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My Woods
The gravel trail leads me into the woods, and the trees welcome me with warm hands on this cold afternoon, their canopy inviting, their sentinels watching over me. As I walk I avoid the faces. There are phantoms all around, watching, waiting around every bend, hiding in the trees.
The squirrels are hungry and take a few peanuts from my hand only to run away and chatter their thanks. My favourite chipmunk is out looking for food. He takes peanuts and sunflower seeds from my hand, filling his cheeks. He runs into his home and comes out for another mouthful. He’ll be okay this upcoming winter; I'll make sure.
I call out to the Chickadees and they call back, eager. One feeds from my hand, sings his famous onomatopoeia that’s become a part of me.
Soon I arrive at the most breathtaking sight, and I stand awestruck for a while. The clouds are a divine city for the gods. I realize I’m standing there mouth agape, so I sit on the gazebo stairs and get comfortable. I couldn’t say how long I sat there staring at the white mountains dotted by angelic castles.
Eventually sitting hurts, and the Sun hides behind a dark cloud approaching the utopia; surely a battle will begin, good vs evil, eternity in action. With a smile and tears in the cold wind, I return to the trees.
I hear children, their song enlightening, fragile and beautiful. Two women are out here to let the kids play. I keep walking as they walk away, deeper into the woods.
I’m almost back to where the woods greeted me when I hear a man’s voice, insistent and intrusive. He’s holding a cell phone before his chatty lips, oblivious to anything but himself. He wears an expensive black suit and a red scarf. No one else talks; he has headphones on. He passes by and his cologne is strong. He does not acknowledge me. I notice that his headphone jack is unplugged.
Odd, I thought as I left the woods. A man in fancy clothes and a red scarf talking to a phone with no one at the other end.
Like the modus operandi of a serial killer, I thought. What a great story! I take three hurried steps on my way home then walk slowly, hesitantly. What if my story was unfolding right now? I stop and turn to look behind me.
The story could wait. I had to be sure all was safe in my woods. How dare a stranger upset the balance that nature worked so hard to achieve? I followed my gravel trail back into my woods. At each step I increased my pace, till I was running.
At the first fork, I stopped to smell the air. The man’s cologne was strong as death, the smell coming from the left. After a dozen steps, I look right at the clearing. Instead of the usual serene environment I see red. I move slowly to find out why.
I stop in my tracks. The two female guardians were here, and I throw up. There is blood covering the ground around two of the trees, also dead and covered in old man moss, a slow silent death.
The women had died faster, painfully. The two women were tied to trees. Their clothes had been cut roughly off their bodies. Cuts showed where the knife caught the skin. Each woman was cut from throat, down the sternum and onto the belly button. The skin had been peeled aside and the inside exposed, breasts hidden behind the flesh, rib cage no longer holding its singing soul.
The kids! I couldn’t smell the man’s cologne anymore, just the metallic smell of blood coagulating. The freshness of the blood reveals that this was done very recently. How could one man do this much damage in such a short amount of time?
I run back to my trail. My children were in danger, and this man couldn’t have them. The smell was back and I doubled my efforts; my trail was well known to me: I could walk my paths blindfolded.
Ahead was where I had seen my kids and my guardians and I slowed for the bend. The man was standing over the children. Blood pooled beneath their bodies, stabbed many times in the belly.
It was time to stop this insanity. I charged the man and he started to get up but I’m already there, my knife in hand. It slides across the man’s throat, opening the skin and tearing through arteries. The blood rained from the wound for a few squirts then stopped.
I grab my white scarf from around his neck. Hadn’t it been red? I wasn’t sure. It was covered in blood. I look at my hands and they are smeared with blood. Looking down my front, blood drips, soaking wet.
It didn’t matter. I had my scarf back and I wrapped it around my neck with a humph escaping my lips. Anger for the man bubbled like hot oil through my whole body. How dare he steal my scarf, enter my woods, kill my people that I protected every day?
I adjust my clothes and rub some dirt off myself. How did I get this dirty? I look down at my stranger lying over my kids and kick him off. His cell phone falls from its pocket onto the ground. There were headphones connected.
Had I seen wrong? The cell wasn’t plugged in, and the man wore a red scarf. My scarf was white when it was stolen. I smelled the air. All I smelled was death; there was no cologne smell. I lean over the man; his dead surprised eyes stare at me accusingly.
My head spins with confusion. I try to get the story straight in my head. I had been walking, same as every day, when I fell in the mud by the marsh. Then I saw my kids and my guardians. Then I saw my killer. What else could have happened? I look down at myself again, getting cold in the chill air, to find the mud was blood again.
I had to get home. Something was wrong. My wife would understand but would my son? I snuck all the way home, avoiding the road. My house treated me warmly and embraced me with my heat.
I go to my son’s bedroom and open my door. He’s sitting in my computer chair as usual, his boney hand resting on my mouse. His skull leaned over to the right. He always leaned to the right; his skeletal neck must hurt something severe. He can’t hear me through my headphones.
Why did everyone have my things?
The room smelled of cologne. I left and closed the door, confused. I cross my house down my hall to my bathroom and found my wife lying in my bathtub. Her skeleton seemed comfortable in my bubbles.
“Why are you still bathing”, I ask her. She grins at me. Realization started kicking in. Memories flooded.
It was me this whole time.
But in my house on my planet in my universe, others would take from me and claim it for their own. My clothes, my cars, my lives to do with as I wish.
Read Angel with the Hear-Shaped Birthmark on Kindle. It’s sequel, Rainbow Demon, coming soon.