The Tenderness of Wild Beasts, Chapter 1
Missing children force a young woman and her biological father to re-explore their lives, filled with serial killers and toxic relationships.
This is the first chapter of my novel, The Tenderness of Wild Beasts. It is a conversation. Between a daughter and her biological father. Between two people searching for the serial killer who has turned their lives and the lives of their loved ones upside down. Between two writers trying to find the words to exorcise themselves and reconnect. Their story begins in a fictional Californian town, Lucero, with the disappearance of two children during a wedding party. Who knows where it will lead them.
The Tenderness of Wild Beasts
Photo & Text all rights reserved © Saint-Lazare, 2025.
“In this century the writer has carried on a conversation with madness.
We might almost say of the […] writer that he aspires to madness.
Some have made it, of course, and they hold special places in our regard.
To a writer, madness is a final distillation of self, a final editing down.
It’s the drowning out of false voices.”
–Don DeLillo
Part I - The Daughter
When a writer is born into a family,
the family is finished.
–Czeslaw Molosz
Chapter 1 - No Good (Start the Dance)
It is going to burn today.
A nice day of summer, but not for long; I got this forecast from an unusual weathercaster, a missing person flyer.
In a different setting, you would have protested. But Joan, it was simply a sheet of A4 paper, stapled to a phone pole, in one of Lucero’s many narrow streets. Don’t give it the prescience of a Cassandra. But not this time. I can see in your eyes that you are sensing it too.
This was not an ordinary missing person flyer.
Bring your aloe vera.
First of all, there was not just one person missing in this flyer, there were two. The top text said ‘Missing Children’. You learnt that their names were Fiona and Nathan Garrison, respectively aged eight and six years. The paper called out to you –Did you see them? Yet, the unsettling object seemed to exist to make you doubt. Did you or did you not see them? The xeroxed photography laid down a macabre veil over their delicate features and outfits. They could be any child. You had to trust the information given below, but what if someone got their description wrong? It put a lot of pressure on you, clinging to you, begging –Help bring them home. When I first laid my eyes on the poster, I was not even sure of the meaning of the word home anymore.
The breeze was softly lifting the paper, as if it were somehow alive. As if the two kids in the picture were (still) alive. The bottom of the flyer was shaking its little teeth of paper, covered with the same handwritten phone number, but none of them had been removed. Every lost or found flyer in the United States would have missing teeth. Troubled teens enjoy disfiguring them before committing to a career of boring dentists. But this one had a pristine smile. A terrible, begging smile no one could even dare looking at, at least not without answering with a mad, forced laugh. The poster seemed to have been there for a while, now covered with blisters of humidity turned dry, giving it a peeling appearance which seemed so familiar to me.
When I was a kid, the walls of my house would also peel. I had spent many hours nervously removing the flakes of paint, revealing the raw fibers of wood underneath. Perhaps I hoped that it would not only destroy the back side of the house, but also the anger growing inside of me. Better the paint than my own skin, I then thought.
Apparently, there is nothing better than a missing kid to remind you of the child who was lost inside of you. So, imagine what two missing kids can do.
I am not sure to believe in the loss of innocence; in fact, I think we betray the child we used to be. We sacrifice them in the name of choices we convince ourselves to be the right ones, the adult ones. Have Fiona and Nathan become lost because of a choice they made, or because of the choice made by a self-infanticidal adult?
It is on the tip of my tongue, but I still cannot figure out what it is. Yet, I do not like the feeling.
Betrayed kids are like Victorian murder victims, they usually come back to haunt you.
In this street filled with nothing else than lime sun, a warm wind coming from Big Sur and silence, there were only two things. Me and the peeling flyer, making a sad pair. I was statically facing it, as if it were a mirror. How did I come up with such an idea? Was it the word ‘MISSING’ in fat letters that led me to this association? Yes, I was missing something, and I felt that the flyer was creating an unhealthy rebalance. This sensation could actually have defined my whole being. For as long as I can remember, my existence has been shaped by dysfunctional pairs.
The old Lucero. The new Lucero.
My mother. My father.
The two entities inside of me.
The collisions they caused brought me here.
I decided to remove one of the flyer’s pieces of paper, with a phone number on it, even if I had no info to give. Just in case.
Just to destroy the sensation growing inside of me.
I cannot state for sure if this sensation was also at play while I was in Boston, but I know for a fact that it started in Lucero. It could come from something in the ground or from the water; who knows.
This is something that could help me, that I would like to know: is it a feeling you are familiar with, or is it just the kind of weird shit kids must deal with, growing in Lucero?
(To be continued).
Want to read more from this serialised novel? Here’s the Content Directory:
I read this first since I saw you post the 2nd chapter. I wanted to wait until after reading both before commenting, but I cannot contain myself—I absolutely love how poetic your prose is. The scene about the blistering paper and how, as kids, we often peel at things like that? So nostalgic. That small detail made everything feel real, like I was inside the narrator’s mind, staring at those missing posters myself. But then adding the layers of how the choices of adults around us affect our childhood? That hit home. Well… off to the 2nd chapter I go!
I'm at a loss for words. I don't know where to begin to let you know how amazing I thought this chapter was.
The use of the flyer as an object to convey the emotions of the narrator was done perfectly. From its discovery, with the impact on the "it's going to burn today"; to the wording who spoke directly to him; to the description of the perfect smile representing the sacrificed child; to the decision of taking one of the teeth.
So powerful. So intriguing. As soon as I have enough free time, I'm going to catch up on this novel. I'm hooked.