.
    There’s a shuffle from the main kitchen. Aesop is standing there, his face blanched. At least, the parts of it I can see underneath the mammoth mountain-man beard. It reaches down past his chest. He’s not wearing a shirt either, and his muscular torso is riddled with tattoos. Random stuff—tribals and faces and symbols and words—all done in black and white. Some of it is intricate and professional. Some of it is muddy and uneven, a clear sign of stick-and-poke. The kind of stuff you get in prison, or after a long night of drinking and your idiot friend has a sewing needle and some printer ink. I’ve never asked him which.
    “Can we please figure out who’s recycling the labels, and tell them to do it after we use the cans, not before?” I ask him. “We’re going to be eating bean and veggie and whatever the fuck else surprise for the next few weeks…”
    “Ash.”
    “What?”
    “Crusty Pete is dead.”
    “Ah fuck.”

T he tree reaches out of the earth and unfurls toward the canopy like an open hand, a pale wood structure perched in the palm. The way the tree spreads up and out, it was impossible to get a ladder to the front door, so the ladder was built onto another tree twenty feet away, and the two were connected by a rope bridge.
    The bridge isn’t up anymore.
    Everyone’s here. With camp currently at capacity—the staff roster full and all the tree houses rented out—that means nearly forty people are crowded around the base of the tree. Heads downcast, still as statues.
    Aesop and I approach, twigs cracking under our feet, and a few people look up, some familiar faces, most not. Some people are weeping, others are holding themselves or each other, and some are blank. A tapestry of shock and mourning. People step aside, allowing us to pass. At the center of the scrum, Tibo is crouched down so low his long dreads nearly touch the ground. He’s contemplating Pete like a painting.
    Pete is sprawled out on the ground, limbs askew and head kinked at an unnatural angle. He’s shirtless, shoeless, wearing a pair of cargo pants cinched tight to his emaciated frame. His long red hair is spread like a burst of flame, draped across his face.
    My breath catches in my chest. It’s cool here in the shadows created by the trees, but the heat on the back of my neck rises. No one is staring at me, but it feels like everyone is staring at me.
    This guy looks way too comfortable. Can’t be his first time around a dead body.
    Real dead doesn’t look like dead in the movies. The skin doesn’t take on a cool icy hue. The face doesn’t rest in a position of serenity. The joints and muscles fall