Le Bete 1975 -

By August, the village had given it a name: Le Bête de 1975 — not a wolf, not a bear, not a lynx. Something older. The priest said it was a punishment for the discotheque they’d opened in the old abbey. The schoolteacher said it was a rogue military experiment from the base near Draguignan. The children, who were always the first to see things, said it lived in the abandoned railway tunnel where the mistral wind sounded like a voice whispering numbers: 1975, 1975, 1975 .

I did not touch the egg. I did not run. I walked backward very slowly, counting my steps to keep calm: 1975, 1975, 1975 . le bete 1975

The last thing I saw before I ran home was my own shadow, stretching long behind me on the white dust of the road. For just a second, it had too many joints, too. By August, the village had given it a