The woods were silent. Lifeless. Deceptive. It came in the night without warning. Flashes of black cleaved through the tent in a blur of sludge and murk. Confusion and disorientation billowed inside. She bolted awake from his screams. Wet and black fur slopped against the nylon walls. Ivory claws tore the tent to shreds. A long, black emaciated arm reached for him. Its pale claw now painted red with his blood. His calf mangled in sinewy tendons. A deep, wet growl bellowed from the beast, flapping the tent shreds and shaking the trees. She reached into their bag and pulled something long and red. She popped the cap off and the tent exploded in a vibrant blush red and orange. Black and grey columns of smoke erupted from the tip and climbed into the night. She waved it in front of the beast, jabbed at it. A high, piercing shriek impaled their ears. The thing recoiled its arm and galloped away, shaking the earth beneath it. She got under his arms and they ran opposite of the beast. Deeper into the woods for days.

You got it?

*           *           *

Friday, 3:47pm

The cabin was empty. Wooden floorboards creaked and groaned beneath every step. They almost echoed throughout the lively and desolate woods. An orchestra of calling herons and quacking ducks and howling coyotes bled through the air between the trees.

             “You’re going to love it. On Monday, this lake will be lit up with fireworks from the locals. You’ll get to try the world’s okay-est hot dogs that I make. You’ll have time to draw by the lake. It’s going to be great. Just what you need,” he said to her as the wood bent and cracked under her feet.

             “Mmm,” she mumbled under the groan of the floorboards.

             Lei almost stayed home. It seemed like a nice break from the monotony of their relationship. But if she had stayed home, he would have gone by himself. Which sounded equally nice. Perhaps nicer. Yet, here she was. Two miles off the main road, in the secluded woods of Big Bear Lake at this cabin he rented for the weekend.

             Ari hauled her bags up the stairs before retreating back to the car for his own. She glided through the cabin. Her fingers traced the striations of the wooden walls. Pine and oak saturated the hallway and crept into her nose and blew through her clear throat. Nondescript paintings of Big Bear landscapes and wildlife hung crooked on the walls. Paintings probably found in neighborhood thrift shops.

            A large black bear painted in thick, raised black and brown brushstrokes hung in the center. Its rear faced her while its head looked back. A patient predator surveying the land. Strong and somber. She approached and brushed her fingertips against it. Hardened globs of excess paint rose from the canvas like waves of a frozen sea. Her fingers could almost pinch the brushstrokes in the beast’s fur. The painting did not shift on the wall as she felt it. It should have at least tugged on the wire it hung from. Then she noticed it was drilled into the wall. All the others hung from a nail or a wire.

            Muffled thuds of duffle bags and backpacks dropping boomed overhead as he unloaded their luggage. She continued through the hallway onto the brown shag carpet of the main living room. A shriek escaped and pierced through the ceiling and upstairs. Ari cast his unpacked clothes aside and bolted down the stairs as fast as he could. She was in trouble. Scared. He needed to help her. Finally.

            “Babe, what is—,” he shouted as he entered the living room and saw what made her scream. About half of Big Bear’s wildlife population was sitting in the room. Frozen in their natural state. A bobcat reached its tawny-grey and brown paw out while baring its glistening pearl fangs. A grey fox perched on a patch of fake blackened rock as its large bushy tail coiled around its hind legs. The head of a white and grey mule deer jutted out from the wall with wide splaying ears and great antlers that forked toward the sky.

            He chuckled as he realized what startled her. “Babe, it’s alright. These guys can’t hurt anybody. They just sit there and watch all the vacationers knock boots in here.” He took his hand off of her shoulder and retreated back upstairs to finish unpacking, his chuckle fading down the hallway.

            She stood against the wall and scanned the room. The quickened booms of her heart were still thumping in her ears. A wave of red washed over her as her eyes went from animal-to-floor, animal-to-floor. She looked in the eyes of these beasts. Frozen in their state.

             But that wasn’t how they died. Perhaps they were stuck with an arrow. Pummeled with the bumper of a speeding car. They were molded to look as they were now. Forced. Someone else made them look like this. As if they didn’t have a choice of how to be. How to think. How to feel. They were probably scared when they died.

            For the first time in months, she felt something. Fear. Fear that was she being forced on how to be. Fear that she was being forced on how to feel. Fear that she would never feel anything else again: Excitement. Passion. Anger. Happiness.

            She approached the couch against the wall and climbed inside. She curled into a ball and stared straight ahead. At what? At the grey fox staring back at her? At the wall behind the fox? Her wide, dry eyes stared straight ahead. At nothing.

*           *           *

“When you watch someone you love change in front of you, it shakes you. Shakes your core. Shakes your whole world. It makes you plummet. Plummet down a path along the quaking earth. The path behind you begins to cave. The earth sends you into your own tremors, feeling its colossal strength. When you look behind you and see the collapse of the world you once knew, memories falling into darkness, that’s when you realize it: there’s no going back.”

– Stranger

*           *           *

Friday 4:07pm

Upstairs, he continued unpacking their clothes. More and more articles came from her bags. Three pairs of shoes. Two swimsuits. The over-packed duffle was a bottomless pit. It was only a weekend getaway. Something to help get her mind off of whatever it was she was dealing with. He was still unsure.

             Lei tried to articulate how she was feeling lately, but even she had trouble putting it to words. She wasn’t excited about the trip, nor was she dreading it. She had difficulty caring about her everyday life. She was lonely. She was unhappy. He felt threatened about their relationship. It wasn’t anything he had done, she assured him. At least she didn’t think so. It also wasn’t anything he hadn’t done. She simply did not know why she was unhappy.

            He thought it was his job to keep her happy. Though rarely eaten, meals were made before she woke. Unsolicited gifts were given. Sacrifices were made. He even researched what to do when a partner was exuding this behavior. Ari couldn’t understand why nothing he did helped her. He soon found himself in a tunnel with self-conjured images of her happiness at the end. His own happiness waiting patiently behind hers. Or was it behind him, waning in the distance of the other end of the tunnel?

            She had small moments of fleeting joy. Fragments of her laughter were forever framed in his mind. Moments of hope. Images that lined the walls of his tunnel. If she was capable of laughing, she was still capable of being happy. So he believed.

            His hands continued reaching into the bag while the memories continued to flood. He hated being alone. His thoughts were his worst enemy. Darkened recollections of empty efforts flooded his mind. Reflections of his inability to help. Crushing images of her on their bed in the fetal position with an expressionless face. The walls inched toward him.

            Ari reached into the empty bag again. There was nothing left inside. Nothing left to retrieve. Nothing left for him to help with. He looked at the contents strewn around the duffle and back into the empty bag. His wet eyes shot upward to the ceiling and his breaths quickened in short spurts. Water began to well in the corners of his eyes. The ball in his throat yearned for escape as he tried to swallow it back until he gave in. Standing in the middle of this wide, open room, Ari felt claustrophobic. As he usually did when he was alone with his thoughts, he began to weep into the growing desolation that enveloped him.

*           *           *

They ran through the woods for three days before they saw the cabin. No, two. Shrubs and twigs and stumps marbled together in an expressionistic painting that splattered across their world. Time didn’t allow them to think of their own hunger, only the beast’s. They continued to run, his leg hobbling and blasting with pain in every step. What was it? A bear. It was a black bear. The only bear to still roam Big Bear Lake. A bear that can weigh over six hundred pounds and could reach thirty miles per hour on a full gallop. How did they know so much about bears? Their son. It was his favorite animal. He wanted to eat one. Their son loved camping more than anything. The family regularly made trips to various campsites. Even after it happened, they continued to camp with each other to honor him. When they finally reached the cabin, the creatu—the bear was last seen by the car followed by exploding hisses bursting from the tires.

You got it?

*           *           *

Friday 5:12pm

Crickets and other critters chorused underneath the sinking sun. An orange glow permeated the sky and trickled into the living room. Marble orbs embedded in the frozen face of the fox reflected the peach tinge of the dipping sun into Lei’s eyes. Ari was still upstairs, though she was certain he finished unpacking a while ago. She wasn’t sure of how much time had passed since she lied down, nor did she care.

             Small rhythmic thumps from above became clearer as he descended the stairs. He called to her from the other room. His voice floated through the hallway and dissipated in the still air of the living room. She continued to stare ahead. He may have called again. She wasn’t sure. The words would never penetrate through the motionless air. Nothing moved. Not his words. Not the animals. Not the ball she was curled in.

             Ari called once more and discovered his love on the couch. The words dissolved into a melancholic vacuum. There she lay, frozen as the animals around her. His earth began to shake. The world inside clashed about as his heart rattled in his chest. The ball in his throat returned. The living room blurred into thick, wet lines as he shook his head, pushing his grief back inside. He drifted towards the couch and sat beside her. His arms slowly coiled around her, gently stroking her shoulders. A soft kiss was laid upon her cheek as she clutched the pillow.

             “Hey. Let’s get up,” he whispered. “It might be good to get some fresh air. It’s really refreshing outside. Let’s watch the sunset. Come on,” he sniffled, “please?”

             Her gaze unstuck from the fox before her and she slowly rose upward. Minutes later, she got to her feet. She scanned around the room again as if it were her first time seeing it.

             “Sure” she acquiesced.

             “Great, I’m just going to grab my—,” he began

             “Do you mind if I go out alone? Just want to clear my head.”

             He paused and looked in her hazel eyes. A couple of wet blinks clicked and his voice broke as he replied, “Yeah of course. Just be careful out there by yourself. I’ll cook us some dinner while you’re gone. Let me—,” he cleared his throat, “let me know if there’s anything I can do for you.” The walls crept toward him. Another way he couldn’t help her. Another way he had failed.

             “Okay,” she mumbled, kissed his cheek, and left the house.

            He made his way back to the kitchen and stopped at the painting of the giant bear in the hallway. The bear stood on its rear legs and snarled a frozen roar at him. An epic depiction of an apex predator in its monstrous glory. Fine brushstrokes adorned the painting, so thin that the ridges of the canvas popped through the paint. His fingers brushed against the artwork. The walls around him felt tight. He wanted to feel the bear’s strength. He needed to. The frame tipped slightly aside against his hand and he flinched.

Friday 7:52pm

A breath of the cool night trailed behind her as Lei returned to the cabin. Warm aromas of roasted tomato and cracked pepper and fresh garlic hung low in the air, welcoming her home. 

             “Hey there. How was your walk? Make any new furry friends?” Ari greeted her.

             “It was fine.”

             “That’s good. Dinner should be ready in twenty or so. I hope you’re hungry because I once again made an egregious amount of pasta. Your favorite,” his mouth forced a smile underneath reticent, swollen eyes.

             “Sure,” she called back as she caved into the recliner of the foyer.

             Whether she was just appeasing him or not, he was relieved that she may finally eat something.

             He continued to make small whirlpools of tomato sauce with the wooden spatula. Steam rose and plastered against the windows, blurring the images of the night wilderness. He stared into the small corkscrews the sauce made in the spatula’s wake. Twisting and coiling. Molding and bending to his will. Bubbles erupted like the raging molten sea of an active volcano. He found himself in daze. Transfixed by the spinning redness.

Then the strangers came.

             Rapid blasts on the door came without falter behind muffled shouts. Lei jumped out of the chair and Ari dropped the spatula on the tile, splattering red on his leg and the floor. Two people were outside their cabin shouting something. He looked at her with wide unblinking eyes and shrugged. 

             “PLEASE LET US IN LET US IN THERE’S A BEAR OUTSIDE PLEASE PLEASE!” one cried out.

             He walked to the door and Lei shot a whisper to him through the drumming door, “Wait! What are you doing?”

             “I’m letting them in, they could be in trouble,” he stopped in his tracks and whispered back.

             “We don’t know that! They’re strangers!” she hissed.

             “They need help. The bear is probably attracted to the food,” he reasoned as a wave of guilt washed over him.

             “We’re just supposed to trust that there actually is a bear outside?”

             The strangers continued shouting for help. “PLEASE ONE OF US IS HURT PLEASE”

             “I’m letting them in,” he replied, no longer whispering.

             He continued for the door. The clattering of fists on wood vibrated through his fingertips as he turned the knob. A woman holding a man barreled through the doorway and collapsed on the floor. An older pair, possibly in their forties, both equipped in clean camping gear. He slammed the door shut behind them and turned back to help the woman get the man to his feet. Underneath the man was a small spatter of blood that absorbed the marinara on the tile. Lei circled around them in a frozen gaze. Stunned at the domestic chaos unfurling before her. Ari helped the woman take the man to the couch.

             “It’s his leg. The bear got a hold of it,” she stammered to him, “do you have first aid? Where is the first aid kit?” The man was groaning in agony.

             “I, uh, think there’s one around somewhere. I mean, there has to be, right?” Ari looked up from the leg and to the woman and to Lei.

             “What do you mean, isn’t this your house!?”

             “We’re just renting it for the weekend! I-I-I don’t know if there’s any first aid kit. Lei can—can you go looking for one?”

             “Yeah,” she shot back and ran to the bathroom.

             “I’ll call 911,” Ari began.

             “No use. No service out here.” Blood leaked out of a clean four-inch slice running down the back of the man’s calf. He continued to wail. “We need a tourniquet. Do you have a belt?”

             Ari reached for his buckle and the prong fumbled between his clammy fingers. When he finally loosened it, he whipped the belt out of the loops and practically threw it at her. The woman wrapped it around the man’s leg as Lei returned with a red box. The woman snatched the box from her and pulled out two cleansing wipes, a small bottle of distilled water, three surgical tape strips, and a packet of sterile gauze dressings.

             The woman unwrapped each tool and applied them to the man’s leg as she spoke through heaving breaths, “We’ve been out for two days now. Had a small camp about four miles in the woods,” she poured the water over the wound, “He must have forgotten to close our food containers properly and the bear must have smelled it from miles away. Came in the night. In our tent,” she pressed down the surgical tapes to tighten the wound, “Sliced his leg in the tent. I had a flare and popped it off to scare it away.”

             Ari stood frozen. He watched the woman move about with smooth medical prowess. 

             “You’ve been carrying him for two days?” Lei asked.

             The woman stopped tending to his leg. “What?” she called back through exasperation.

             Was that a dumb question? Lei thought to herself when the room stopped. “You, uh, said you’ve been out for two days and the bear cut his leg in the tent.”

             “Oh. Um, yeah. I guess so,” she turned from Lei and looked at the man for a split second before she returned to his leg and he returned to his moaning.

             “And it’s still bleeding like that after two days?”

             “Listen. We’ve got a lot going through our minds, I can’t give you a thorough play-by-play of our escape. We very much appreciate you opening the door but I’d also very much appreciate if you didn’t fucking interrogate me while my husband is bleeding. You got it?”

             Lei winced and recoiled and Ari took her under his arm. They watched this married couple—these strangers—continue their first aid. The husband’s groaning slowly dissipated. The wife coiled a roll of gauze around the wound. She reached in her back pocket and pulled out a small knife to cut the excess gauze and tape it shut. The knife sliced through the white bandaging and Lei saw something. She tilted her head and squinted to get a better look, but the woman quickly taped over it and finished on her husband’s leg. “That should hold well until we stitch it up,” she concluded.

             “I’ll drive you guys to the hospital,” Ari began again.

             The man finally spoke, “We saw the bear rummaging around by your car and heard a hissing noise. We think it bit into your tires. Plus, I’m not ready to go out there again.” 

             “Yeah, it’s too dangerous to go out again,” her head gestured toward the steaming pot, “It can smell that food from miles away. It’s possible it will attract more. We just can’t risk it right now,” she continued, “Do you mind if we just wait it out for a while? Possibly until morning?”

             Lei and Ari looked at each other with stern eyes. They fumbled their words as they both thought out loud. “I, uh, we—…” Lei started.

             Ari interjected, “We need to talk first.” The two of them walked a few paces away for a personal sidebar and debated over allowing these two to stay. They didn’t own the place, but it was their home for the weekend, and they didn’t want strangers to stay in their home. But they couldn’t just exile them back into the danger they were running from.

             They finally reached a decision and approached the two once more. “You guys can stay.”

             A blanket of relief draped over the married couple and they thanked Lei and Ari. The sense of panic began to dispel.

             “Can we offer you some food? You’ve been out for a couple of days and must be hungry. There’s plenty. It’s a good way to get rid of the smell and not attract more,” Ari chuckled as his eyes darted around the room.

             “We would very much appreciate that, thank you,” the woman replied, “And by the way, that’s Cal on the couch. I’m Pate.”

             Ari introduced himself and Lei and retreated to the kitchen to finalize dinner and set a table for this impromptu dinner party. Lei followed behind for another sidebar.

             “Ari, I need to tell you something,” Lei spoke softly.

             “What is it?”

             “When she took out her knife and cut the bandages, I saw something.” Her voice sank low beneath the clatter of plates and silverware.

             “What do you mean?”

             “When the knife cut through, it left a mark. A red mark. Like…I don’t know…blood, maybe?” she stammered quietly.

             “As in—if it was blood—it was already on the knife?”

             “Yeah.” Her voice was sharp.

             Ari stopped for a moment to gather a possibility. “Maybe she used it on the bear or something.” he reassured while rubbing her shoulder, then continuing to finish dinner.

             Lei was left at the table staring down while Ari wiped the red off the floor. The married couple were getting comfortable in their living room. “Yeah,” she said to herself, “maybe.”

*           *           *

After a tumultuous three—no, it was two; get it right—days in the woods, the two found refuge and dined with their new acquaintances. One of them was to notice the woman’s necklace before the other. The draw to attention would determine the course. A silver shimmering deer skull with distinct humanoid attributes. It belonged to the boy. After the course was established, they would utter the rite.  

And remember: he’s hungry.

You got it?

*           *           *

Friday 9:37pm

Lei and Ari sat across the table from their two new guests Pate and Cal. Red-spattered plates piled in the sink. Conversation of Pate and Cal’s predicament and their travels gradually devolved into amicable small talk. The exchanges dominated by Pate or Ari. Cal seemed happy to finally have some wine in his system. Lei sat back and watched as her boyfriend made friends with new strangers. Something he was always good at. But they weren’t strangers anymore. They had shared a nice meal under the same roof and would share the night with them. Strangers didn’t share; they took. Friends shared. Right?

             She watched Ari periodically grab the bottle of cheap red wine and top off everyone’s glasses. Throughout the conversation, he seemed to do it autonomously. Lei’s glass was always first to be filled. It was nearing the top as he made his fourth round. Ari tipped the bottle over when he came back to his own. The last remaining droplets dribbled into his empty glass.

             “Uh-oh, folks. It would appear that I am dry while the rest of you aren’t. Cause for another bottle?” Ari made his way to the cupboard before anybody could answer. Cal smiled, raised his glass in agreement.

             “Looks like you could borrow some from your lovely girlfriend. Lei, honey, you barely touched your wine. Don’t care to partake?” Pate asked warmly.

             “I do. Just not so much tonight,” she replied under the shutting of cupboard doors.

             “That’s quite alright. I hope you don’t mind us indulging a bit after the day we’ve had. I would hate to impose more than we already are. Also, I want to apologize for snapping at you earlier. I was very stressed and only had my husband’s best intentions in mind.”

             “By all means,” she gestured openly to the table. Pate’s words hung suspended for a moment.

…after the day we’ve had…

           They sounded unnatural—almost foreign—in Lei’s head. “Also, you mean the days you’ve had. Right?” she corrected.

             “Hmm? Oh. Yes, of course. Silly,” Pate lowered her voice before she playfully announced, “My, it seems that wine must be doing the trick!” Her and her husband’s giggles slowly dissolved into a silence filled with Ari’s rummaging. Lei glanced around the table. Pate and Cal were smiling at her. Somebody coughed. The slow rise of crickets came through the still air. Lei forced a smile in return.

             Something twinkled from Pate’s neck. A small pendant dangled and shimmered in Lei’s eye. Hanging from her neck was a silver charm of a deer skull with branching antlers that acted as anchors for the chain twisted behind her head. Underneath the skull was a human ribcage. “That’s a rather interesting necklace you have.”

             “Oh,” Pate reached up and gently caressed the pendant. “Thank you. It’s my son.”

             Lei stopped for a second. Perhaps she didn’t hear her correctly underneath the clatter of bottles and cupboards. “Pardon?”

             “It’s my son’s. Well, it was.”

             “Oh.”

Was?

             “Eureka!” Ari exclaimed. The clanking of glass bottles and wooden doors stopped when he made his discovery. Everybody turned towards him. His arm sank deep into the cupboard. Grasped in his hand was a black-labeled square bottle with gold script. On his way back with four tumblers, he announced, “It seems the grapes have been depleted, but our trusty friend Johnnie Walker has valiantly come to our aid.” Cal’s eyes lit up and he sat upright in his seat like a dog awaiting his next treat. Pate gasped with an agape smile. He held the bottle and the bronze swill swished inside as he shook it. “Something to take the edge off. Eh, Cal?”

             Cal opened his mouth to speak when Pate interjected. “I’m sure he’ll be more than happy to partake.” She turned to Lei, “He’s been quite a fan of the bottle lately.” She chuckled. The whites of Cal’s eyes blotted over as he side-glanced towards his wife.

             Ari began to pour. Four small tumblers were filled with a finger of scotch. Notes of charred oak and toffee candy and peat smoke ascended into low air between the four of them. The smell hit Lei and she winced as the scents burned in her nostrils. Cal raised his glass to his face and inhaled a deep breath through his nose. A smile crept over his face as he exhaled. “Ah, the good stuff,” he muttered to himself and put the glass to his lips.

             It almost happened in the span of a blink. An effect of the wine, perhaps, but the world seemed to move slower and trail itself. It was practically a flash in the air. It seemed faster than the world should allow. Pate’s hand smacked across her husband’s face. The loud clap of her palm against his cheek stopped all other noises in the kitchen, save for the clatter of his glass dropping to the table. A sharp gasp escaped from Lei’s throat. Scotch dripped from Cal’s cheek. Lei and Ari’s eyes shot toward the married couple. Unblinking. Unbreathing. Cal looked down at the table. His hands retreated into his lap. Bad dog. Pate’s eyes shot daggers at her husband.

             “EXCUSE YOU,” she scolded. “We are guests of these lovely hosts. You dare drink without first toasting to their hospitality?”

             Cal painted the table with his gaze. The tumbler lay on its side and the last of the spirit dribbled outward. “I’m sorry,” he murmured.

             “Don’t apologize to me,” she commanded, “Apologize to our gracious hosts, you got it?”

             Cal’s eyes slowly rose from the table. Seconds or minutes or hours later, he met Lei and Ari’s. “I apologize.”

             “What do you apologize for?” Cal’s eyes dashed from Pate’s to Lei’s. Lei and Ari still hadn’t taken a breath.

             “I apologize for taking a drink without first toasting to your hospitality,” he repeated back to them.

             Ari squinted sympathetically and shook his head. “It’s t-totally fine. Totally,” his low voice stammered. The silence swelled the air between them and lingered. The walls of the kitchen spiraled inward, constricting the four in a spire of brazen funeral disquiet. Lei and Ari shot glances at each other.

           Pate reached across the table for the bottle of scotch. She paused before she grasped it and looked at Ari. “May I?” she asked in a tone her husband probably never heard before. Ari gestured with open palms to help herself. After she picked it up and refilled it, she placed the tumbler back into Cal’s hand. “Would you be so kind as to toast to our lovely hosts’ hospitality?” she commanded.

           Cal rose from his seat at the speed of a blade of grass maturing. The legs of his chair skidded across the tile. He held his glass to Lei and Ari. “To our very gracious hosts, Lei and Ari. We are very grateful for your unconditional hospitality,” he toasted. Then he turned to Lei, “May the night be kind to you.”

           “May the night be kind to you,” Pate softly repeated. The four raised their glasses and drank.

           Lei and Ari continued on mute. Someone may have coughed.

           “That was a lovely toast, Cal,” Pate calmly muttered as if the past two minutes never happened. “Now you may kindly be excused to the restroom to clean yourself up.”

Friday 10:20pm

The table. The glassware. The walls. Lei and Ari didn’t know where to look. Each spot seemed forbidden. Pate’s eyes especially so. Ari cleared his throat again. Lei tapped her fingernail on the table, creating a metronomic clink.

             Hours may have passed before Pate spoke again. “I’m rather sorry you had to see that. Please excuse me. It’s just that Cal has gotten rather…frivolous with his drinking habits lately. Ever since our son.” Lei’s finger stopped tapping. Ari’s eyes locked onto Pate. The air froze and coagulated.

             “Regular kids asked for video games or baseball gloves or toys for their birthdays. Our boy always wanted camping gear: a new tent, hiking shoes, trekking poles. It didn’t even have to be his birthday; he always wanted them” she chuckled to herself. “Strange kid, right? That was just his thing. Camping.

           “You see, we come out here and tell ourselves that it’s to honor his memory. That his spirit lives on in our little excursions. But really, it’s just a temporary escape. Staying in that house is just too much.

           “Cal is taking it much harder than I am. Not that I’m discrediting his memory or saying that it’s easy for me. He just continues to struggle with it as much as he did the day after the accident. He talks less and drinks more. I don’t blame him. I never do. People deal with loss in their own ways. There are the five or six stages of grief; that seems like something I went through. I’ve tried to help him, but it just pushes him further away. If I completely pushed him away with my help, I would never forgive myself. He’s all I have left.”

           The air around them suspended in time. The hanging light above encased them in a glowing orange dome.

           “But he continues to drink and drink. Poisoning himself. I’ve stopped making two cups of coffee in the morning because he used to pour some whiskey in his mug when I wasn’t looking. I’m not stupid. We all know what alcohol smells like. I thought maybe if I stopped making his coffee, he’d stop sneaking the whiskey. But he just pours it into an empty mug now.

           “Watching him destroy himself—self-destruct—it kills me. Really breaks whatever is left of my heart. Just makes me feel so…insignificant.”

           The words fell from her mouth like anvils, severing the ground apart into a spider web of crawling fissures. The aftershocks lingered until she began again.

           “When you watch someone you love change in front of you, it sha—,”

             They almost didn’t hear it. A deep, low grumble came from outside the cabin. A bellow of something struggling for air in pockets of sludge. A growl. Soft, measured thuds on the wooden porch out front thumped in deafening succession. A blade carved through Pate’s voice and sliced it out of the air, dissolving the words into letters and letters into the surrounding vacuous hole. Lei’s face reddened as the walloping of her heart drummed in her head. Ari’s chest heaved up and down. Pate tilted her head and held up a finger to her lips.

             Not a sound emanated from the woods. No crickets. No owls. Nothing but the marching beast in the midnight beyond. Every fall of its paw or foot or claw pounded like black coals dripping from a rucksack. Something was outside. Something was pacing their porch.

             Ari took Lei’s trembling hand, anchoring it to himself. Lei continued to look at the steam on the window. Probably from the meal or the heat of our alcohol-soaked bodies, she thought. She squinted to get a better look. All she saw were vague towel streaks and a murky black. The night remained static. Lifeless. Whatever it was, it wasn’t as close as it sounded. Or so she thought.

             A billow of warm air blasted against the window, ballooning more steam. It wasn’t from the inside. The thing outside was breathing on the window. Blurred images of the murky black painted the outside. Something moved with the black. Somethings. Jagged brown sticks moved in abhorrent synchronicity with the black. Antlers? From a bear? No. Couldn’t be.

           A hissing came from behind Lei. Ari shot a sharp ‘psst’ to get her attention. Her head swiveled like a ventriloquist’s rusted dummy. Ari’s voice remained mute while his mouth said “It’s okay. We’re okay. Stay with me,” his other hand pointed two fingers at his eyes. The beat of her heart boomed aloud. She put her hand over her chest and stared into her boyfriend’s eyes. Frozen with fear.

           Another growl and Lei’s whole body trembled. Ari stopped mouthing words to his love. Pate remained still. The beast began to bellow when a small noise chirped in the distance. The patter of its paws thumped quickly. Empty glassware rattled atop the table as the thing galloped away towards the chirping sound. A collection of snapping twigs and rustling shrubs and indistinct animal chatter faded and dissolved into the woods. The window returned to twilit indigo and the light overhead swayed back and forth.

           “Holy shit,” Cal stood in the hallway, “what’d I miss?”

Friday 10:27pm

Ari’s hands swept back and forth over Lei’s shoulders. His own hands trembled slightly. Her breathing was slowly returning to a natural rhythm while Pate and Cal discussed the encounter.

             “We clearly can’t leave tonight,” Pate announced to the table.

             “Definitely can’t. Damn, that thing is persistent,” Cal added.

             “Yes, you two are staying here tonight,” Ari concluded.

             “And, to be frank, it’s a good idea if some of us stay up for the night. Black bears are prone to backing off if you fight back. We don’t want it coming back while we’re sleeping,” Cal began, “Something to remember with bears: if it’s black, fight back. If it’s brown, stay down. If it’s white, say goodnight.”

           “Thanks for that, Cal. Real comforting,” Ari said and a smirk crept over Lei’s face.

             “Sorry,” Cal conceded. “Luckily, there are only black bears in Big Bear. The miners and loggers wiped out all of the grizzlies in the 1800s. They’re basically the mascot of this city but, today, you’ll only find them in a zoo. Black bears are the smallest of the three, so, if by any reason it comes back, it should be relatively easy to scare off.”

             “Can the smallest bear really make the house shake like that?” Ari asked. “It felt like tiny earthquake aftershocks.”

             “Definitely possible. A fully grown male can weigh over six hundred pounds. These old cabins have weaker wooden foundations. Something that heavy in a full gallop going thirty miles an hour could definitely rattle the inside.”

             The amount of information he rattled off the cuff surprised Lei. It didn’t seem out of the ordinary, with how much they presumably went camping. But it did seem rather convenient, given their current predicament. “How do you know so much about bears?” she inquired.

             Cal turned from Ari and paused for a moment. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down before he spoke under a somber veil. “Our little boy. He loves camping—”

             “Used to,” Pate interjected. “Our little boy used to love camping, Cal. I think your whiskey brain is showing a little bit. And I already told them.”

             Cal was flushed. He placed the back of his palm against his forehead. “Yes, of course. My mistake.” He continued, playfully, “Whew, you might be right about the whiskey brain, honey.” Cal chuckled and Pate watched him dramatically plop back in his seat with wide, sharp eyes. Her statue expression homed in on her husband.

             “I love that middle painting in the hallway,” Cal began in an effort to change the subject, “with the two bears together.”

             Lei paused for a moment. She thought she knew the painting he was talking about. Bears? More than one? “Two bears?” she asked.

             “Yeah, the one in the middle. One of them is standing over the other? It’s one of those optical illusion paintings. I always liked those. Where the object is one shape but its subject is something different entirely. Impressionism, maybe?”

             “It’s surrealism, you got it?” Pate corrected.

             “I’m sorry, but what painting are you talking about?” Lei asked, over-enunciating her words.

             “In the hallway. It’s a bunch of deer skulls on a plain but the shapes and details of the bones make it look like it’s actually two bears. Kind of like Dali’s painting of the ballerina, but it’s actually a skull?”

             “No, it is not,” the words shot out of Lei’s mouth like torpedoes embarking on a cataclysmic excursion. Ari’s hands froze on her shoulders. Pate turned toward her. Cal’s eyes widened. “That painting is of one bear. Its body is facing the opposite direction and the head is looking back at you. I basically studied it earlier today. You’re wrong,” the torpedoes careening towards calamity. “And how are you two convinced that was a bear outside? Am I the only one who felt it?” her voice rising with each word. “It shook the whole god damn cabin. Am I the only one who saw it in the window? There’s no way that…thing was the smallest type of bear. How the hell is everyone so god damn calm!?”

             The room froze. Even the ceiling light ceased its sway. All eyes were on Lei while her own bolted around the room. The room clouded and her face felt hot. She looked at the table and discovered her temporary salvation. She snatched her full wine glass and tossed it back. The gulps emanating from her throat practically echoed throughout the woods. She slammed the wine glass down and the stem snapped in two. Every guest flinched. Including her own boyfriend, none at the table had seen her act like this. Lei turned her hand over and saw red beading down her fingertips and trailing into her palm. Ari jumped out of his seat and tried to usher her to the bathroom to help her clean up. She put her hand on his chest and he stopped in his tracks.

             “I’m fine. I can do it,” she shot at him. Lei almost took the trip down the hall in three strides, the trailing wisps of her hair whistling through the air. The bathroom door slammed shut and rattled the bits of broken glass on the table.

             Ari looked at his guests and spoke after more silence. “I’m, uh…sorry. About that. She’s not usually like that,” Ari’s gaze descended to the table and he picked up pieces of glass. “We’ve been having a rough couple of months, and I think it’s just getting to her.”

             Pate placed her hand upon Ari’s. It stopped him from discarding the glass, so he dribbled the pieces into his pocket. Her teeth hid behind her smiling lips. “It’s not your fault,” she told him. His mouth smiled, but his eyes remained stoic, dripping with incredulity in the shrinking confines of the kitchen. Tremors quaked in his core.

             The bathroom door squealed open. Wooden floorboards groaned slowly until they paused. Fast footsteps followed in fierce fervor. Lei stormed the kitchen and the three guests looked up at her.

             “Where is it?” she interrogated.

             The three at the table looked around at each other inquisitively. “Where’s what?” Cal asked.

             “The painting you so incorrectly described. It’s gone. Where is it?”

*           *           *

             The painting. Remember its offering of reflection. The cabin was gifted the painting from the Yuhaviatam tribe after what happened to their boy. Their sweet boy. His first signs of transformation began early. Before he was born. The doctors told them to plan for twins. Their nursery room of the cabin was brightened with blues and pinks. They called it “vanishing twin” syndrome. It’s easier to accept one twin is absorbed for nutrients than the other twin being parasitic.

Two cribs sat across from each other. One stayed.

*           *           *

Friday 10:58pm

The four stood in silence. Lei’s eyes fired icicles toward Cal. After a couple of moments of an agape mouth, he finally spoke. “What do you mean it’s gone? I was just looking at it.”

             “Exactly. You were the last one to look at it. And now it’s mysteriously disappeared. What’d you do with it?”

             Ari stood up from his chair and made strides into the hallway to check. The arguing faded behind him. He also knew the painting, as he was admiring it earlier. The sounds of torpedoes firing increased in the kitchen behind. Sure enough, the painting was missing. In between two landscape portraits was a perfect lighter-colored outline of the frame against the wall.

             Why take it, though? It seemed so unimportant. It was just some rented painting on this rented wall of this rented cabin. What would Cal want with it? As unimportant as it was, Ari somehow felt wronged. It wasn’t his painting, but he revered it. Felt connected to it. And he wanted it back.

             Ari came back to the kitchen. He planted next to Lei. “She’s right, it’s gone.”

Cal quieted down. He and Pate looked at each other.

             “What did you do with it? And how did you get it off the wall? It was drilled on there,” Lei asked.

             Ari turned to his love. “No, it wasn’t.”

             “What?” Lei turned to her boyfriend.

             “It wasn’t drilled on there. It hung from a nail.”

             “I touched it earlier and it was tightly anchored against the wall,” she shot, unwilling to back down.

             “I touched it, too. It tipped.”

             Lei began to feel attacked. Why was Ari challenging her on this trivial detail? Pate and Cal sat back and watched the couple argue. Lei began to shout about their lack of trust. Ari threw back about her inability to notice. Pate got the feeling that this wasn’t so much about the painting anymore. Nobody seemed to notice the smile creeping on her face.

             The young couple continued arguing in symbiotic autonomy. Flames ejected from angry mouths. Daggers of ice and brimstone spewed about the battlefield. Pate and Cal were ghosts in the kitchen. Unseen amidst the volley of animosity and pain.

             Cal moved quietly underneath the shouts, like a thief in shadows of venom. His chair slowly backed from the table, hovering over the floor, careful to not make a sound. Lei and Ari never saw it coming. An empty wine bottle coursed through air and crashed down on the back of Ari’s head. His eyes went blank and he collapsed to the floor. Lei watched, bewildered and stunned, for just a moment before the same bottle collided against her head and the world went black. 

1:642

Ari awoke. Befuddled and lightly mystified. The glimmering stars of his world trailed themselves and multiplied. The kitchen was rotating and twirling. A ballooning and shrinking table materialized into view. The table he was just sitting at. Having dinner with his new friends, he thought. 

             Around the twisting world he saw colors. Unfamiliar colors coalescing in a whirlpool of indigo and emerald and orange. His head lolled around his neck like a marble sinking through sludge. He moaned as his bearings slowly returned to him. The world flashed in and out of existence as he blinked his way back to himself.

             Ari looked down at the table and heard various critters of the night. They were no longer muffled from the outside of the cabin. They were next to him. Surrounding him. With struggling effort, he brought his head up and looked around himself. Above him was the same kitchen light. Suspending from…what? Nothing. It floated in place. Below him was the same kitchen table. Except it was rotted. No, it was rotting. Before his eyes. The immaculate red oak disintegrated into a murky brown and chipped away at thousands of crawling termites that washed over the surface like a terrible rising black wave of insects.

             He looked around and saw the trees of the forest. They towered above him, reaching into the sky like oaken fingers grasping for the midnight moon above. The woods around him swayed smoothly as rising kelp at the bottom of the ocean. 

             Ari tried to rise from his chair, but he felt a tugging at his waist. Binding him to the chair was a rope of teeth coiled several times around his belly. Some teeth were human, some weren’t. 

             The noises around him stopped all at once. He heard nothing. Not even the echoes of the woods or the gasping midnight air. His world was muted. A row of trees ahead bent to the left and another row to the right, creating a path to him. The bending and cracking of trunks and twigs should have roared through the woods, but he heard nothing. 

             Then came the stomping. Far ahead into the woods were quaking blasts walloping into the earth.  Each thud reverberated into his heart. Something coming towards him. Something big. The kitchen light shot into the sky. Its peach bulb cast a giant orange dome, illuminating the woods. The thumps stopped and the thing reached him. 

             Standing before Ari was a repulsive creature of horrific magnitude. Tufts of wet black fur dripped from emaciated limbs. A putrid stench slithered its way into his nose and down his throat, burning with every inching crawl. He looked at the thing and slowly peered upward. Its chest was exposed, revealing a human rib cage within its cavity where two gray and purple sacs swelled and reduced. The creature crouched down to his level. Ari saw its face. Its vile visage with vicious and vulgar malevolence. He recoiled and shut his eyes. The creature spoke to him.

             “You know, I always thought that you talk too much.” The rows of teeth coiling around his waist began to shiver.

             He heard the voice. He had heard it before. It was the voice of a woman he loved. Ari opened his eyes and there she was. Lei stood towering over him. But she was…different. Her body was not her own. Atop her head were glossy and lustrous silver antlers that beamed brightly in the black sky. 

             “I’m sorry. I’m not myself. I’m scared that I may never be myself again. I’m plummeting. And I’m even more scared that I’m going to bring you down with me.” The ground below began to convulse and tremor. “I want you to know that I see.” Veins of the earth split and branched open into black. “I’ve always seen.” The trees around him fell into the dark. 

             Lei reached from behind her back. Anorexic black fingers opened its furry palm. Ari squinted at the shimmer in the thing’s hand. After some heavy blinks, its bright light dulled into a shape. A shard broken off from a wine glass. 

             Ari opened his mouth to speak, but she interjected. “Sometimes, you just need to cut the chatter.”

             He looked down at the glass. Then down at the rope of teeth which began to violently tremble against his belly. Her claw reached and patted him lightly across his face. Ari plummeted down into the weightless void below him.

             “Hey champ, you with me?”

Friday 11:33pm

Ari awoke. Light slaps across his face brought him back to coherence. The back of his head pulsed with pain. The room continued to spin. A thin smudge stood before him and spoke to him.

             “Hey champ, you with me?” the smudge asked.

             The blurs and duplicates of his vision slowly receded into themselves. The orbit of the room gradually equalized. It asked him again between a couple more slaps. As he regained his consciousness, the smudge became recognizable. It was Pate. His new dinner guest he so desperately regretted inviting inside.

             “There he is. Almost lost you two for a second,” she announced. Ari looked around the kitchen. The table was gone. Sitting next to him was the woman he loved. The woman he failed and continued to fail.

             “Welcome back, folks. I hope your heads aren’t hurting too bad. Cal apologizes for the restraints, as well. You’ll have to forgive us for it. You’d never do this willingly; nobody ever does.”

             Ari looked over at his love. Her head rose and fell like a pendulum. “Lei. Lei, are you okay? Love, can you hear me? Stay with me,” he told her, disregarding the talking smudge in front of him.

             “She’ll make her way back to us soon. We’ll have to wait for her; he likes his food live,” she told him.

             “What the fuck is going on? Why are we tied up?” an onslaught of further questions erupted from Ari without pause.

             “Hush now, little fish, or you get the hook again,” Pate playfully told him like some sadistic mother.

             “Might kill him, getting hit in the head again,” Cal included.

             “You’re absolutely right, Cal, honey. He’d never forgive us if his dinner was already dead. Spoiled.” Pate reached into her pocket and pulled out a pair of pliers. “Do you think he’d be okay if dinner was missing a couple of fingernails?” Crouched in front of him, she waved the tool through the air, staring deep into Ari.

             “Oh, I think he would be just fine with that, ma’am.”

             “What do we think, little Ari? Are we thinking of getting our nails done or are we done with the outbursts?”

             Ari remained silent, huffing deep breaths through his nose and glaring back at the stranger. Pate patted his face. “Good boy.”

             Pate stood and drifted away from the two prisoners. She held her hands up and gestured to the furniture and walls. “How are you enjoying your stay in our home? It’s a lovely place, isn’t it? It’s been here since the Yuhaviatam people.” She paced slowly through the foyer. “We have a bit of a…special relationship with them.” She slid a chair across the tile and sat a foot across from Ari. He could smell the vanilla shampoo in her hair as she leaned in.

             Pate held up the pendant dangling from her neck. “You remember this? Your lovely lady noticed it first. Unfortunate for her. I almost slipped up when she asked about it. That damn wine almost made us slip up a couple of times. Isn’t that right, Cal?”

             “Sure did, ma’am.”

             “That should teach us to be a little more restrained next time,” she turned back to Ari. “I apologize for not being entirely truthful with you two.” When Ari looked into her eyes, he didn’t believe it, but they seemed genuine. Almost regretful. “We didn’t lie about everything, though. Did we, Cal?” her husband agreed with her.

           She caressed the pendant once more. “Our boy. Our special boy. We love him so much. His room is upstairs, did you see it? Did you notice how big it is? The doctors told us we were having twins. A boy and a girl. We were so excited. And very nervous. I mean, you can’t actually plan for twins. Can you, Cal?”

           “No ma’am, you cannot.”

           “So we did our best to plan for the both of them. We gave them a big room. Everything was going perfectly. Then we went in for the last checkup.” Pate’s voice trembled and she paused for a moment. “They called it ‘vanishing twin syndrome’. Much easier to accept than a ‘parasitic twin’.

           “All every parent wants is a healthy baby, right? After what happened to our girl, we were so nervous for him to come out. We were ready for him, but nervous. Sure enough, he came out the most beautiful baby boy we’d ever seen. Wasn’t he, Cal?” Again, he agreed with her. “Not a scratch on him. We were elated,” she paused for a moment.

           “Before we left, one of the nurses pulled us aside. He said that his grandparents used to tell him stories as a child. Stories about his ancestors and their experience of some creature in the woods. Something of gluttonous rage. Insatiable greed. Some cannibalistic creature that fed off of the pain of others. It sounded like folklore. Myth. Stories to teach their young how to accept and appreciate what they have. Can you guess which tribe he was a part of?”

A rustling of trees came from beyond. Cal drifted towards the window.

           “In the beginning, we were just a regular new family. Our boy was perfect. He was our home. But as he became older, he became more…difficult. He wanted everything. Didn’t matter what it was, he would reach for it. He would throw tantrums when we withheld.

           “We had difficulty keeping the pantry stocked. He ate so much. So much, that one night it was empty. That night when I found him, I saw something. Something that made me desperately wish we had kept it stocked. He turned around, in his sweet innocence, my perfect boy, and his bottom lip was gone. Chewed off. Blood was dripping from his mouth. He was eating his own mouth. But here’s the thing: it didn’t bother him. In fact, he was smiling at me,” her voice continued to tremble and falter. “We had no idea what was happening to him, but we did have an idea of what happened to his sister inside me. The next morning, he was gone.”

           She turns away from Ari. Her gaze ascends. With sympathetic eyes, she looks up at you. Puzzled and disoriented, you look down at her words. Her soft voice says to you, When you watch someone you love change in front of you, it shakes you. Shakes your core. Shakes your whole world. It makes you plummet. Plummet down a path along the quaking earth. The path behind you begins to cave. The earth sends you into your own tremors, feeling its colossal strength. When you look behind you and see the collapse of the world you once knew, memories falling into darkness, that’s when you realize it: there’s no going back.

           Cal returned to his wife’s side. “I think he’s close,” he told her. 

           She looked back down to Ari, “Remember how there used to be grizzlies here? Well it wasn’t the miners that wiped them out. The tribe said what needed to be done in order to save the wildlife and keep our boy from starving,” Pate paused again. Her shoulders sank towards the earth as she changed course.

           “That painting in the hall is something special. Something from the tribe lives within it. It’s not entirely just a painting. It’s a mirror. A reflection of your pain. Something that makes you more…appetizing.” Ari looked over at his love as the weight of desperation fell heavily on his eyes.

           She paused once more. “This wasn’t always easy for us. It still isn’t. We never wanted it to be this way. But our boy needs to eat. There’s no other way.” When Ari looked back at Pate, he saw her genuine eyes had returned. This time, he believed them.

Friday 11:48pm

Lei’s world continued to spin as it brightened and blackened. Muffled speech pierced through clouds of gray. It was a familiar, unwelcomed voice. Her head rolled around to her left. A black smudge was crouched in front of her boyfriend. A second smudge stood behind the first and pointed at Lei. The kitchen went black several more times and the smudges dissolved into two familiar shapes. Two familiar strangers. 

            “Welcome back, little one. We’re so glad you could join us. Aren’t we, Ari?” Pate said.

            “Fuck you,” Ari fired back. Cal struck him in the nose and blood trickled to his lips.

            Pate rose and brought her chair close in front of Lei. She could see the wrinkles darting out from the corners of Pate’s eyes widening to smooth skin as she smiled at Lei. “I was just telling your lovely boyfriend here about my boy,” Pate told her as she reached for her necklace once more. “There is one thing I didn’t say about him. My boy loves attention.” She held the pendant up with her thumb and index and the golden glow of the kitchen beamed brightly back into Lei’s eyes. “And you noticed him first,” she told her as eyes widened with her smile. 

            Lei looked at the stranger before her. Whatever she was saying to her, she didn’t care. She didn’t want to be here. She wanted to go. She wanted to be home. 

            “Lei. Love. Look at me,” Ari pled. “I’m so sorry. I should have never brought you here.” 

            “Ah, but you did. And now my boy gets to eat,” Pate replied and she turned back to Lei. “You see, as I was telling your rather appetizing boyfriend here, my boy was—,” she began when Lei interrupted.

            “Fuck this. Fuck you. And fuck your boy,” Lei blasted back. 

            The whole kitchen recoiled. Pate shot back in her chair with full eyes. Cal stood dumbfounded; more than he usually did. Even Ari stopped for a moment to look at the woman tied next to him. 

            “You talk too much. Just cut the chatter, already,” she shot at Pate.

            The words clanged in Ari’s head. Cut the chatter. Something he remembered. The glass shard. The one from the wine glass shattered from Lei’s frustration. Residing in his back pocket. He reached inside.

            “My. What fire you’ve discovered. Where was this before? We didn’t notice it at all. Did we, Cal?”

            “No ma’am, we did not.”

            “We warned that one over there for his outbursts. But it seems like you don’t care to hear the warning. So,” she began as she reached for the pliers, “I’ll just show you what happens with your tantrum.”

           Pate stood up and walked behind Lei. Ari began to shout at her, telling her to stop, to take his instead. Cal yelled at Ari to be quiet. Pate reached down to Lei’s fingertips while the room was filled with uninterrupted yelling and panic. The pliers clamped down on Lei’s black index fingernail. Lei looked ahead with a brow furrowing deep down towards gritted teeth. Immense discomfort quickly rose to agonizing pain in her finger as the pliers tugged at the nail. Pate wiggled the teeth of her tool underneath the tender skin to get a better grip. Lei rapidly shot gusts in and out through her nose while the men continued to shout. Another tug on her finger. Lei felt the skin of her nail bed slowly tear upwards from her finger. Pate peeled off the nail and that’s when Lei screamed. 

Then she pulled off another.

            Ari felt a rage that exploded out of him. He screamed at Pate and Cal, spewing obscenities and promises of their own pain. The walls came rushing towards him as he watched tears roll down Lei’s stricken face.

            Red trailed from her fingertips and dripped onto the floor. Pate circled around and sat back down in the chair before the woman. Lei was stomping her feet in pain. Pate held two red-spattered fingernails in her open palm. Lei continued to wail inside herself, her face contorted with torture. Pate carefully clasped the two fingernails together with the mouth of the pliers. Her other hand clutched Lei’s neck to hold her still. She held the pliers to Lei’s mouth. Lei tossed her head from side to side. 

            “Open.” Pate commanded. Lei continued to convulse in her chair, shaking her head away from the pliers. “Open wide, or I pull another.”

            Lei continued to recoil in pain. She stopped tossing her head around and looked at her own fingernails being fed to her. The orange glow reflected off Pate’s necklace and back into her eyes. She looked at the pendant dangling from Pate’s glowing neck. 

           Lei lunged forward, teeth baring. She latched onto Pate’s neck with her teeth and bit down. The taste of metallic beads dripped on her tongue. With all her dwindling strength, she yanked backward, taking the necklace with her. A spew of red shot outward from Pate’s neck and she fell backward. Lei looked down at the helpless stranger on the ground. She returned the patch of Pate’s flesh and spit it on the floor next to her. She had opened wide.

            Ari’s fingers dripped red as the glass shard furiously cut into the binds behind him. He watched Cal tend to his wife as red continued to dribble out of her neck like an overturned wine barrel. Pate looked up at her husband while she pressed down on her neck. Through bloodied spits and exhaustive gasps, she spoke to him.

            “The necklace…” she coughed, “She took the necklace…get it…or he won’t—,” she tried to continue before the thuds returned.

            The steam on the window returned. A booming bellow broke into the house and shook through the floor. The house froze. Time stood still and hung in the air in one fleeting moment. The thing returned to the doorstep. Cal scrambled for Pate’s bloodied necklace while she stared at the door. The thick silence hung high into the air. Then it collapsed down on everyone after Pate spoke in a hushed monotone.

           “Cal.”

            The front door exploded into a shower of wooden splinters and jagged glass. A roaring barbaric monstrosity howled from the porch and shuddered the kitchen. A gaunt, malnourished arm of wet fur black as coal reached inside and slithered to Cal’s leg. Ivory claws sank inside of his bandaged calf. He yelped as he was pulled into the night. Lei screamed. Ari continued to cut. Pate yelled her husband’s name. 

            Pate scrambled across the floor and slipped on her own blood while she attempted to rise to her feet. She continued to shout after her screaming husband. Cal’s cries crumbled in the collection of copses. Pate stumbled towards the door, slipping on shards of glass as a trail of red followed behind. She rushed to the woods outside, failing to notice Ari’s free hand untying himself. 

            He rose from his chair and dashed to Lei with the shard of glass still cradled in his bleeding hand. He spun her chair around and she then faced away from the front door. The adrenaline coursing through his veins overshadowed the pain in his hands as he began to carve through the binds around Lei’s wrists. Carnage continued in the woods behind them. Pate shouted at her son as Cal’s screams grew in violent volumes. His cries echoed throughout the woods of the witching hour and into the kitchen until they transformed into a gurgle. Ari continued to cut. He had to get his love out. He had to get them both out. The glass sliced into his fingertips as he frantically hacked through the ropes.

             The woods echoed one last cry. “Don’t you dare! I am your moth—,” and the trees stopped. 

           Ari paused for a moment as the silence drifted in the kitchen. Lei swiveled her head at her boyfriend behind her and urged him to continue. Ari snapped back and continued to carve in panic. The small threads of the rope splintered and snapped apart. Its thickness dwindled as Ari progressed.

             A loud thud stopped the kitchen from moving. A putrid stench of carrion and viscera invaded. Ari’s hands stopped. His gaze slowly rose upward. Then they both heard it. It was inside with them. A wet, guttural groaning grew in thundering vehemence. His hyperventilating breaths halted. Another thud shook the kitchen, sending vile vibrations and ferocious fissures through the floorboards. Ari looked down at his love and rested a hand on her shoulder. The surrounding walls blossomed open like the indecently beautiful petals of a black rose.

             She felt one more cleave on her wrists. Then, a snap as the rope loosened. All was quiet. Ari exhaled all the air left inside his lungs. His last remaining breath gently brushed through the bristles of her hair. Lei felt the warmth of Ari’s cheek against her ear. A warmth so inviting and fatally beatific. Ari released her shoulder and she felt his whisper.

             “I promise you, you will be happy one day. I lo—.”

Lei cried his name as the warmth from Ari, her love, was taken into the woods and he never felt anything again. 

Saturday 12:01am

Lei remained in her seat. Her wrists free and unbound. A leafless tree unearthed from its roots. Her shoulders trembled as the tears dried on her cheeks. She had to move. Another moment and she would be taken next. The sliced rope lay coiled in a pool of blood. She wasn’t sure whose.

            She scrambled to her feet and rose with the swelling panic inside of her. Lei spun around towards where the front door used to be. The remnants of chaos lay strewn about the foyer and kitchen. Blood and wood and glass and more blood splayed about the floorboards. She ran towards the hole in the wall and into the night. 

            The woods were silent. Lifeless. Deceptive. Lei came without warning. She ran towards the car and saw four wheels resting inside deflated tires. She began to sprint down the dirt road. Tufts of dust spurted underneath her feet. Rocks dashed outward. Twigs splintered. The only sound of the night was the heaving of her chest. She ran some more.

            A miasmic thundering of the beast’s moaning exploded from the woods. Lei continued to run on the main road, refusing to look back at the thing. The glow of the cabin dwindled behind as the woods slowly faded into black and blue. Blurred images of indigo teeth in begrimed thickets and the sallow orb of the midnight sky whirred past her as her speed increased. 

           The strides of her feet continued in great distance when the earth rumbled underneath. Quick and measured quakes continued behind her. She felt it shake the land as it came after her. Lei didn’t dare look at the wretched thing, fearing she may trip or slow down or freeze in dismay. She bolted from the main road into the teeth of the trees.

           Saplings and shrubs scraped at her bare arms, slicing into the skin. She dodged the thick stumps and brushed between dead brambles. The ground continued to shiver behind her until the thing roared once more. She no longer felt the tremors of the earth, but the crowns of the trees began to violently rustle overhead. Lei continued to run as the canopies above continued to convulse. A shower of leaves and sprigs rained down on her face and arms, trailing slices of red in their wake. 

           Lei ran and ran. The thick black of the woods slowly faded ahead of her into a dying orange glow on the horizon between the trees. What was that light? Civilization? Fruits of the woods continued to cascade. She ran until her feet thronged with pain. They may have been bleeding. The dying orange glow ahead was revived into a breathing dome of light. She saw buildings. Lodges. Homes. 

           Lei ran. The edge of the woods was in sight. Adrenaline coursed through her as she dashed towards salvation. The trees made one more sound.

           The looming tower of earth ahead of her began to shiver. A roar from above. As she blew past the copse, something long and black reached down. The orange bloomed ahead. A curved ivory scythe dipped in red glimmered in the coral glow and swooped down towards her. She ducked underneath. Red fire burned on her scalp as tufts of her hair were ripped out. Her feet collided into each other and she was weightless.

           She landed on a bed of grass. She quickly struggled to her feet and ran. Lights beamed into her vision. The landscape ahead of her blossomed into a wide open plain of green and orange. Not a tree in sight. Civilization. The woods behind her screamed in distant agony. She turned around. All was still. The tree heads stopped swaying. The branches stopped snapping. Nothing moved or made a sound. The ghastly thing of pain remained in the woods. Minutes or days passed until the woods shrieked at her. A great booming roar blasted from the thickets, from the fog of nightmare.

           Lei thought of everything that happened in the night. Her fingers panged. Her head throbbed. Her feet blistered. Then she thought of Ari. Her love. What he had done for her. How she would never see him again. Her lip quivered. In the middle of the beast’s bellow, she screamed back. All the loss and pain and rage exploded out of her. The thing in the trees stopped. It roared again and she screamed at it once more. Louder. She continued to bellow at the woods until her voice was hoarse and throat scraped. 

Ari’s last words echoed in her head. 

I promise you, you will be happy one day…

After everything she just went through, would she? She didn’t know. But she was free.

           Lei looks up at you from the trees. You look down past the words, past the page, past the trees, and meet with her. With everything she has left, from a face devoid of tears, she screams at you and your earth no longer shakes.

---

Follow My Stories

Get new stories delivered directly to your inbox.