They Remember Faces

Editors of ‘The Jury,’

Yes, I am the man who murdered Jakobi Stewarts of Ovil Industries. Yes, I stood in charge of research and development, where I spent a decade fattening elk and squirrels and other vulnerable species. I was there for all of it—selling their flesh to zoos and parks, then for private consumption. Yes, I coined our company’s ethos when a batch of fresh-faced trainees soured green upon witnessing a tray of dhole pups being churned into cheetah feed:

“That which humanity finds useful will never go extinct.”

Internal questions or concerns, I addressed them. Failings and flaws, I solved them. When inspiration struck Jakobi at three in the morning with reports due at seven, I wrote them. Unaffiliated press calls haunted us hourly in those first couple years, ripe with accusations of animal cruelty and genetic experimentation. It was brutal training programs to filter those as spam (the animosity of that chapter is the reason I now find it so difficult to contact you).

I did all this—wept cortisol, bandaged my wrists with adrenaline patches, clocked work in at all strikes of the bell and through my supplement alarms—without ever nearing the top of Ovil’s payroll or receiving half of Jakobi’s praise. Not even a quarter.

But I did not do what I did out of ‘jealousy,’ as your newspaper suggests. Nor, as the competing theory goes, did I adopt a change of heart or ideological stance.

My father was a slaughterhouse worker, see. He returned every evening reeking of ammonia and oxidized hemoglobin. Cruelty roosted in our air and in our water. Violence does not bother me.

I’ve never desired the crushing weight of a spotlight either (lest my poor bones shatter), nor have I harbored much need for luxuries beyond hot water and a stove. My childhood weaned me on charity: first with the roof my father shared, then with the opportunities the ravens traded me.

I remember it so clearly. Murders of ravens perched outside my broken windowsill, croaks and calls spilling through the jagged glass. My father couldn’t afford anything more sheltered than an abandoned warehouse downtown. Not if we wanted food or cigarettes. My bedroom was a stack of crates and curtains partitioning off my square of crumbling foundation from my father’s. Besides the drunks ambling outside and the flickering shadows of our fellow house-less, the ravens were our only neighbours.

I fed the ravens crumbs, then sweets. They traded me trinkets, then protection. Clawed shields between me and my father’s fists when he caught me pawning off their stolen jewelry for tins of mints and trading cards.

“Under this roof, I have the final say! That money is mine by right, damn you!” He strangled one raven, snapped its neck, and roasted it whole. Then he scattered the feathers outside like a skull-on-pike warning. “Useless goddamn things.”

After that, ravens followed him everywhere. They circled outside his work and tailed every bus and train he rode. They knew his face like I did until they sharpened their beaks and rearranged it.

He became a changed man after that. He even helped put me through college—not that he knew that was where his disability checks were going.

The ravens stole his eyes, his lips, and his tongue, and it was through his thin warbling that I stitched together our most pleasant conversations.

Jakobi’s company had an internship program. Lab tech, engineering, and midnight coffee runs. Ovil was a smaller lab back then, specialized in transgenic plants, and though I’d never cared much for botany, every other opening rejected me. I had to make Ovil work. It didn’t matter the cost.

I nursed an addiction to stimulants. I slept ten hours a week so I could spend more time slaving away in the lab and learning in the library. I once tripped down my lecture hall’s stairs and arrived at Ovil twenty minutes early in a splint I’d crafted from tape, spit, and pencils.

In hindsight, I could have gotten away with far less. Jakobi prized my skill in weathering his storms more than any latent talent. He gave me more of his time, and more of his time meant more responsibility. And more responsibility meant my life became Ovil.

We were going to change the world. Turn every dying species into a factory-farmed machine. Keep them on life support if solar radiation and human development wouldn’t let them have anything else. Jakobi cared about that, at least, and so long as I flocked by his side, I had a place to stay.

I had meaning. I had stability.

I purchased a new apartment (one without roommates, if you can believe it), scalded myself raw in the shower every night, and cooked my meals on an actual stove.

The world still sloughed apart in glacial inches around us, but we were doing just fine.

After animal feed, Jakobi set his sights on human delicacies. Rhino shanks, antelope venison. When squirrels started dying out at the same pace as everything else, I suggested selling their hearts on skewers. He agreed.

I grew complacent, you see. I began to believe I mattered. I thought I had a say.

Then Jakobi wanted ravens processed next. I refused.

“Seb,” he said, “we’ve known each other a long time, but that doesn’t mean you’re irreplaceable. You don’t make the final decisions for me or this company, understand? Any species can be made into an asset. I want ravens. If you don’t take this project, I’ll find someone who will.”

I could have walked away. I almost did, too. But then, perched on a tree branch outside Jakobi’s office window, I met a pair of shining black eyes over an obsidian beak, paused amid grooming its oil-slick wings.

So, I killed him.

I choked Jakobi Stewarts with my own two hands, his skin purpling as he clawed at my face, throat whistling curses, calling me a mad traitor and worse. I choked him like my father choked that raven. I choked him like I wasn’t choking him at all, but the idea of him, his legacy, everything he was, and everything he would cut me out of being.

My metacarpals ground together; my clenched jaw ached. I channeled more power in those minutes than I ever had before. I floated. I flew outside myself. The chair tipped over. A lamp bulb smashed. He thumbed at my eyes; I crunched them like carrots. Broken phalanges, warm and slippery against my tongue, still pulsing arteries flossed between my canines. I chewed, I laughed, I swallowed.

You might imagine me selfish. Foolish. Insane. But I know the raven saw me, and I know it understood. A trade for a trade. Protection for protection.

The irony is not lost on me that, in facilitating Ovil’s preservation of the species, I have doomed the individual, killed the culture worth preserving in the first place. I could have walked away, allowed Jakobi to continue with another more willing participant, but the ravens would know, and they would never forget. They’d saved me once. It was time I saved them.

I’ll be long gone by the time you receive this. Tell the police to be gentle with my possessions (if they’re capable), and do not harm my messengers.

After all, they remember faces.

Sincerely,

Sebastian Fi