An Ohio Massacre
Sean McAllister’s ex-wife Nancy bailed him out following his arrest for filed-off serial numbers on an AK-47 he swore he would never use. An AK-47 whose previous owner said that it’s just good hygiene to keep these things untraceable. Nancy told Sean she posted bail so she wouldn’t have to take care of his animals, but when his sentence was read out, she did just that—she, and some hired hands she paid with money from Sean’s bank account. The two hadn’t spoken since the day of sentencing, when Nancy told him everything would be taken care of. But on day 402 of fulfilling his debt to society, Sean was informed by a guard that he had a visitor. His first in months. He thought maybe his sister finally made the drive up, guilt-ridden and with her children in tow. But it was Nancy’s face that shone beneath the prison’s glaring florescent lights.
Nancy told him, through the phone linking the two sides of a glass divider, about Mark, her new man who Sean could not manage to find fault in. She would soon be Nancy Fischer, she said, she would soon be married to someone who knew what contentment was, she implied. And she also told him she was done, officially, with looking after the animals.
“Your land defies the laws of nature. I have done my best by you—and Sean, I love you still and want the best for you always—but I cannot carry on like this,” she said, her eyes wet with tears that she did not let fall. The tally was imprinted on her brain: 18 tigers, 10 lions, 8 bears, 3 macaques, 2 wolves, and 1 zebra.
“Will the men stay?” he asked, too broken to convince her to do the same.
“They will. They are paid more than any sheet metal company can afford. And they’ve really developed relationships with the animals. You understand.”
“How much is left?” he asked. He did not want to discuss the hired hands and their ability to feel how he felt. He believed that no one could feel how he felt about the animals. No one could look into their eyes and see what he saw. Sean loved them, and they, in turn, made him special.
“Honey, by the time you’re out of here, not much,” she said.
Nancy left the visiting room soon after she arrived. Apart from money and the property, there was little she could bare to discuss with him anymore, little interiorly he was brave enough to share.
When he returned home 742 days after he first donned his prison jumpsuit, Sean confirmed Nancy’s message: his bank account held $3,452.61, and the workers had fallen in love with the animals the way Noah fell in love with God. Sean, wanting God all to himself, if only for a little while, fired them all and emptied his bank account.
Sean’s homecoming was muted—save for his reunion with the animals, who recognized him still. The house itself was covered in a layer of dust that he decided he would never clean. It was empty of person and sound, and Sean could only think of talking with Nancy again. Nancy, whose former presence in the house could still be felt. He saw her in the decorative plates displayed atop the cabinets, the salt and pepper shakers in the shape of two small porcelain pigs, the mystery novels that lined the living room windowsills.
He wanted to call her and tell her all the things he should have years ago. He wanted to tell her that he was lost, that what made him feel found was never enough, that he should have made her feel enough. Sean also very much wanted to tell Nancy that he loved her still, too.
These were the things he did not have the introspection to know until he spent night after night in a cell, finding the thread connecting his actions—his obsession with beauty that led him off path time and again. Sean callously left his high school sweetheart who held his hand for years and never put him down as soon as he first saw Nancy dancing to ABBA at a bar he—the very moment before—begrudged playing ABBA in the first place. He traded his home in town, surrounded by things to do and friends to see, for the beauty of the country: ladybugs on every sunflower, willows protecting a still pond, and countless blood orange sunsets. He spent large sums on a collection of antique cars now parked in the brown grass beyond his barn, their grandeur undiminished by their age and rusted edges. And now he knew he lost his wife to his pursuit of beauty.
This final obsession being the most beautiful thing he had ever seen; the last thing, as it turned out, he would ever see. A Bengal tiger, for sale on the dark web. His desire for this creature felt like a need, and his land, an opportunity, and his wealth, fate. He had seen a tiger in person only one time at the Columbus Zoo, and possession permeated his blood ever since. He picked up the tiger, whom he named Charles after his childhood dog, at Ohio’s Kentucky border using his neighbor’s horse trailer. His neighbor did not ask why he needed the trailer. He was nice like that. And Sean returned the trailer the next day, as promised, with no noticeable signs of wear, no outward appearance of change at all. But the neighbor knew the trailer had changed because his horses would no longer go inside it.
This was not when Nancy left. But when one tiger became ten, when zero bears became five, when a monkey overran the house—then, she left. She knew that beauty at that place was no longer a plaything. Sean could not comprehend her reasons, could not comprehend that more was not better, and, with her loss, he only grew more obsessed with the things that made her leave.
Sean did not tell Nancy these things on the day of his homecoming, or the next. In fact, he never called her again. He spent two days caring for his animals. He hung a bucket on the spout of an in-ground water pump, filling it on repeat until the water troughs in all the cages were full. He hand-fed hay to the Zebra, whom he had named Anne and never tried to saddle. She was his most recent purchase, bought only months after his macaques. In his advancing age, he found himself turning to vegetarians, recognizing the beauty in peace. He let the wolves, who he bought as pups and bottle fed, free all day. He had resisted the urge to name them Romulus and Remus. This was not Rome. Instead, they were named Canyon and Dakota—places he pictured them running wild. On his land, they stayed by his side like a shadow. He took the macaques to the trees lining his pond and watched as they climbed up the branches. He caught rabbits, raccoons, and even a deer in traps laid out in the forest, releasing them live in his corral so the tigers, lions, and bears could play at hunting. He stared at Charles for hours.
These moments gave him comfort, but they did not make him whole. And his nights, which were sleepless, felt no different from the ones spent in the Ohio state penitentiary.
On the third morning, he rose, showered, and grabbed his single action revolver and a pair of garden shears. He wrote a note and placed it in his dresser drawer with his remaining life savings, an amount that would have sustained his farm’s needs for maybe two weeks. The note read: To Nancy, I love you still, too. He opened the drawer as soon as he shut it and ripped up the note. Before he left the room, though, he replaced it with an identical one.
Sean walked to the barn first and lead Anne out of the paddock. He gave her a small slap on her haunches and hoped she’d run far. He then went to his macaques, opening their doors. They were slow to move, still sleepy though the sun was well-risen. He waited by their cages until they exited and began to groom and play with one another. He smiled at them, remembering when they would hang on his arms as he walked his land. He moved on to the wolves. When he opened their cages, they first went to the other, sniffing and nuzzling, but, as always, they followed their master when he walked on. Once they sensed he was heading toward the bears, though, they hung back, watching as Sean cut gashes with his garden shears into the sides of the cage housing all eight of them. He opened the bears’ cage door, as well. He did the same to the lions’ cage.
His final stop was for the tigers. Charles was pacing, pressing his fur up against the metal so that his hair poked out in a checkerboard pattern. Sean still loved Charles most. Sean opened the door to Charles’s cage—and to the cage of the 17 other tigers—and took one last look at Charles. Sean placed the revolver in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
The police found his body after six hours. It started with an onslaught of calls: a neighbor trapped in his barn with a bear circling the wooden structure, a driver spotting lions lurking in the ditch alongside a country road, a farmer frantic as her horses were being corralled by wolves. Then followed the soundtrack of police radios updating the force that two macaques had been eaten, their bodies mangled next to the tiger cage; that closing the cage door on the lions that lingered inside was fruitless; that Officer O’Malley locked it only to find one escaped through a gash in the side; that the police had to shoot the lion 10 times to save their colleague. There were reports of multiple attempts to find Sean in his house or to find his body on the grounds. But the night that fell and the rain that fell and the fear that fell lead only to the realization that the police had no idea what lurked in the brush. It led to barricaded vehicles lining the drive. And, eventually, it led to a final tally: 18 tigers, 10 lions, 8 bears, 3 macaques, 2 wolves, and 1 man dead. The zebra, however, made it to the Ohio river and crossed one last time.
Nicole Grace is a writer, professor, and public interest attorney living in Chicago. Her published work can be found in Pigeon Pages, and her short story, An Ohio Massacre, was longlisted for The Masters Review Anthology XII Contest. When she is not advocating for clients or writing, she is likely covered in flour in her kitchen, watching movies at her local theater, or drinking in bars with friends.