Artist Statement:
David Busboom pursues a BA in English (with a double minor in Creative and Professional Writing) at Eastern Illinois University, where he has also served as a reader, assistant editor, managing editor, and editor-in-chief of EIU’s student-run literary magazine, The Vehicle. His fiction has appeared in Shock Totem
I am nine years old, armed with a crude homemade walking stick almost as tall as I am, marching into the tree-dotted clearing that is our front yard. The sun is out, but filtered by a thin screen of cloud cover, and the air is neither hot nor cold.
I am a knight with a lance, patrolling the castle grounds.
I reach the spot my mom (the queen) indicated, and after a few seconds I see it: the monster that has invaded our kingdom to terrorize her, the scaled worm I have come to kill.
A thin brown snake, maybe two feet long at the most. It slithers slowly and silently along the base of a baby conifer my dad (the king) planted a year or two earlier, its body almost hidden in the scattered weeds and pine needles. I watch it move for a moment, suddenly unsure—for a moment I am just a little boy again. The snake is harmless, and that somehow makes it more threatening.
Before I can lose my nerve, I strike.
I should bisect it with a shovel the way Dad does. I should end this quickly with a swift stab at its head, crushing the tiny skull, but that doesn’t occur to me. I beat down at it with heavy overhead swings. With the first strike it begins to writhe and twist like an impaled earthworm, stirring the weeds with a rustling sound that is the only noise here except for the thwack, thwack, thwack of my stick and my own heartbeat thudding in my ears. After the first few thwacks I want to stop. Nothing is as I thought it might be: I am no saintly hero and this is no draconic beast, no grand battle in an enchanted wood. But I can’t stop now, can’t leave it wounded or crippled. I must finish what I’ve started. My eyes are blurry, my cheeks warm and wet. It takes forever to die, and when its throes finally cease my arms are tired and my temples are throbbing. The tears and snot moisten my lips, the sobs wrack my chest.
I’ve done something terrible.
My mother hugs me tight and tells me she’s sorry, she’s so sorry.
“You have such a big heart,” she says.
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