by Susan Harris
“Old man,” Ahriman called. “Aren’t you afraid to travel without guise?”
I rumbled a laugh, deep in my chest. “Young friend, did you not see the face beneath my cowl? These scars are from a needlefire three seasons past, one that caught me unawares when it blew the wrong way during a terrible gust of wind. Since then, I have worn a mask far more terrifying than any created by the hands of even the most skilled men.”
I turned away and took a few more cautious steps, my voice lowering, heavy with a despair that accompanied me most of my waking hours.
“And I don’t fear the spirits any longer,” I breathed, struggling with the effort of simple movement, no longer certain or even caring if my voice reached the ears of the stranger. “For what evil can be heaped upon me that a miserably long life hasn’t already inflicted?”
I reached the bottom of the hill, not without effort, and started along the well-traveled road I’d walked since I was old enough to carry myself on two legs. My back gave way to seizures as I continued on, using the short, shuffling steps of the ancient that drew pitying looks in the daylight hours. I reached my home, and with great exhaustion, I lay down on the tattered blankets I now used for a bed.
I struggled to kick off my shoes, but wasted no effort with the rest of my garb, wet though it was. My heart was still burning from exertion and another fit of hacking cough had taken hold. I lamented my plight and longed for slumber, but the room was too chilled for sleep, and my mind was cluttered by stories from far-away lands. I knew that when I did drift away, I would dream of the monster child, and I wondered if I would wake in fright, or in sadness that it hadn’t been me chosen by that creature so long, long ago to live in unnatural perfection.
My eyes fell closed after a time, my raspy breaths serving as a lullaby. Once more, as I’d done every night for many years, I prayed to the Gods, imploring them to see fit in their mercy to snuff out the last, lingering pieces of my rotted and useless body. I did not expect that on this night my pleas would finally be heard and answered in dreadful form.
I heard not a sound, but before my throat was taken in hand. My eyes opened in fright, and I stared up into the smooth face of a girl, braids in her hair and blood stained on her lips. Her eyes were clear and bright, but they held a rage that was unnatural for one so young. I pushed at the small hand encircling my neck, but then the booted foot of the stranger, Ahriman, landed fully on my chest, preventing any movement.
“What is this wickedness?” I gasped, my eyes growing wide with a horror I’d never felt.
“You are the wicked,” the monster child said, her voice as soft as a summer breeze. “You covet me, my youth and my health, without care or concern to my plight. I will never grow to see my body turn ripe. I will never know the love of a husband, or feel my belly swell with new life. I am trapped forever as a child, without even the hope of death to save me. And in this, you dare to find envy.”
She leaned down, so that her face was mere inches from my own, and when she grinned, I saw teeth that were as blades. But even in my fear, I could not douse the hope that sprang forth from my heart. Perhaps this monster child, this unholy creature from another land, was the weapon the Gods would use to free me from my torment. I awaited the attack with a peculiar mixture of emotion, and braced myself for the solitude to come. It did not.
“Get on with it, child,” I said, my voice laden with the effort of forming even simple words. “Deliver the strike and release me from this cursed life.”
“I will show you what it truly means to be cursed,” she whispered. “For as surely as I am trapped in this body, you will be trapped in yours. As I am forced to walk the world in what you deem constant perfection, you will walk in suffering and sorrow, for the rest of all time.”
The implications of the words were not lost to me, but I had not even strength enough to cry out when she bit into my flesh. I struggled, rebelling against the fate that was to be mine, but it was to no avail. In those last moments, before I was made into a creature of eternal lamentation, my dismal eyes caught sight of the hearth and the dwindling flame that danced within; the one, which for the first time, had not been lit by an ember from the needlefire.
Twist of Fate
Rebecca Nolan
Twist of Fate
Rebecca Nolan
“And here I thought he would be dead!” Lana said, "I mean, you totally nailed him with the car… right?”
“Yeah… It’s a truck, by the way, and I got the dent in the front to prove it… just not the body,” Eric muttered, scratching his head in confusion. “Where in God’s name could he have gone?”
“I don’t know; are you sure it was a guy?” Lana looked at the empty stretch of road behind them. She was positive that they had run over a guy, too, but now there was nothing, only a dent in the front bumper and a smashed windscreen.
“Seriously, Lana, it is mid-morning and the sky is clear, we both saw him hit the truck, and I don’t think deer wear PVC pants,” Eric jested half-heartedly. She could tell he was having trouble processing this, too.
“Yeah, I know; I just don’t know how it is that he is not a broken mess behind your car.” Eric glared at her. “I mean truck,” she corrected herself, so tired of hearing about why she couldn’t call it a car.
“Christ, this is like right out of some pathetic horror film… where now he is going to leap out of the woods and hack us into little pieces after torturing us.” Eric groaned. “Either way, I am a dead man.” Lana shot him a quizzical look. “If some crazy, psycho hell-bent on revenge doesn’t get me, then I have no doubt my dad will,” he answered.
Lana sighed, bending down to see if the liquid on the ground was blood. She carefully dipped her fingers into it; they came out a rich red as she studied the liquid a little more and rubbed it between her fingers. Though, she did stop before she was tempted to taste it.
“Well, something is injured; that much I can tell you.” She turned to Eric who was now contemplating the damage to his front end. “We need to go and find him, make sure he is ok”
“You’re crazy, right? This guy got hit by my truck doing fifty, and by the time we are collected enough to jump out, he is gone… I mean really.”
Eric shook his head at her as Lana shrugged her delicate shoulders. “Seriously, we are not going to offer ourselves up to be sliced and diced just because you have a guilty conscious”
“So… what, we just leave him alone… out there… hurt?” It wasn’t who she was.
Eric threw his arms up and walked away. “Lana, get over it.” It was a harsh thing to say, but that is what was needed. There was no way in hell he was about to enter the woods to find some psycho killer. Lana grabbed the bag out of the back and the gun out of the tool box. She passed over the rifles they used for hunting, opting for a classic Smith and Wesson .357 Magnum.
Lana wasn’t sure if she could fire it correctly, but she was sure that if she ran into trouble, it would certainly help her.
Eric watched her, dazed; this was not the usual way Lana acted, and he should know considering they practically grew up together. There was only two years in age between them; Eric being the older one, of course. Lana had moved into his neighborhood when he was eight, and their mothers worked together in the doctor’s clinic. Lana’s dad had been out of the scene for a while, and Eric’s dad was happy to fill in as a part time replacement when needed. Eric remembered the way his dad use to walk in all red-faced after giving Lana a driving lesson. It seemed so long ago, instead of only a few years, and now they were home on break from college.
“So are you coming with me?” Lana looked at him, blue eyes pleading with him to come. She really didn’t want to walk in the woods alone. “You owe me; you know that. Look, we will just go a little way in, and if we don’t see any trace of him we will leave it alone.”
Eric groaned. He knew that he owed her, but really he was hoping to make up for it by helping her decorate her dorm room or something far less terrifying. “
Jeez, Lana, this doesn’t feel right. Surely you aren’t too blonde to realize that this isn’t right.”
Lana hissed something lower, and rather abusive he assumed, as she started to head towards the edge of the woods. The trees were tall, dark and thick with foliage. She glanced once more in Eric’s direction, pleading for him to come with her. He was watching, waiting for her to admit that it was crazy to head into the dark and somewhat scary woods to find a person who ran off after being hit by a ca… truck.
Cautiously she placed her foot onto the debris, listening to the crunch as it gave way to her weight. After that, it seemed easier to move forward. Lana looked meticulously down to make sure she stayed on the right blood trail. There wasn’t a great amount to follow, so Lana made sure she left a trail behind her. Another strip of the rag was being tied to another branch when she heard her name being called. Somehow it appeared as if the words were echoing in her head; that was until Eric ran right into her.
“What the?” She screamed half panicked “I thought you weren’t coming?”
“The truck wouldn’t start. I mean, it has no reason why it shouldn’t start, but it didn’t even turn over,” he panted out of breath.
“Well, that’s odd, but why didn’t you just lock yourself in until I returned?”
Eric didn’t look at her; instead he just shrugged his shoulders as if he were too ashamed to admit he was too scared to stay in the truck by himself. Lana laughed out loud, she couldn’t help it. Eric was a six foot two, college-wrestling champion, whose dad was the town sheriff and had taught his son from a very young age how to look after himself. There were only two things Eric was scared of: one, his dad, and two, his family finding out that he was gay… both were completely understandable. That is why they pretended to be a couple, so Eric could buy himself a little more time before he came out of the closet.
“You were too scared to stay there all by yourself… weren’t you?” Lana teased.
“For your information, I wasn’t scared. I just didn’t think it was wise for you to go on this one man search party fully loaded like dirty Harriet and blow some poor, defenseless, little deer’s head off.”
“So what?” She hissed “Now you are working for PETA or something? Since when do you care about poor defenseless animals?”
“No, I am more worried about you, honestly… I mean, doesn’t this all feel a little horror movie-ish?”
“Jeez, you can be a real drama-queen.” They stopped to look at one another before looking around; they could no longer see the road, nor did they have any clue how far they had walked. Nothing looked familiar, and Lana realized she hadn’t spotted the blood trail since Eric arrived.
“We need to back step; I have lost the blood trail I was following,” Lana said trying to sound calm. Suddenly everything about this situation was terrifying. She ripped another strip from the rag and tied it to another branch then turned around and counted twenty steps. Nothing was there; she was sure she had left a marker every twenty steps. She counted another ten, still nothing. Surely she hadn’t walked more than thirty, and if they walked another twenty and still didn’t find anything, then it would be time to panic. They walked thirty not finding any trace that they had been here.
“Shit,” Lana said. “We need to head back to the last marker and then try to find where the others are from there.” She looked at Eric “I need a piece of your shirt; it is a different color and will help us mark this path so we know this is the wrong one.”
Eric took off his shirt and tore a rough stripe from it before putting his shirt back on. They counted another sixty paces, heading back the way they had just came, only stopping every twenty to leave a new marker. Once the sixty was up they looked around, nothing was there, no marker, no disturbed ground, just nothing. Eric and Lana looked at one another; this was getting creepy, very friggin’ creepy.
“I told you! This is some sicko’s idea of fun before he finally hacks us to death,” Eric yelled as he paced back and forth.
“Calm down, we must have gotten off course is all.”
“Calm down? We are lost in the woods, looking for some guy who can survive being hit by a truck and also likes to wear PVC in summer out here,” He yelled frustrated and scared. This was not the way he wanted to die.
“Fine, let’s just head that way,” she pointed, “maybe if we go far enough, we will either hit the road or get high enough to get a signal for our phones.”
“Ok, but just so you know, this is how most B-grade horror films start out; You know, lulling the prey into a false sense of hope before they pull out the chainsaw or a giant, butcher meat hook?”
“You watch way too many movies,” Lana said, rolling her eyes.
“Movies aren’t real, and we aren’t being lead into a false sense of hope… whatever that means.”
“It means they are allowing us to believe we have a chance to get out, when they know we are only putting off the inevitable.” He sulked, tagging along behind her. They walked in silence. Not a sound was heard; the birds didn’t sing, and there wasn’t any wind to rustle the leaves. The further they went, the darker it became as the sun was lost to the canopy above.
“Ok, this feels eerily like the path to our death, and like stupid little rabbits, we are following it happily until finally we are trapped, squealing for our lives,” Eric said. He checked his phone again, still no signal.
“You’re forgetting that I still have the gun,” Lana said, suddenly happy to be carrying it. Eric laughed at her.
“Do you even know how to use that thing?”
“Yes. You point and shoot. I am not completely naïve; you know your father taught me a thing or two as well!”
“Yeah, with a brand new 9mm, not a big revolver.”
“Yeah, so it is like all the same, right? You point at the target, and you shoot. It ain’t rocket science you know.” Lana sat digging in the bag for something to snack on.
“Well then, Miss know-it-all-must-save-every-freaky-person, why don’t you give it a go then?” he snickered, studying her carefully.
“And waste the bullets?” Lana shot back at him. “I think that would really be unwise.”
“This place is freaky. It is too quiet, and it feels as though things are watching us, waiting for us to make a mistake so they can fight over the remains.”
“Eric, look… calm down.” Sympathy was not something she was willing to give Eric right now; she needed to think of a way to get out of here. Lana took a good look around, she knew it was early afternoon and yet, darkness was closing in on them.
“This is one hundred percent your fault!” Eric declared as if she didn’t already know that.
“Come on, we need to keep moving.”
“Can’t we rest for just a few minutes, it’s not like we are lost or anything,” Eric said sarcastically. Lana rolled her eyes as she placed the backpack down again. Eric was slumped against a tree, his baseball cap pulled down over his eyes. Lana sighed. So much for him being all terrified of the boogieman, she thought. Lana closed her eyes. Only for minute, she thought. She was tired from the walking.
“God, Lana! Get up, now!” A voice yelled at her. She opened her eyes to see Eric seriously pissed off and looking down at her. “Why were you asleep?” he demanded. Lana rubbed her sore eyes and looked around. It was almost dark. How long had they been asleep for?
“I only wanted to rest my eyes, Eric, really! It felt like only for a few minutes,” she stuttered.
There was an uncanny silence in the woods, freaky for this time of night. Lana looked around, which way had they come from? Nothing seemed familiar anymore.
“Eric which way did we come from?” she asked, as Eric turned to face her. Something was not right, the fine little hairs all over Lana’s body stood on end. Eric was grinning, not in the friendly, joking way, but in a way that made Lana want to back away from him. Eric’s eyes were cold and dark, even in this light she knew this was not the boy she had grown up with.
�
��Follow me, Lana. I will get us out,” he said quietly. Where was scared, drama-queen Eric? Lana thought as she reached into her backpack for the gun… it was gone. Her eyes flickered up to see Eric, standing there casually holding her gun. “Looking for something?” he mocked.
“Eric, I know you think this is funny, but cut it out?” She cried “you win… I am totally freaked out now.”
He tossed her the gun and laughed, “Come on, it will be dark soon.”
She breathed a huge sigh of relief, her heart still hammering away inside her chest.
“You are such a jerk” she screamed frustrated. “Don’t kid around like that.”
Eric laughed again as his arm slipped around her shoulders. “Did you truly think I would kill you?” he asked giving her a squeeze. She swallowed; the lump was still stuck in the back of her throat.
“No,” she lied. It wasn’t even a good lie.
“I am sorry,” Eric said sincerely. “I didn’t mean to scare you, that badly.”
“Forget about it,” Lana snapped. Guiding her through the forest, Eric made sure to stay quiet. He could feel Lana’s rage at having been scared emanating from her. With each step, her foot stomped into the ground, leaving an imprint. If it hadn’t been for the situation, Eric would have found it funny, but it was getting late and dark. The stillness now paired up with the looming darkness was off putting. Eric had long forgotten about the man; he was clearly long gone now. All that Eric wanted to do was find his truck and get out of there.
