Tag: horror

Categories
Short Fiction

Lucidity

Isiah was awoken suddenly, pulled from a dream of home, and he almost fell from his burlap hammock as he came to focus in the dimly lit sleeping quarters of a whaling ship. His friend and shipmate, Cormack, was shaking Isiah with eyes wide in excitement. “It’s a whale Isiah! Our first whale!”

               With a groaning lurch the ship turned suddenly, throwing Cormack backwards into the balanced arms of a heavily tattooed Greenlander who pushed him back onto his feet and bellowed, “Find your legs greenhorn, it’s time to earn your pay!”

               The two sheepishly dodged more experienced crewmembers as they snuck topside, scanning the chaos for the first mate. They saw him holding himself above the main deck on some railing, shouting orders as the captain wrestled shirtless with the steering wheel behind him.

               The first mate was a younger man, tall and thin with closely cropped sideburns. He had a kindness to him that not all of the seamen could boast of, so the two younger boys tried to stay within his eyesight. “40 yards off starboard!” hollered the captain as harpoons were passed out and whaleboats were lowered along the side of the larger ship. Isiah could feel his stomach turning in the excitement and a sour belch of pemmican and grog breached his lips.

               The first mate pointed at Cormack and Isiah, “Greenhorns! Climb the mainmast and don’t let that whale out of your sight!”

               Cormack sprinted ahead and jumped up the rope ladder, always having been the stronger of the two. Isiah followed as quickly as his unsteady feet would allow. Clearly there only needed to be one lookout, but both of the boys knew the order was to their benefit. This would keep them out of the way until they were adept enough to be safe amidst the action.

               As Isiah neared the halfway point of the mast, his soft hands stinging against the rough salty ropes, a wild force knocked the entire ship and it lurched to the side. Isiah kept ahold of the rope, but the recoil nearly tore his arm from its socket. He could hear a commotion from below but was too afraid to look down. He regained composure and double timed his way up to meet Cormack in the crow’s nest, but his compatriot greeted him with a white face and wide eyes. Isiah turned back and looked down at the deck.

               Several men had been thrown overboard by the shock, and a cacophony of curses rang out as some men threw ropes overboard in a rescue attempt. Others lay in pain, crippled with injury. “What did we hit?” Asked Isiah breathlessly. Cormack shook his head, “No Izzy, it’s what hit us. The whale hit us!”

               The first mate was frantically sprinting about the deck, tossing men back to their stations and trying to unstuck the whaleboat that had gotten wedged to the side of the ship. He looked up at the gaping mouths of the two boys with eyes wide and fearful, “Greenhorns, where is that damned whale?!”

               Without a word the two boys took to the different sides of the ship and began scanning, trying to ignore the furious curses of the captain as he yelled at them for losing sight. The captain’s left arm hung at his side as the muscles in his right arm furiously worked against the strain of the wheel.

               Suddenly Cormack was hollering, “Whale! Port side! 40 yards! No, 30 yards-er, it’s coming for us!”

               Isiah turned to see a small dark figure speeding towards the ship, not nearly the monster of a whale he’d imagined capable of such aggression. The first mate’s voice broke as he hollered, “Brace for impact!”

               The whale actually leapt from the water, against the side of the ship, and for a moment before the impact Isiah could see a stark white form atop the whale’s head that resembled a foppish powdered wig. That was the image burned into his mind as the whale collided with the port side of the ship and the mast whipped to and fro, throwing the boys roughly against the sides of the crow’s nest. Isiah saw Cormack roll over a side, his fingers gripping the edge. Before Isiah could get his feet underneath him, the fingers disappeared and he could only watch in horror as his best friend fell quick and hard to the deck, landing with a sickening thud.

               Isiah had no time to react, even if he could. The mast began to strain and splinter below and he felt his guts lurch as gravity betrayed him. The horizon turned on him as the mast rolled to the side of the ship and he jumped for the water before impact. The cold Atlantic water hit him like a wall, shooting up his nose and shocking his brains.

               He instinctively fought for the surface and found himself surrounded by debris.  A damaged whale boat floated nearby and he made his way, the strength of terror and desperation pulling him over the side as he gasped and shivered. Within the moment he came to his senses and sat up, looking over the side of the boat at the whaling ship that was now almost completely broken in half, the sides covered painted with a dark blood.

               He had no oar and futilely splashed at the ocean with his arms trying to change course back towards some of the men struggling in the water, but he watched as one by one they were pulled down into the deep. It struck Isiah that this was still the work of the whale. It was methodically drowning each of the men, one after another. He realized that he was in as much peril as anyone, floating alone in this small whale boat and he fell back on his ass, frozen in terror.

               As the last of the men were silenced, Isiah held the edge of the whale boat with white knuckled anticipation. Suddenly on the slowly sinking ship he saw the first mate standing tall, a harpoon in hand. The man screamed defiantly into the ocean and threw whatever he could, attempting to draw the creature in close. Isiah saw the back of the beast before the first mate could, it sped towards the sinking ship from behind the first mate’s sightlines. Isiah sat up and began to point and holler out, “Whale sir! The whale!”

               The man turned towards Isiah just as the whale dipped below the surface, and saw Isiah waving his hands frantically but didn’t seem to be able to hear him.

               Out of the waves leapt the monster, and Isiah saw it clearly for an instant. A small, dark thing. Harpoons and pieces of the ship hung off of its sides and the water falling from it as it breached the ocean surface was full of blood. For a moment, he thought the whale was attempting to jump over the entire ship and the first mate held his harpoon aloft toward the soft underbelly. But the trajectory slowed, and the mass of flesh came down directly atop the mate and the middle of the ship with a sickening and final crunch.

               Isiah stared in disbelief and horror at the wreckage, the whale shuddered atop the mess and lay still. A deafening silence overtook Isiah as he sat alone in the only remaining whale boat, adrift in the ocean, watching the only ship he’d ever worked on slowly sink below the surface.

               At night the moon dominated Isiah’s world. Everything else was blacker than pitch, but the moon shone bright and reflected across the water as a sheer white path, as if it was reaching out to him. His exhaustion eventually beat out the cold and uncomfortable oak bottom of the whale boat. Laying on his back, he was overcome with the sensation of sinking. He jolted awake several times expecting the boat to be taking on water, but as he adjusted to the feeling the sink became heavier and he let it drag him into sleep.

               His mind exploded into a world of color and sensation. Isiah knew that he was dreaming, the trauma of the whale attack couldn’t have left his mind. He felt himself floating through his own mind, traveling rapidly through different memories. His father’s print shop, the smell of his mother’s hair, Cormack’s laugh. The experiences of a lifetime floated past him rapidly and he smiled in acknowledgement of them, but had no control to stop. It was as though he was being piloted through his own life, until suddenly the experience froze upon the face of Cormack. The young man smiled and spoke reassuringly. “Don’t worry Izzy, I’ll make sure you get home.”

               When Isiah woke up, the whale boat was beached upon the sandy shore of a small island next to a freshwater inlet. He paced the beach at first, not believing his own luck. After drinking greedily and washing his face, he wandered back to the whale boat and sat in the morning light trying to come to terms with the previous events. He stared into the horizon as he remembered the dream state that he’d experienced. Had Cormack really appeared to him?

               He looked down at his feet and noticed that next to the whale boat was a neat pile of shellfish and a few whitefish as well. After grabbing the bounty away from the surf he split a fish and began pulling at the insides, eating the flesh raw. He used a dull steel knife he’d found in the whaleboat and tested several rocks until he found one that reliably sparked against the metal.

               Soon he had a fire going and cooked the crab and the fish, eating until his belly was warm and full. The speed at which his survival needs had been met left him with a rising emotional tide. All of the men lost, including his best friend, and here he sat fortunate enough not only to survive but to thrive through sheer luck.

               Night brought no end to the survivor’s guilt that wracked his brain, and the constant nagging worry of what to do next weighed heavily on him. After hours of tossing around on the beach, he decided to give the hard surface of the whale boat a try, after all he had slept wonderfully there the night before. Sure enough, as soon as he’d laid down on the wood he felt the same similar pull and let himself go deep into his own mind. This time, however, he didn’t travel through his memories. Instead he found himself recounting all of the knowledge he’d learned in school and from his father at the shop. Even things that seemed simple enough to Isiah that he’d never given them a second thought. He found himself explaining the alphabet to himself and recalling the books that he’d read. Mathematics, the Bible, and whatever science he knew of came to the forefront.

               Then he drifted passively across the land around where he had grown up, stopping to focus on odd things such as certain plants, animals and flowers. He was transfixed by a deer that he’d seen up close as a young boy and some chittering squirrels climbing up and down trees. And trees! He’d never thought twice about the forests near his home but now every moment he’d spent gazing at the old growth seemed weighted as emotionally as the faces of his family.

               Isiah woke with the sun rising and once again found a curious pile of seafood piled up near the boat. Not knowing what to think, he wandered around the shallows looking for any hint of what could be causing his fortunate predicament but it wasn’t until he neared the boat that he heard a voice in his head that wasn’t his. “Isiah, do not be afraid.”

               He jumped and looked around the beach, but no one was there. The voice wasn’t a noise, he wasn’t hearing it through his ears. It seemed to echo around his mind. “Who are you?” He asked the absence.

               Suddenly his mind flashed to the first vision he had of the whale that had attacked, to the white mass on top of its head. He felt himself falling to his knees as a flood of experiences completely foreign to him rushed through his senses. The darkness of the ocean, fleeing from fish and other predators, swimming not with arms or legs but through an odd locomotion of a body he was unfamiliar with. He saw the whale in its own environment, he saw it allow him protection and he clambered upon it and entered the thoughts of it. He saw the world from the view of an aquatic mammoth. He saw the whale’s mother taking it up for breaths of air, nursing, learning how to hunt.

               Most of all, he experienced the sounds. Isiah had always thought of the ocean as a silent place, but the rich and overwhelming songs that the whales were singing to each other were rich with meaning and intricately beautiful. He felt his physical body sob with emotion as his mind was worlds away, feeling the different echoes of the behemoths as if they were strokes of a paintbrush in his brain. He saw himself as the whale meeting an albino squid that was fleeing a group of hooded seals. He felt the squid gently wrap its arms around the whales head and he comprehended two non-human creatures communicating. He, as the whale, chased the seals off. The two animals remained paired and Isiah experienced a bond he could never have imagined.

               Suddenly, as Isiah the whale surfaced for air after a morning of filter feeding the two creatures noticed a ship. Isiah instantly recognized the ship.

               He tried to pull his mind out of this experience, screaming as he felt himself locked into the whale’s perspective as it was pierced with harpoons. He felt the panic, and the squid’s fury. The squid took over control of the whale in this moment, and the whale began speeding toward the ship in single minded determination. Isiah was split between the perspectives of control and helplessness, terror and fury.

               Isiah lay exhausted on the beach, having lived through the life and death of the same animal he’d left home to hunt. Dried tears left rough patches of salt on his cheeks. When he was finally able to sit up, he noticed that the white mass of squid was peeking around the side of the whale boat. Somehow he’d already known it was there. Isiah crawled up and over the side of the boat and laid flat, offering his mind to the squid for communication. He felt forgiveness, and a communion of souls. He did his best to share the location of his home on the Atlantic coast, and the squid roughly indicated that it would be able to help him return.

               The journey took a little over a week, the squid propelled the small whale boat while Isiah used a makeshift oar that he’d crafted from the island driftwood with the dull knife. The squid would stop for a few hours a day to hunt, and it always brought food for Isiah as well. He suffered a lack of water but the squid was able to communicate that the eyeballs of the fish it was providing were a source of refreshment, and rain came mercifully on the fourth day.

               As they travelled, Isiah lay on the boat with closed eyes and communicated with the squid. It was beginning to learn to use rudimentary English and seemed to be excited by the concept of this new form of communication. Finally they reached the shore of Isiah’s small fishing village, and as they neared land a group of onlookers grew into a crowd as people recognized him. He was weak when they came out to rescue him, and his body collapsed almost as soon as he was in the hands of fellow humans.

               It took him several weeks to recover, which he spent reading, to his father’s delight. Unlike other sailors that had been rescued from sea, Isiah did not show a shyness toward the ocean. In fact, as soon as he was able to, he wandered down to the shoreline and spent hours each day laying in the bay. His family and neighbors worried that the trial of his survival must have addled his mind in some way, but the doctor assured his parents that he was sound.

               Isiah spent the rest of his days reading books and floating in the ocean, secretly allowing the squid access to all of the knowledge that he could attain as recompense for the death of the whale, and repayment to his aquatic savior. He never told a soul, for fear that the squid would be hunted and captured as a curiosity. In return the squid took Isiah’s mind places that no human could hope to experience, and the man’s life, though seemingly simple from an outside perspective, achieved a depth and richness so vast that as he grew to old age he only became happier and happier. Even as his body aged, he expressed to anyone that would listen that his life far surpassed what he could have hoped for. People listened in amusement, patient acknowledgement, and sometimes rude disbelief. It never mattered to Isiah.

               After the old man finally passed away, his family honored his wishes. They took his body from his deathbed out to a small flat raft, that they pushed out to the sea, past the breaking waves. The whole town gathered to see him float away, in pious remembrance of a rare survivor.

The crowd watched in unknowing horror as pale white tentacles reached out of the water and enveloped the body, dragging it off the raft and down into the sea that he had known better than any human alive or dead.

Categories
Short Fiction

Tree Line

   

     A cold night in October was the first time the old man saw the eyes at the tree line. The moon was silhouetted in a glow he knew to mean that frost was coming. One hand was tucked into his canvas coat pocket, warm with fleece. The other was mostly numb, alternating between the cigarettes he was chain smoking and the wine he drank from a chipped black coffee mug.

 

     He sat on his porch bathed in the halogen light that buzzed above over the moths plinking against the opaque glass. The porch light shone as far as the ditch on the other side of his dirt driveway. Beyond the ditch was a grassy hill that ended in a dense thicket of woods that stretched for thousands of acres and only ended halfway up a nearby mountain range. The old man’s cabin was as close as he could get to the wilderness without abandoning society completely. A rusty old blue Ford pickup was his remaining link to human contact and he used it as rarely as he could.

 

     There had been plenty of wildlife around. Elk passed through in droves. Coyotes bickered nearby. The he mountain beavers would come, washed out of their burrows scared and hissing. The old man killed the first, raising a shovel over his head and bringing it down quickly. He saw the fear and confusion in the animal’s eyes, and felt the familiar surge of power in his veins. He buried it with a eulogy out of habit. But the words felt sarcastic and blasphemous. He learned to turn the other cheek and allowed the critters to weather the storm under the Plexiglas of the porch.

 

     The animals disappeared when the eyes came. It grew so quiet that the old man could hear his cigarettes burn with every inhale, and he fingered a cross necklace he kept warm in a pocket. The silence crept on for days. Every night he sat on the porch and stared back at the eyes. He met their glowing crimson gaze, not with defiance, but with a passionless resignation. He considered his continued existence a penance.   

 

     On the fourth night, the eyes grew bold and stepped out from the tree line. They were perched from a monstrous height, and swayed unsteadily. As the attached creature drew close to the ditch, the old man pulled a flashlight up and for a horrible moment illuminated the visitor.

 

     The eyes belonged to a grotesque humanoid form, gaunt and pale, with skin in tatters. It looked as though a corpse had been stretched and pulled taught over a set of bones belonging to something larger and distantly related.

 

     It froze in the light and in a delayed response, slowly threw its gangly arms up over its face and took a step back.

 

     The old man lost his nerve. He bolted for the door and slammed it shut, impotently flicking the doorknob to a locked position. He turned out all of the lights and crawled into his bed, shaking and hiding under an army surplus blanket like a child.

 

     He could hear the thing slowly investigating the cabin, dragging its feet and running its hands along the exterior. When the sounds finally stopped, the old man made the mistake of looking from beneath the blanket. He found the entire room bathed in a red glow, the eyes shining through his curtain, aimed directly at him as if the creature was using something other than sight to observe him.

 

     The night passed long and quiet.

 

     By morning, hunger and lack of sleep emboldened the old man. A hesitant check through the windows showed no signs of the creature and the old man breathed a sigh of relief and finally fell asleep for several hours.

 

     He awoke sweating from a nightmare in which the sun followed him wherever he went, burning through buildings and blistering his skin. He made coffee and slipped on rubber boots to examine the outside of the cabin.

 

     The creature seemed more a dream than the nightmare he had, but there was evidence enough to convince the old man of his unfortunate sanity. Instead of tracks there were ruts worn in the dirt that formed parallel circles around the cabin where the creature’s path must have been. The tracks got closer and closer to the cabin until they diverged from the pattern and formed a straight line to his bedroom window.

     He finished his coffee and got into the old blue pickup truck, driving 35 minutes to Amgoss, the nearest town. As he passed the local high school, he noticed the sign out front for the first time. “Home of the Windegos!”

 

     He parked a block away from the local library, a baseball cap pulled low over his face. A few people stared and whispered. One man spit as he walked by.

 

     The library was empty. The old man walked up to the front desk and waited a few moments before ringing the bell. A woman, with thick curly grey hair that seemed to explode from her scalp, came quickly out of the back.

 

     “Can I help you?”

 

     “I’m… uh. Looking for information on local legends.”

 

     “Oh. Ok? You might check our reference section for old newspapers, but honestly you won’t find much.”

 

     “Ah. Um, do you happen to know what the high school mascot is?”

 

     “The Windegos.”

     “Yeah but, what is that?”

 

     “What is a windego?”

 

     He nodded sheepishly.

 

     The librarian leaned her shoulders heavily onto the counter in front of her. “Well, a windego is a native legend. They say if a person eats another person, they become a mythological monster. They become corrupted with a craving for more human flesh.”

     “That’s kind of a strange mascot for a high school isn’t it?”

 

     “Well, legend has it that when Amgoss was first settled, there was a winter famine. One of the men in town lost it and ate his son. His wife found them and killed herself. The man was exiled into the woods and never heard from again.”

 

     The old man stared.

 

     “Of course that story turned into this local myth that he turned into a windego. Every once in a while some hiker or hunter claims to have seen him. So that’s how the high school got its name.”

 

     “Oh. What was his name?”

 

     “Isidore. The high school’s mascot’s name is Izzy, named after him.”

 

 

     The old man pulled into his driveway and walked into the cottage with a bottle of wine under each arm. He drank coffee until sundown and ceremoniously donned a wool cap and his warmest flannel. He looked at himself in the mirror, muttered “Fuck it,” and pulled open the top left drawer of his dresser. He dug past a layer of socks before pulling out his old priest’s collar.

 

     He sat on the porch, humming different songs from his past and feeling the wine soak into his bones.

 

     The eyes came at last. They did not pause at the tree line. The creature shuffled along with the same awkward gait. The old man poured more wine as he watched it rise from the ditch into the glow of the porch light once more. This time he really looked at the thing.

 

     He could tell the monster was distinctly human, now that he saw what was left of the face. The eyes sat deep in the skull, atop a sagging nose. The skin and bone had worn down around the mouth so it wore a mocking half grin through the remaining half of its cheeks. Long matted hair tangled down along its mud covered body. A rancid mulch, of what now seemed to be a long indistinct set of clothes, festered into the skin.

 

     The old man’s hand began shaking. He gulped at the wine, hoping that the windego would speed up and end things, fearing that the act would take longer than necessary.

 

     It skulked up to the porch, staring directly at his chest. He gulped hard. Its leg joints creaked and popped as it stepped up the stairs. It smelled like earth and shit. He noticed how its distended stomach wobbled as it stopped in front of him.

 

     A breeze blew between them. The windego turned to the right, and sat down next to the old man’s chair. It still stared at his chest.

 

     The moon was out again. It looked like frost.

 

     “Isidore?”

 

     The windego looked away. It stood up and walked off the porch, then a few more steps more before it stopped to look back.

 

     The old man sighed, drank the last bit of wine, and stood up. Together they walked beyond the ditch, and disappeared into the tree line.

 A cold night in October was the first time the old man saw the eyes at the tree line. The moon was silhouetted in a glow he knew to mean that frost was coming. One hand was tucked into his canvas coat pocket, warm with fleece. The other was mostly numb, alternating between the cigarettes he was chain smoking and the wine he drank from a chipped black coffee mug.

 

     He sat on his porch bathed in the halogen light that buzzed above over the moths plinking against the opaque glass. The porch light shone as far as the ditch on the other side of his dirt driveway. Beyond the ditch was a grassy hill that ended in a dense thicket of woods that stretched for thousands of acres and only ended halfway up a nearby mountain range. The old man’s cabin was as close as he could get to the wilderness without abandoning society completely. A rusty old blue Ford pickup was his remaining link to human contact and he used it as rarely as he could.

 

     There had been plenty of wildlife around. Elk passed through in droves. Coyotes bickered nearby. The he mountain beavers would come, washed out of their burrows scared and hissing. The old man killed the first, raising a shovel over his head and bringing it down quickly. He saw the fear and confusion in the animal’s eyes, and felt the familiar surge of power in his veins. He buried it with a eulogy out of habit. But the words felt sarcastic and blasphemous. He learned to turn the other cheek and allowed the critters to weather the storm under the Plexiglas of the porch.

 

     The animals disappeared when the eyes came. It grew so quiet that the old man could hear his cigarettes burn with every inhale, and he fingered a cross necklace he kept warm in a pocket. The silence crept on for days. Every night he sat on the porch and stared back at the eyes. He met their glowing crimson gaze, not with defiance, but with a passionless resignation. He considered his continued existence a penance.   

 

     On the fourth night, the eyes grew bold and stepped out from the tree line. They were perched from a monstrous height, and swayed unsteadily. As the attached creature drew close to the ditch, the old man pulled a flashlight up and for a horrible moment illuminated the visitor.

 

     The eyes belonged to a grotesque humanoid form, gaunt and pale, with skin in tatters. It looked as though a corpse had been stretched and pulled taught over a set of bones belonging to something larger and distantly related.

 

     It froze in the light and in a delayed response, slowly threw its gangly arms up over its face and took a step back.

 

     The old man lost his nerve. He bolted for the door and slammed it shut, impotently flicking the doorknob to a locked position. He turned out all of the lights and crawled into his bed, shaking and hiding under an army surplus blanket like a child.

 

     He could hear the thing slowly investigating the cabin, dragging its feet and running its hands along the exterior. When the sounds finally stopped, the old man made the mistake of looking from beneath the blanket. He found the entire room bathed in a red glow, the eyes shining through his curtain, aimed directly at him as if the creature was using something other than sight to observe him.

 

     The night passed long and quiet.

 

     By morning, hunger and lack of sleep emboldened the old man. A hesitant check through the windows showed no signs of the creature and the old man breathed a sigh of relief and finally fell asleep for several hours.

 

     He awoke sweating from a nightmare in which the sun followed him wherever he went, burning through buildings and blistering his skin. He made coffee and slipped on rubber boots to examine the outside of the cabin.

 

     The creature seemed more a dream than the nightmare he had, but there was evidence enough to convince the old man of his unfortunate sanity. Instead of tracks there were ruts worn in the dirt that formed parallel circles around the cabin where the creature’s path must have been. The tracks got closer and closer to the cabin until they diverged from the pattern and formed a straight line to his bedroom window.

     He finished his coffee and got into the old blue pickup truck, driving 35 minutes to Amgoss, the nearest town. As he passed the local high school, he noticed the sign out front for the first time. “Home of the Windegos!”

 

     He parked a block away from the local library, a baseball cap pulled low over his face. A few people stared and whispered. One man spit as he walked by.

 

     The library was empty. The old man walked up to the front desk and waited a few moments before ringing the bell. A woman, with thick curly grey hair that seemed to explode from her scalp, came quickly out of the back.

 

     “Can I help you?”

 

     “I’m… uh. Looking for information on local legends.”

 

     “Oh. Ok? You might check our reference section for old newspapers, but honestly you won’t find much.”

 

     “Ah. Um, do you happen to know what the high school mascot is?”

 

     “The Windegos.”

     “Yeah but, what is that?”

 

     “What is a Windego?”

 

     He nodded sheepishly.

 

     The librarian leaned her shoulders heavily onto the counter in front of her. “Well, a Windego is a native legend. They say if a person eats another person, they become a mythological monster. They become consumed with a craving for more human flesh.”

     “That’s kind of a strange mascot for a high school isn’t it?”

 

     “Well, legend has it that when Amgoss was first settled, there was a winter famine. One of the men in town went crazy and ate his son. His wife found them and killed herself. The man was exiled into the woods and never heard from again.”

 

     The old man stared.

 

     “Of course that story turned into this local myth that he turned into a windego. Every once in a while some hiker or hunter claims to have seen him. So that’s how the high school got its name.”

 

     “Oh. What was his name?”

 

     “Isidore. The high school’s mascot’s name is Izzy, named after him.”

 

     The old man pulled into his driveway and walked into the cottage with a bottle of wine under each arm. He drank coffee until sundown and ceremoniously donned a wool cap and his warmest flannel. He looked at himself in the mirror, muttered “Fuck it,” and pulled open the top left drawer of his dresser. He dug past a layer of socks before pulling out his old priest’s collar.

 

     He sat on the porch, humming different songs from his past and feeling the wine soak into his bones.

 

     The eyes came at last. They did not pause at the tree line. The creature shuffled along with the same awkward gait. The old man poured more wine as he watched it rise from the ditch into the glow of the porch light once more. This time he really looked at the thing.

 

     He could tell the monster was distinctly human, now that he saw what was left of the face. The eyes sat deep in the skull, atop a sagging nose. The skin and bone had worn down around the mouth so it wore a mocking half grin through the remaining half of its cheeks. Long matted hair tangled down along its mud covered body. A rancid mulch, of what now seemed to be a long indistinct set of clothes, festered into the skin.

 

     The old man’s hand began shaking. He gulped at the wine, hoping that the windego would speed up and end things, fearing that the act would take longer than necessary.

 

     It skulked up to the porch, staring directly at his chest. He gulped hard. Its leg joints creaked and popped as it stepped up the stairs. It smelled like earth and shit. He noticed how it’s distended stomach wobbled as it stopped in front of him.

 

     A breeze blew between them. The windego turned to the right, and sat down next to the old man’s chair. It still stared at his chest.

 

     The moon was out again. It looked like frost.

 

     “Isidore?”

 

     The windego looked away. It stood up and walked off the porch, then a few more steps before it stopped to look back.

 

     The old man sighed, drank the last bit of wine, and stood up. Together they walked beyond the ditch, and disappeared into the tree line.

Categories
Short Fiction

Well Fed

     Billy sat in his tiny fluorescently lit field office, playing minesweeper on a dusty desktop computer that had taken over 25 minutes to boot up that morning. His lone companion, a 10 year old beagle named Lucy, was curled on a pile of blankets underneath the desk. Billy hit a mine, lost the game, and leaned back in his creaky office chair that was clearly older than the word ‘ergonomic.’

He gazed at the two decorations on the otherwise barren paneled wall he faced. A framed engineering degree from UCLA, and a bright, sunny photo of a bunch of smiling students. They all looked determined to change the world, especially after a summer spent designing a sustainable solar energy grid that could be effectively deployed in rural villages.

     He closed his eyes and rubbed his rough forefinger and thumb against his eyelids, hard enough that his vision was out of focus when he opened them again. Wyoming made everything dry. Eyes, skin, mouth. The wind just cut through everything.

     The oil company paid him well, but Billy never felt as though the work he was doing was meaningful or valuable. He knew was being paid to be alone, cold, and bored.

     The heating in the office barely worked. He took his gloves off and split the cellophane on a new pack of hand warmers. He tugged his boots off, shaking out the last batch. The problem with the warmers was that after you shook them, they got really hot. Almost painfully so, but the pain was a welcome respite from the numbness it replaced. After a few minutes, the warmers cooled to a proper temperature that they maintained. But because of the initial blast of heat, a more moderate temperature barely registered. Even warm felt cold.

 The password to Billy’s work desktop was “SamMcGee,” after the titular character in a Robert Frost poem that froze to death trying to strike it rich in the Alaskan gold rush and, upon being cremated, comes back to life only to beg to be left in the fire a little longer.

     Billy had always prided himself on his natural ability to be alone. He remembered watching a movie as a kid, the main character a loner type, but by the end he had gathered a rag tag team of friends. “No man is an island,” the protagonist had said as the movie came to a close. Billy had always felt that the character had failed himself somehow. Billy thought that he could be an island. He prided himself in that and even thought of it as an inner strength. The ability to not need anybody, to get by just fine on your own.

You always hear stories of people going crazy from being isolated, astronauts and prisoners and shipwreck survivors. Billy liked to imagine a cruel and crooked warden opening up the door of a solitary confinement cell that Billy had been wrongfully imprisoned in, hoping to see a broken man, only to find Billy relaxed and cheerful. “Could I stay a bit longer? I’m enjoying the peace and quiet.”

Like Sam McGee, but instead of being tormented with the unrelenting cold, he suffered from the wear and tear of human interaction.

There was a photo of his parents and sisters in a drawer of the old desk he sat at. Billy had taken it off the wall after the third time he told them all that he would move back, only to get a well-timed raise from the oil company that kept him there for another year. At first, Billy’s plan had been to save enough to pay off college loans. Then, it was to save enough for a down payment on a house. Now he looked at his bank account a couple times a day, and always found himself fantasizing about having more. It gave him a relieving comfort in his chest to see he had worth, and he knew he couldn’t make half the money anywhere else. Still, after every peek at his savings, he would calculate how long he thought he could survive if he quit his job immediately. He was up to 5 years in Wyoming, maybe 8 months if he moved back to Los Angeles.

“The money is nice kid.” That’s what they said when they interviewed him for the job. Two middle aged men in ill-fitting suits with shit eating grins. “We know you’re into that environmental stuff. This job is terrible for the environment, sure, but it pays a shit load. If you don’t do it, someone else will. Do yourself a favor, just work it for a few years, bank some money, and then decide what you want to do.”

     Billy pushed his chair back, startling Lucy whose collar jangled. “C’mon girl, time to make the rounds.” He pulled on a second jacket as the beagle got up and did that cute little slow stretch walk toward the door, her nails clacking against the linoleum. Billy watched her, eyeing the grey around her muzzle. He didn’t really have to walk around the pumping station. It was all automated, and any problems would be immediately noticed by the company and radioed to him. Nothing had gone wrong the entire time he worked there, but it was nice to get out of the claustrophobic office a few times a day. Even if getting out was frigid.

     The whole operation was fenced in by a chain link, and Billy liked walking around the whole thing a few times a day to get some sun on his face. It took about 20 minutes. Lucy used to walk with him, but now she minded her own business. She usually pissed on one specific shrub, or shit near another one. But this time, she stood alert and trotted meaningfully towards a spot facing a large patch of tall grass outside the fence. She growled and her hackles raised up.

     It gave Billy goosebumps when the dog could sense something he couldn’t. He let out a low whistle, but she didn’t budge. He walked over, boots crunching over gravel.

     When he got close, Lucy started to whine. He stared hard out at the grass. Out walked a coyote. It was big, with a heavy coat that was a dark grey color like he hadn’t seen before. The coyote didn’t show any signs of fear. The ears stood straight up, not back, and its eyes were curious but relaxed. Billy’s heart beat heavy, and he felt that familiar adrenaline rush of uncertainty you get from being close to anything feral. The coyote’s eyes were a beautiful ice grey color that made it seem ancient, almost something to be revered. He and the coyote stared at each other for what felt like minutes before he noticed a smaller coyote, with a coat more auburn and patchy, behind the first. “Hey you git!” He finally yelled. The smaller coyote started, but the first didn’t even flinch. “Get out of here I said!” Lucy picked up on the cue and started barking frantically. The larger coyote finally broke eye contact with Billy to look at Lucy, and the thing seemed to grin?

     Billy shivered, picked Lucy up, and carried her back in the office, turning his back on the coyotes. They’d had wildlife get close before, usually deer, once a big bear got right up to the fence. Even the bear had fled after a gruff “You git!”

 Billy decided that he didn’t like coyotes.

     On the way home, Billy stopped at the only bar around. You wouldn’t know it was a bar if you hadn’t been in before, there was no signage. The part of the building facing the road was a rundown house, but behind that was a living room that had been haphazardly remodeled into the kind of bar where everything is made of wood, or particle board, and nothing is painted. The bartender, Ben, was grey haired with a massive torso and tiny legs. He had a goatee with a wispy mustache, yellow with nicotine. His mouth looked tiny compared to his massive cheeks and neck. His eyes disappeared when he smiled, which was always, and dimples dominated his crinkled mischievous face as he placed a fresh cigarette between his lips. “How much of my oil did you pump today, Bill?”

Billy grinned, playing along, “Almost all of it now Benny. I’ll be out of here before you know it.”

     Ben gave him a mock stern look, “Don’t leave too soon, you’re my best customer.”

“I’m pretty sure I’m your only customer.”

Ben chuckled. “Better keep an eye on your dog, man, heard there been coyote sightings around recently. Well fed coyotes too. When they’re well fed is when they’re worst. That’s when they’re killing for fun. Damn things will eat the guts out but leave the rest. Fuck.”

     Billy nodded, “I actually saw two of them today.

     Ben came and sat next to Billy, handing him a beer, and blowing smoke across the bar top. Ben never drank, which made the bar feel even more like it existed just for Billy. He’d never seen anyone else in there.  Ben took another drag, “Maybe you met Old Man Coyote, huh?”

      “You’re naming the wildlife now Benny? You’re losing it out here.”

     Ben scoffed, “No fool, Old Man Coyote. Native myth, Crow I think. Created the Earth with some ducks.”

“Ducks?”

     “Yeah, see there was all ocean, and Old Man Coyote saw two ducks. He told them to swim down and they pulled up mud. Old Man Coyote used the mud to make islands that turned into the continents. The ducks pulled up a root, and he used that to make all the plants and trees and stuff. Then he made people out of clay.”

      “Is seeing him like, good luck or something?”

     “Nah. Real bad luck. Fuck. You better watch yourself, don’t go buying any lottery tickets.” Ben turned the TV over to jeopardy, and Billy stared quietly at his beer.

     He must have drank too much, because the next thing he knew he was waking up at home. He didn’t feel Lucy curled anywhere on the bed, so he whistled and listened for her collar’s jangle. Nothing.

Lucy had gotten out of the house somehow. Billy found her body by the wind breaking tree line near his truck. All of this talk about ‘well fed’ coyotes. Billy really hadn’t thought about the “well fed” qualification until Lucy was the feed.

     He picked up the remains before work, eyes watering but keeping it together. He put her in a hefty garbage bag, and something about how light she was made it worse. It didn’t really hit him until he plopped the bag down on the passenger side floor of his truck. He felt guilty for not treating the body with more ceremony, but shit, what was he supposed to do? It wasn’t even Lucy anymore, it was a pile of viscera in a trash bag. The organs had been eaten out, but the body left just like Ben said. He left the bag in the truck while he went into his office, not wanting to look at it all day. He figured the cold would keep it from stinking too badly.

     He somehow managed to hold everything in, not taking any breaks to go outside and walk laps around the facility. He almost thought he was going to get through the whole day without crying, but as soon as the truck was parked in the driveway of his rental he lost it. A sad country song played on the radio while he broke. He pulled out a poorly rolled joint that Ben had given him the night previous and lit up, inhaling between sobs.

     After he had pulled himself together, Billy went inside, and found a box to bury her in. He had bought a new coffeemaker online and never thrown the box out. It was the perfect size, but he had to put duct tape over the upbeat faces smiling down at their cups of coffee. He fixated on the false advertising for a moment, not remembering a morning when he ever smiled at a mug.

     He quickly dug a hole as the dark set in and the wind picked up. He didn’t say anything, just leaned against the shovel and stared at the hole for a while. Then, with a heavy sigh, he picked up the Lucy bag and gently lowered it into the box and down the hole.

     Billy got 8 drinks deep at the bar, and breathed heavy. “I had that dog for 10 years man. 10 years. A person changes in 10 years. There are versions of me that I don’t even remember, but I bet that dog did. She looked like she did. Shit. I feel like years of my life were just me and that dog, and now she’s gone and I just… I feel like I’ve got nothing you know? I told myself I was fine without anyone but I never thought that Lucy was someone to me. She saw everything good about me. She knew the best parts of me. She was the proof that those parts ever existed. And now she’s gone.”

Ben stayed silent and Billy burped. Ben looked like he was being held hostage. He was rolling joints quietly. Ben never drank but he smoked weed religiously, and recently had started sharing. Billy started to feel self-conscious. “You know what Ben, it’s getting late. I’m gonna get out of here.”

     “You good to drive buddy? You’ve had a few.”

     “Yeah, I mean I’ll be the only one on the road. So I’m the only one in danger anyways right?”

     “You might want to just sleep it off in your truck. If you wreck, nobody will find you until morning.”

     “I’m fuckin’ fine Ben, thanks for the drinks I’ll see you later.”

     Ben held out a joint and Billy paused, feeling guilty for his mood. He grabbed it and put the tip in his mouth as he walked out the door.

     Billy didn’t even see the coyote before he hit it. He was fumbling with the radio, eyes stinging from the smoke, trying to find a sad song. He passed a rock formation and a furry blur sped out from his right. There was a “thunk” and he slammed on the brakes, momentum whipping him forward so fast he left his seat and slammed his face into the windshield. He pulled the truck over, cursing and shaking.

He took a deep breath and could feel his heartbeat in the lump forming on his forehead. It was pitch black. He dug a flashlight out from under his seat, flicked the rest of the joint out into the night and pulled himself out to survey the scene. He saw a furry body, back about 50 feet, laying still. The truck had no damage, but there was a pretty sizeable blood splatter that made it halfway up the hood.

     “Too many dead animals for one day,” Billy thought to himself. He wandered towards the roadkill, and as he got closer he saw that it looked like the smaller red coyote that he’d seen the day before. Now it was nearly broken in two. “Serves you right,” he sulked, “An easier death than Lucy.”

     He felt obligated to get the body out of the road. He walked around the carcass, steaming at the split, and decided to grab it by a front and back foot. Billy hoping that would keep the remains from splitting further. As soon as he began dragging, the coyote split from the other side and left a greasy, steaming trail. The steam rose to his face and he cursed and spit. It smelled primal. He imagined his ancestors celebrating over a kill, and then he imagined the coyote standing over a steaming Lucy and was sick.

     He had nearly dragged the carcass to the shoulder of the road when he realized the hairs on his neck were standing up. Billy’s back was to the trees, and he was dragging a fresh kill. He dropped the limp paws of the coyote and spun around to see another coyote. This one was much bigger than the one he had hit, with those same grey eyes, and it was standing about 15 feet away. He was sure it was the coyote from before, with its ears up and at attention. “HEY!” He yelled at it.

The coyote didn’t even flinch.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING? GET OUT OF HERE!” He pulled his hat off and whipped it against his jeans with a flourish. “GIT!”

     The coyote took a purposeful step forward and sat down on its haunches, never blinking or breaking eye contact with Billy, whose heart beat through his chest and forehead. A cold line of sweat rolled down his cheek. “Are you waiting for me to leave? You wanna eat your friend, asshole?”

     A thin line of red formed around the corners of the coyote’s mouth, faint at first but it oozed out from the jowls. Blood dripped down the lower lip of the coyote and somehow, defying gravity, a stain of blood seeped up its face as well. The coyote still stared as the blood soaked past its eyes and matted behind its ears. It’s mouth seemed to widen in the same smile as before, but impossibly wider.

Billy heard a buzzing sound. The coyote’s jaw opened in what seemed like a casual yawn and the buzzing intensified. A rush of dark steaming blood slopped out onto the ground in front of the coyote. The blood was full of meat chunks, living flies and maggots. They buzzed and squirmed and struggled as they fought to free themselves of the sticky coagulated coating. The coyote’s jaws didn’t stop at a yawn, they opened further and further. Blood continued to gush out, and the pool it formed slowly crept onto the asphalt toward Billy.

     Billy’s hands shook uncontrollably, but couldn’t help but stare into the red fleshy maw. He had the thought that something was about to burst out of the coyote’s face, and couldn’t help but wince in anticipation. Just as the mouth started to fold back upon the coyote’s head, Billy heard a familiar whimper. A whine and then a yelp, and then a cry. It sounded like… Lucy.

     Billy whispered in disbelief, “It was… it was you. You ate Lucy. You motherfucker!”

     The coyote’s jaws snapped shut with a clap like a gunshot. Billy jumped, almost slipping in the blood, he reached back and put his hand on the hood of the truck to ground himself. The coyote still stared, eyes ice grey and surrounded by thick bloody fur. Billy felt something move in front of him and when he looked down, the split red coyote’s head had turned up towards him. It was alive somehow, and grinning through bloody teeth. He jumped back and looked up to see the grey coyote take a step toward him and Billy turned, sprinting back to the open door of his truck.

     Billy didn’t drive home. He just drove, radio turned off, eyes wide open. He pulled on his hair with a free hand. “What the hell, what the fuck.”

     He drove past Ben’s bar, slammed on the brakes, flipped a U-turn and pulled up. The lights were still on. Ben was the only person he really knew in the area, and he couldn’t imagine explaining what he had just seen to anybody else.

Billy tried not to seem panicked as he quickly walked from his truck to the bar, pulling the screen door open and throwing his shoulder into the heavy oak door with “Bar” carved into it. His momentum carried him into the room, but as soon as the door opened he could tell something had changed. The bar was silent.

     He looked around and Ben was nowhere to be seen, but a pack of cigarettes sat opened on the bar top. “Ben? You here?” There wasn’t an answer, so Billy sat on a stool and pulled out his phone.

     “Can I help you?” A gravelly voice rasped.

     Billy dropped his phone and jumped up, nearly falling over. “Shit, man…”

     A tall, thin old man stood in the doorway between the bar and Ben’s house. He was wearing an old dark grey duster that clung tightly to his frame, and a shadow obscured most of his face but a long braided light grey ponytail hung over his left shoulder. He took two measured and quiet steps towards Billy, bending over to pick up the phone that Billy had dropped. The silence was suffocating, and Billy desperately needed to say something to someone. “Where’s Ben? I’m Billy, by the way. Sorry for swearing, you started me.” He waited for a response, but the old man stood silently, turning the phone over in his hands.

     The old man finally set the phone down on the bar top without looking at Billy. “Synthetic. Pathetic. Don’t you think? Did you know that people used to make things from what the Earth gave them? Wood, bone, fur, fiber, mud and water. We were hungry then. But now,” the old man scoffed, “Now people want for little, and take everything. They bore into Mother Earth and they harvest her organs while she still breathes. Her oil, her minerals. There is no life in plastics and synthetics. Synthetic. Pathetic. There is no dignity. Do you know what oil is made of?”

     Billy nodded, unable to make eye contact.

     “It’s ancient. It’s ancestors. Of life lived, and given back. It was never meant to be taken and used up.”

     Billy gulped hard on a lump that rose in this throat and rubbed a hand down his arm, trying to quell the hairs that stood on end. “I, uh, you know I work at the oil facility here but before that I wanted to…”

     The old man shook his head, silencing Billy. “It doesn’t matter what you want, only what you do. Dignity is lost in discrepancy of intention and action. Pathetic.” He was grinning. “If you say you want one thing, and you perpetually do another, what good is your word? Why waste breath? You do what you will, why burden yourself further with denial of intention?” The old man’s voice rose sharply, “Life used to be measured in cycles, now it is measured in time, so why waste it for the both of us?”

     Billy was frozen to the stool he sat on, he hunched over and looked at the floor. He couldn’t breathe and he felt deeply and suddenly ashamed.

     The old man walked toward Billy and gently put his hand underneath Billy’s chin, slowly, almost ceremonial. He lifted Billy’s face to meet his eyes, and upon doing so, Billy breathed in a heavy sob. The man’s eyes were ice grey. “I’m sorry,” Billy whimpered.

     The old man’s face cracked with a smirk. “Do not apologize to me. I think this discrepancy eats away at your insides. I think you tell yourself that you are strong enough to live a lonely life, but in truth, you are too weak to love someone fully, and look them in the eyes. Life got away from you.”

     Billy felt a sudden anger rising in him as the terror subsided somewhat. “Why are you saying this to me?”

     The old man laughed. “I’ve done nothing to you. You walked into a place that was not your own and started a conversation that you did not want to have, and you still haven’t asked the only question on your mind. Do you want to ask it?”

     “Do I have to?”

     “You’ve chosen to do everything you’ve ever done. The only thing that you have to do is decide whether or not to live with those choices.”

     Billy grabbed his phone off of the bar and shakily stood up, wiping his face. “Fuck this, I’m out of here.” He walked to the door and as he put his hand against it he stopped, and looked back at the old man leaning on the bar. “Ok. What’s your name?”

     A flash of teeth as the grin widened. “I’m a friend of Ben’s. Here to watch the place for him.”

Billy shoved the door of the bar open and trudged quickly toward his truck. The floodlight outside the bar caught his movement and came on with a buzz, illuminating the truck. On the hood lay the broken body of the reddish coyote, its blood dripping down to mingle with the splatter-stained grill. It’s head popped up and it howled. Billy froze and spun around to see the larger, dark grey coyote sitting behind him on the porch of the bar. It stared patiently, unblinking.

“Fuck! Fuck you! I said I was sorry!”

     The coyote slowly pulled itself up on all fours, stretching as it did, never taking its eyes off of Billy. Billy started stumbling backwards as the coyote opened its mouth, blood pouring out onto the dirt as it started to stalk towards him. Its ears were down and its lip drew back over blood soaked fangs, ice grey eyes turning black.

     Billy turned and started to run for the road, knowing that he couldn’t outrun the coyote. He saw headlights and shouted desperately waving his hands as he sprinted. He stopped in the middle of the lane, but the car did not slow down or stop. He watched headlights speed toward him, and then sickeningly through him. The combination of collision, car horn, cold wind, and dizzying force that all hit him in an instant. Time froze for a moment and he felt himself being lifted away from it all. Free from gravity. Then it went dark.

     He woke up in a blur of pain. His whole body was dulled by the heavy pull of sedative. He couldn’t make out definite shapes, but it was obvious that he was in a hospital room. His throat ached and he couldn’t shut his mouth. His tongue was dry. He felt a strange barren loneliness as he realized nobody was in the room with him. No warden was coming to open the door of his solitary cell. His eyes closed again, the white noise of beeping and whirring medical equipment pulling him down into the bed.

     He opened his eyes again, as someone brushed their hand against his hair. As his vision cleared he saw a nurse, her face very close to his. She had auburn hair, and smiled a little too wide. Her lips seemed strange, he realized. And the lipstick she was wearing…

     “I’m sorry to wake you, Mr. Warren. It’s Billy right?”

     He could only stare back. A doctor stood back a ways, holding a clipboard.

     “I’m not sure if you can hear me. You’ve been through a terrible car accident, and unfortunately there has been severe nerve damage and blood loss. We’ve got you on life support and have notified your next of kin. I just wanted to come and thank you personally for being an organ donor…”

     He heard the doctor saying something to the nurse, maybe to him. Something about organic organs still outperforming synthetics.

     Billy stared at the nurse’s cherry red lips as the sedative pushed him down into the hospital bed. The nurse’s lipstick seemed to pull together at the lowest point of her lower lip and it sank down, seemingly pulled by the same gravity as his body, until a single red drop separated and fell from her lip. It landed on his cheek, felt hot. The drop rolled down his face as shadows rose around him.