I started with a half step out of the door. Then I tried a full one. I felt the burning prickles engulf my feet and travel to my legs. I had to work with this. What greeted my face was the sharp shock of Autumn air. Our porch was surrounded by yards of field trampled by tossed trees, with some debris that snagged on the aging poles of our snouted awning. The storm had torn through the plank floor with as little mercy as fire is to dry wood. The grass that covered our surrounding field was another color of savagery; its bottom was waterlogged in rains carried from miles away. It was like nothing from our old life had survived. I blinked slowly and breathed out with strain as my heartbeat fastened. My lack of practice, along with gravity, partnered in its crime to make me stagger as I attempted to find footing. Finding the porch fence, my palm skimmed off its new skin of water as I paced myself down each step of the stairs, hiking up my nightgown soiled at the hems. I looked up and ahead of me was the dragging body of my Father wrapped in a knitted blanket―the one I knitted a few years ago when I was punished with a lack of responsibility. My brother, Ian, was in the distance as the leader dragging that blue wool beacon. He pulled Father’s wrapped death with a tough rope that strangled and marched him forward. My brother promised that if anything, we were going to survive. I wanted to scream at him.

I slipped on the slicked wood and fell, gritting as I tried to brace the impact. It was better with my wheelchair; I had the chance to be free. I didn’t want to move again if that meant falling repeatedly, so I only gazed at the pimples of mud on my skin. Here was all I knew, all we knew. I crunched the sagging earth with tight fists. The last thing I wanted to do was follow my brother lost in his improvised sense of responsibility. I raised my head to see him stopped, his face turned to me.

“I… can’t go now,” I said. “I can’t go out there with or without my wheelchair, and you’re no better! It’s just destruction for miles and miles out. There’s nothing!” My chest heaved strangely, and I desperately wanted to rest my weight on anything other than my body, my arms were beginning to shiver weakly. His face was bright with innocence and sun as his light eyes landed on me. His expression then sharpened like he tasted something bitter.

“Get up, Edith.” He said.

“I can’t,” I repeated. I held in a breath before releasing it slowly, hoping it would steady me, but my senses were kept in quiet anxiety. “I just can’t… I won’t.” It came out softer than I had anticipated.

He looked above me and at our home as if noticing the partially collapsed-in, rustic cabin for the first time. In his eyes, I saw the same sparkle when we were smaller when he jumped the fence to run after a lost dog. He dipped into the forest line, too far to hear anyone call his name. Too gone, too lost to the way only he saw. He sighed now, his face strained in stress lines that aged his fresh-faced skin. He made a move to come closer and offer his hand, but I promptly burrowed some strength to gather myself back into a standing position before giving him a chance. I interrupted a glance at the body wrapped in blue, my eyes searching for anything to ease me away from it, and I ended up turning to Ian. I felt naked and chaotic.

“I’ll go on my own, then.” He said, concluding it for me.

“Ian,” I reached out for him only to graze his elbow. “you… you’re so certain?” I questioned. I couldn’t help but want to spit it out.

He turned around halfway, meeting my burning stare with a half-blink. He gestured to our cabin unceremoniously. “We have to cut through the forest; we can’t stay here, it’s simple.”

“What are you talking about? You want to run away from home just to head into more danger?” I said. I wanted to ignore the crawling dread that chipped away at me. I backed away, feeling a split second of worry that I was going to trip again.

“Edith, what home?” he retorted quickly. Again, there was that defiance that burned at any criticism I had of him. “If you want to rot here, don’t bother to drag us down with you.” He turned to grab the rope tied to the blue blanket. He was going to leave me. “I’m not going to let Father rot here.”

My mind startled into a precise ache, pained to hear him mentioned but too heated to let that eat at me.

“Father?” I walked forward to stop him. “I want to keep us to stay safe, Ian! You don’t know half as much as you think you do; why can’t you just let me fix it?”

He wasn’t listening. He turned his back to me and continued down his way. Despite my every reluctance, my legs followed suit. It was more terrible to abandon him. My shoes were a suitable protection against the ragged ground, but that didn’t stop piercing pins from pinching my feet at each step. It was already difficult enough without anything to grapple to guide my legs. I watched my brother as he distracted himself. In his hand, he gripped the compass watch, the one that Father had always carried in his pocket. He must have gotten it from him at some point. It had a golden rim with an eye of glass, and a teardrop ring attached to its side. He stared intently at it, ever so often glancing up. Finally, he looked at Father’s wrap, checking the strength of the rope with a confident tug, and then caught my eye.

“You know how to read it?” I asked.

He wet his lips and gave a pensive glance at me, then towards the compass. “I knew for years; Father never let me forget it. We’re going East.” He said as if it was self-explanatory.

“East?” the word slipped slowly from my mouth. “What’s at East?”

The trees that we approached stood next to each other like soldiers in a disciplined line, except for the failures who succumbed to the winds and laid flat, dead. The stones that littered the entrance were still slick from last night’s rainfall, like the grass, with a clinging moss that held at the bases and dripped onto the ground. Sticks and leaves were freckled, as well, and thickets of sad shrubs quietly stood next to us, hiding potential threats. A warning that the forest is not welcome to any life that hasn’t made a claim. Then there, in those slits of darkness that hid between the thick trees, was hell. A loud caw sounded its way through the bodies of trees, and I yelped, my feet unable to take the jolt and slipping on the already unstable ground. I found Ian’s shoulder and balanced myself with it before I could take a true stumble. His eyes were focused on the trees beyond the trees; it was the way only he saw. The one I will never see or understand. It was never clearer with Father’s direction. Though his warnings were tough, they had an undeniable rationality. But Ian had to be that wild spirit, the one who chased that dog.

He turned towards me with a softer look in his eyes. He was determined to press forward. “If you need me to carry you–“

“I’m fine.” I said shortly, letting go of his shoulder. I would just have to pray instead.

And so, we ventured forward, but I never stopped looking back. We weaved through the trees, Ian maneuvering Father with long and hard pulls to keep him close and cursing when the rope snagged on the arm of a dead brush or rock. I tried, but no matter where I looked, I couldn’t block out the sound. The rustle of his body when he hit the humps of dirt. The scrape of dead leaves that hitched onto the blue blanket.

I darted my sight to the darkness between the trees, and those holes the size of an arm left in small hills, which I made sure not to pass too close to. The forest was alive with the festering noises of creatures mewing and gawking in the distance, which would come close enough to shock a gasp out of me. I tried to take in the silence that hovered in the air as the noises lulled in phases, but it couldn’t stop my thoughts. I snapped my head in the direction of a ‘shh’, swearing I heard a word though I couldn’t make it out. All I saw was the sunlight that spotted the swamped grass below and the fluttering of small insects on drooped flowers. Not a single thing I saw could explain my fear. Then another ‘shh’ to my left, and I followed my head the same way. Trying to push it away, I reasoned with the zipping movement as scattered lizards or the unintelligible voices as the scratching sound of that blanket pushing through bumps of dirt and leaves. But there was something following us, there must have been.

“Closer.”

“What?” I gasped, spotting a motion in some shrub, but staring at it for long led to no discovery. I hugged my hand to my wrist to stop myself, feeling a familiar tug of risk.

“Edith!” Ian shouted and I felt my mind blur over until I met his eyes. He huffed as his eyebrows narrowed down in a way that darkened his eyes, his face flushed from the sun. There was an edge of impatience that spoke through, roleplaying as the disciplinary adult. “We keep moving; we don’t stop.” He was gripping the blanket, a part of the fabric impaled by a sharp stick planted into the mud.

I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding, fixing my hair from poking at my eye. ‘Don’t give into it, don’t let this be you.’ I steeled my nerves with a hard blink, then opened my eyes.

“‘If you leave home, I will not punish you. But God’s forgotten will’,” I said quietly. “… do you even remember that? He would tell us that every night.”

“Father said a lot of things,” Ian said, his sigh pregnant. “But I’m telling you we’re not stopping here. Don’t be surprised if I leave you behind.”

I couldn’t believe him. He impatiently tugged until the fabric finally ripped through, creating a hole in the cover. I saw Father’s skin peeking through. I turned away quickly. Home was anywhere else but here. I leaned my hand against a tree close by and let out a sigh before my legs went out for a moment. Despite the rutted skin of the bark, I pressed my back to it as if it were the comfort of a living room chair. We were only a few yards in, and my body only ached more, crying out for a break. Without a chance for me to counter, Ian grabbed my arm and shot me back up to my feet, the quick motion dizzying me before I settled into irritation.

“I told you, I–!”

“We’re heading East. We’re not stopping.” He said with deadly patience as he dragged me to where he stood sharply, his hand latched onto me like a collar to a dog’s neck.

“I wouldn’t have to if I was using my chair!” I was surprised that the voice that came out of me was so violent.

He checked the compass again, not bothering to look at me. His tone rested into a tired displeasure. “You wouldn’t have made it half a foot with that thing in the woods. You’re better off.”

I shook my head. “God, what’s at East, Ian? A miracle?” My voice was louder than before, I couldn’t calm myself down in time. His ignorance only stoked the flames in me, my passion our undoing.

And the worst thing is to be proven right. I had no idea where it came from, it looked nothing like robins or song sparrows whose little bodies couldn’t weigh more than a whisper. The bird’s shadow held both of us in a fake night, long spiny arms and feathers decaying from off its bone. I cried out and it shrieked with me in its meal call. It must have been waiting to make a move, stalking its prey until the right moment. Ian seemed more appalled by my scream than anything else, until it made a dive for his head. He ducked into a small stumble, dazed by what had just occurred but not enough to put fear into his eyes. Only a mild but widened gaze. I was on the ground not thinking at all. I felt the prickling sensation of immediate fear that torched my body and sent my limbs into stunned silence. The thing made rounds again, its pride injured by an easy miss. My eyes shook and darted in its direction: behind the trees in front of us, then ducking away from our sight in the darkness, then circling to our right. We were surrounded, we were dead.

Ian swiftly made a move out of the way, but I didn’t follow. And just as expected, the monster with its pride injured by an easy miss, was bored with idling. It darted in my direction before I could blink. Time froze for a second, a drop of sweat stuck to my forehead and my breath hanging in midair. It was close enough for me to see its jotted-out bone, the melting flesh off its corroded skeleton that glimmered with a yellow-like puss. Its eyes stared back at me, almost innocently as if it couldn’t know itself. A rot sealed them in a glassy gray. For a moment, I felt like I understood. Then, I fell backward with a frenzied cry at the weight of its vigor. The monster was on me, biting and snarling in a surge of vexation that it stewed for hours, dodging every pushback I swung at it in clumsy, crying attempts to get it off me. The fear that gripped me wasn’t the beast, but the boiling pressure I felt underneath my skin. It yanked me and pushed me into the clogged damp earth, thirsting for a bite of me. A chilled edge of terror swarmed my vision until all I could feel was the conscious part of myself, ripping and bleeding, slowly being buried beneath a viscous leak from the back of my mind. It was happening again. My breath hitched. The only barrier that separated my face from its dripping beak was my arm, and it gave no pause in ripping through my sleeve into white snow around my face. It was like being slowly crushed by a boulder, an unstoppable force, but it was nothing against this. It squealed when a piece of a darkened spike struck out from my arm and sliced through its right wing.

In a pierced cry of pain, the beast stretched backward flaying its tangled feathers with wild abandonment. Ian must have been waiting for a chance to strike. A familiar rutted cutting edge of silver peeped from its stomach and dark blood spilled onto my rust bodice. It quickly moved off me and found its new target. But Ian didn’t wait for the beast to make its attack before he raised his arm, revealing the glint of a sharp knife, and added another strike into its body. It shrieked haplessly and doubled back into the ground. Its limbs reached out for a lifeline, before curling into the dirt like a spider.

I buried my face in my hands, shaking with sickness. Ian hadn’t noticed but sat up firmly above the corpse, watching it closely as if waiting for another move. After a few moments of nothing, a giggle erupted from his lips. He took a shaky step on his knee to rise, standing up in a lightness of gleeful laughter with a boyish grin. My goosebumps broke out. The darkness had worn off from the corners of my eyes as I witnessed his display.

“When did… when did you get a knife?” I whispered, panting against a heaviness I still felt over my chest.

With a casual shrug, he waves it around with a proud air before eyeing me. He points the knife at the now corpse of the monster, not breaking his line of sight. “When did you?”

“What?” I said.

“How did you stab that thing?” His voice was low and honed like he knew. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t need to.

He closes his eyes for a short minute, then walks to Father’s body to observe him cautiously before grabbing the rope.

“Ian!” I couldn’t stand the silence any longer. “If we push on, it will only get worse. There’s probably a hundred more of those things, all swarming beyond us waiting to get a piece. Who the hell knows with this place? The woods… it feeds on life. Any bit of it. ‘Th-the more we fight, the harder it’ll―’”

I winced at the sound of a hard thump in front of me. Ian had slammed his fist on a nearby tree, his knuckles whitening with restraint. I could tell he was gritting his teeth from his jaw locked in tension.

“God, just stop!” He said. “I… I don’t care what you say, you don’t know everything. The house is nothing now. We. Keep. Moving.”

I kept quiet again.

The wind shocked our hair into our eyes as we walked deeper into the depths of twisted greenwood. It was like the forest had retreated into itself after the horror of the struggle, the trees closing in tighter as if to wring the breath from us. After taking another fall, I placed my hands on the ground and I pushed my body up, adjusting every other second until I could steady myself onto my feet again. My body was screaming at me to give up with fire that gored my veins. We made our way along the narrow pathways that were trampled in twisted shrubbery and thick foliage that bit at our arms and ankles. Ian severed through them with a hardened impatience as he huffed deeply; I could hear his breathing become sloppier each time. Despite it all, he learned nothing. It was this way, then it was that way, and then the other he insisted that would lead us somewhere that would make it all worth it. We were halted occasionally, either by my need to rest or a bump in the path that motivated Ian to scramble to Father’s body and search tenderly for something worrying before dusting off snagged blades of grass and continuing forward. Whatever forward was. Another uncanny noise reverberated against the bark walls, and I stopped to listen, certain I would hear a voice. Ian, as always, kept walking.

Home was not a place anymore; it was a thought. I observed the fallen animal deformities that blended with the surroundings―a reminder of my mistake of leaving always a few feet away. They were corpses at least, the live ones most likely keeping out of our sight in an untouched darkness. Their eyes were glazed over in rot and their drooling fur was dark with broken blond claws that peeped from underneath bright leaves. Needing to look away, my sight landed in front of me, that dirtied blanket of sea with waves of tears across its body. An intimate pain throbbed through me.

He would hate me, I know he does. Father was cocooned in a tomb that deprived him of the rest he deserved. He was straddled on a journey of the dangers he taught us to fear. I tightened my eyes until I saw bright red, praying that would stop my thoughts. And it was all my fault, too. The cabin was rocking with brutal winds, turning the furniture upside down, the rain punching the window with a heated rage I’d never seen from a storm before. It was already out of my hands. I was tired of fighting. I was being punished out of my body as that depth pushed me and pushed and pushed. I was so tired. I am so tired.

I gripped the figure of a tree and leaned into it as I felt the world tilt with me. I couldn’t find the balance I needed to pull myself out of my pathetic huddle. I slammed a fist onto the bark, opening my eyes with directed frustration at my brother. I gathered the pieces of me left, an old habit that got me so far, and teetered over to him. Before I could push against his stubbornness, I realized how glossy his blushed skin was in sweat, his eyes faded into a somber green. I exhaled softly, knowing the fight he would put up.

I pulled the remains of my sleeve up and hooked it onto my thump, then wiped his forehead. He looked like how I felt. “You look terrible.” I said.

He didn’t respond but walked over to Father and tightened the rope across his waist, securing it briefly. He didn’t get up from his crouched position, only looking up to the sky that was now caramelized from pale yellows to deep oranges and reds. He must have silently acknowledged his fatigue now. He took a shallow glance at the compass and sighed quietly.

“You know it’s late. We’re too far gone now.” I said, glancing behind us. I confused some background movement with a tree branch but pushed that notice away for the moment. “I can’t keep walking, Ian.”

He shook his head with a smile as if amused. This did little to deter me, I knew I was right ever since I followed him into these woods. He never listened to me.

“There was nowhere else to go but home, you should have listened to me.” I continued. I bit the inside of my lip, breaking from a nearing spiral of hopelessness that would suck me down whole. All our options were used up by now, yet it was a miracle we were still alive. “And it won’t get any easier at night. God, you kept talking about East, but where are we now? Do you even know?” I looked back at him, then choked on my tongue.

A stumped hand was an inch from the top of Ian’s hand. Its spindly fingers were layered in weathered wrinkles like dried leather, hovering behind him in wait. I stumbled back to the ground, my eyes following the hand that led to an arm, which traveled farther and farther back, stretching to an impossible length of a few yards. Its owner was a tree stilled in innocence. My breathing quickened to an anxious pulse in the span of a second as sweat dripped from my temple. I attempted to speak to alert Ian to the danger with my hand clasped over my mouth, but only a fragmented whistle of a voice came out of me. What I was seeing, if I was even seeing it, shouldn’t exist.

Ian tried to piece together my sudden distress; his eyebrows furrowed in confusion. Its joints snapped forward in a creek of old wood, which jolted Ian from his obliviousness, and he jumped back when his eyes caught a finger about to curl around his hair. He backed away in a quick motion, scattering the ground leaves around him. We were close together watching this unreal being, a tree with a functioning arm. I hoped it was just a hallucination, a privilege of insanity that came with enough time spent in the woods. The unknowable being made another jolt that resounded in a stiff creak as it pulled back its hand a few inches, then another one for a few inches more. It stopped as if unsure of where we were or what to do next. My stomach dropped.

Father’s body was right below it.

The end of the rope harness must have been a good amount of inches away. It was snuggled in the muddled herd of grass like a lazy snake. I saw Ian reach out slowly and I tightened my hold on his arm. Naturally, he carelessly ignored me and continued to reach forward for the rope. I slapped his shoulder, which earned me a pointed glare and a slap back in retaliation. His eyebrows were sharpened downwards with thin lines cradled around his eyes. For a moment, I pulled back with sudden guilt. He looked a lot like Father.

“You want to help?” He shot at me and pointed toward the gnarled wooden arm. “Get rid of that thing.”

I shook my head with fury. I knew what he meant, but in the moment, I was taken aback enough to feel dumb. “I can’t do that!” My voice was frayed in a whisper that cracked with intensity at the end.

“Why not?” he said with a scoff, not attempting to hide his cruelty. “You’ve got no right to be afraid, anyway. You didn’t have a problem with doing it before…”

I bit back a shout. I tucked my hand under the other to stop it from shaking. My eyes darted around the area at anything that would give us an opportunity. “I could… I could distract it.”

He only shrugged. I didn’t want to believe it, but I sensed excitement in him. “Do it.”

After picking out a dependable rock through the wet foliage, I held it tight in the palm of my fist like I was worried I’d lose it. It only took a moment before I wanted to stop myself. A rock? What would a rock do against this? I could throw it at a good distance and maybe it would distract it in time for him to grab the rope. But what about after? The long haul to drag Father’s body back to us without it ever noticing would be an ignorant dream. My arms stayed in a lifted position, looking like I was testing the trajectory when in reality I felt frozen; I lost to reality. I always lose to it. This is why I’m here; this is where I get us because of me.

I felt the weight of my brother’s hand against my shoulder, but I didn’t move. Not an inch.

Then, I threw it. It landed some distance across from Father’s body, barely a deep swing. But it didn’t matter, as the arm took the bait and dived for it in a flurry of speed, unlike any magnitude it presented before. At that moment Ian didn’t hesitate to make a move, fishing for the rope in the blades of grass and pulling it back to gun into an opening in the trees with Father shooting behind. I wanted to run with them, but my legs weren’t up for the battle. I was rooted to the ground uselessly. The hand let go of the rock and moved forward towards me, slow to even react to my brother’s fast exit. I crawled away slowly, unable to look away from it as the unnatural limb grew its joints to gain distance. Its boned fingers twitched subtly a few inches away from my nose, creeping in quietly as if it was concerned it would startle me. Without thought, I slowly raised a finger to it, desperate to feel its rage beneath the cool bark. There was something I could understand in it. Something wretched.

A snap sounded from behind me, and it jumped to action. It must have been my brother, who made a dart in my direction, since his hand had grabbed my arm in quick succession, pulling me away with the creature missing us despite its speed. The full force brought me to a kick-off onto my feet, getting no chance to fall again but to run through the wind with him in control. My legs felt scattered and thumped against the inside of my skirt as they pushed against the ground. I attempted to gulp in a breath before we stopped suddenly. Around me spun an open space, a glade somewhere in the forest.

No way home.

Ian let go of me, resting his hands on his knees as he let out puffs of air. I whimpered softly as a river of tears fell from my eyes. That was too close, every moment in these woods was too close. The death we kept escaping would just try again until it caught us in a mistake. Even to keep alive, what was left? What was for us? I buried my face in my hands in an attempt to stop it all from consuming me. I needed to pull it together before I fell victim to myself again. Before I unwound all the laces I grew pride in tightening. I combed my fingers through my hair until it caught a knot, then regarded our surroundings. Father wasn’t with us. Ian must have left him in the forestry when he came for me.

“H-He, he’s gone.” I said, questioning it I should bother to wipe my tears. Even in my exhaustion, I was tired of keeping myself useless, turning a coward the moment I sensed something beyond me. I let out a fragile breath. What was in Ian that made him so reckless? I needed to be someone else, even for just a minute. “I’ll try to find him.”

“No, I’ll do it.” he said, flapping his stretched shirt to let wind down his chest.

I shut my eyes tight, feeling it all bubble up my chest, but that did little to stop me.

“Goddammit, Ian!” I shook my head in exasperation, pulling back for a trembling breath of air. “Just let me help with something! I… I told you we shouldn’t have come here; it was reckless, this is reckless! Father… we were always warned to stay put, but you always had to break the rules, didn’t you? It was my fault; I shouldn’t have let you…”

Ian waved his hands in the air as if giving up. A laugh burbled out from him in a dried-out voice full of wicked humor. “You wanted to die there.” He said.

My lip quivered and I bit it harshly. I shook my head slowly then gathered stability in my voice in a hurried attempt to reign in control. “No… I wanted us to stay safe. I needed you to stay safe so I could–!”

“No, enough!” He sharply turned back to me. “You want to fix it, but you don’t do shit. I try to fix it, and I’m out of control. You and Father are the damn same, but unlike you, he didn’t pull back. Despite everything, despite everything you know you are, you’re still a coward.”

“You don’t even let me think, for God’s sake! The moment I try to tell my plan you’re off trying to get yourself killed. Tell me one moment when we followed your way that we weren’t about to be torn to pieces and eaten by some monster!”

He let out a prompt chuckle, his eyes filled with something worse than impulse: spite and sorrow. “Maybe I should be like you then, hiding and scared until it’s too late, and let it out on someone else.”

“I know you hate me!” The words were almost caught in my throat. I kneeled my head to the floor and let the teardrops race down miserably.

There wasn’t a rebuttal. The glade felt quieter than it should have been, save for a few crickets—miraculously alive—that sang an orchestra of in failing light.

“I don’t need you to forgive me, I can’t forgive me. I can never forget that night… not for a second. Father tried so hard to understand, even forgave me. But he shouldn’t have.” I swallowed back more tears. “He should have killed me when saw what I was becoming. That way… that way I wouldn’t have failed him, and I did that so well. Over and over again… I tried, I really tried, Ian. But there’s no fixing a monster.”

Then it started with a guttural rumple, the rattling of the underworld beneath my hands that stuck to the dirt. Another rumble, and another, longer than the last, and promising the culprit as something bigger, more terrifying than life beneath my hands. As the ground seemed to shift higher, I finally looked up to Ian to see him gazing up at the tops of the trees, his expression unreadable but stoic. I wanted to light up with laughter at how ridiculous it all was. And I almost did, but instead, I turned around. The begging of the ground rose in surging waves, breaking among its green tides in striking cracks that revealed the darker meat of earth. Something was emerging from the heart of the glade and created an earthquake with it. Something more terrifying than life. My hand reached to my mouth to shield the air from my scream. I scuttled backward from the jagged pieces of land and found myself behind Ian, who hadn’t moved a muscle.

To see it, to watch the earth crumbling like softened clay as a colossal impossible thing birthed from a hole, is to realize that you have been trapped by the forest. That you have been fated to feed God’s forgotten with nothing but the bars of trees to witness it. The thing’s head was crowned with antlers wrinkled like an ancient tree and chipped with an unknowable age. Then, came a snout of a withered deer that found its way above, twitching in the air like a dog. As it emerged from the darkness of the earth, it shook feverishly, ripping and screaming as it rose and rose until it became tall enough to eat the clouds. In the wake of the burning moonlight, I could see its skin covered in a mottled ugliness of dark purple with decayed browns that traced its limbs. It was hardened into a bark with veins of glistening moss that pulsed in rhythm as it marched in stunted steps. It must have been merged with various organic matter all bred in this forest. The head of a buck with velvet slipping off its antlers, the body of wood bulked in strangled layers, the mind of a beast.

The eyes, though I wasn’t sure if they were eyes but slits of light on its face, were a luminous yellow. It was unreal, a fantasy from a fairytale Father used to read us when we were little. That must have been where we were. That notion changed quickly when it lifted its face and let out a guttural growl that vibrated through my skin to testify to its actuality. I looked to reach out for Ian, but he was walking to the beast without a care.

“Ian, stop!” I shouted out, considering if he truly was just stupid all along.

He didn’t acknowledge me. The scariest thing was the glimpse of fire in his eyes. He stepped forward in the direction of the beast, and I could see his chest heaving as I looked behind him in awe of his blatant show of defiance.

“What do you want from us?!” he screamed at the beast; I could hear the smile on his lips. He took more steps forward as the massive beast began to let out a wail. He wailed in laughter, but unlike the other times, it was choked out in pain. “You’re never satisfied, huh?!”

“Ian, please!” I managed to say amongst the deafening noise of the creature pounding the ground as it approached Ian with primal confidence.

It bowed its head to the dirt as if recognizing the consenting dual and performing a formal entry. It pawed at the ground, lifting a boulder of uprooted grass with its hove, and charged towards us with horns facing our direction, belting out a wiry war cry. In its mind was a simple prayer: to rage and scream and slaughter. I thought I met death before, stared it in the eyes as that bird came for me with nothing behind its gaze but thick, bloody instinct. But that wasn’t death, because true death was when a creature that shouldn’t be real and is as huge as you’ve seen city buildings, comes straight for you at full speed with its hardened antlers at full display and an intention to shred through you like a blade to paper. I forgot to breathe, forgot that I needed to run, that I even felt fear in the first place. My brother was always the quick one and took my arm when I could count the age lines on its horns as it reached a terrifying closeness. We ran across the circled line of the forest, the beast met with trees by bending them backward under the weight of his attack. It cried out at its failure to hit us. We were at the edge of the glade and taking in more breaths as the ill-formed giant swiveled its head to us. Ian didn’t hesitate in brandishing the pocketknife as if it were a prized weapon when it was just as dependable as paper in the wind. He strolled over to the beast as it made its way to us again.

Before Ian moved any further, I grabbed his leg and hugged it tightly. “Don’t do this, we can’t do anything against this thing!” I pleaded before he shook me off. I wanted to slap him out of the hero he thought he was.

“Exactly.” The word was cold. He turned and approached the monster again, walking across from me in stride to lead it away.

It made no sense at all. Ian was an amalgamation of too many things our father couldn’t stand: loud-mouthed, shockingly independent, socially unaware, reckless. He would say the first thing that came to his mind and stick with it, all because it was his. He didn’t feed the chickens or tend to the weeds before they poisoned the crops, believing that a life well spent was one where mundanity died. It was the adventure, to succumb to the urges of curiosity that he was demanded to work against. And he fed through curiosity well, always asking questions when I knew to stay silent. ‘What about the forest? Why does the outside world not need us?’ He was given the belt time and time again but refused to learn. The antithesis of everything I tried to be, and everything I feared I was when Father sighed at me.

He was no different here, he never would be. There was that lightness in his step, his bright eyes, that certainty in his voice as he hurled insults at the beast that towered before him at a dazzling magnitude. I couldn’t believe he was stupid enough to act like a man unafraid to die. To leave me forever. He knew he stood no chance, that knife couldn’t even give the beast a splinter and he knew it. ‘Then why charge, Ian?’ A storm of anger beat inside me as I realized he didn’t care. Either that or an impossible bravery that I could never dream of meeting. I wanted to run towards him and toss him away. But more than that, I wanted to cry at my perfect waste of a life. A life with no father, no future, and soon no brother.

Just as that thought entered my mind, I saw the creature raise its leg and smack Ian sideways, flying him into the grass. I screamed, banging my fists on the ground in worthless agony. I sloppily seized whatever rocks were near and threw them as far as I could at the giant. They never hit, and my breath hitched from exertion. Ian got up, a fresh red blooming on his shirt, before running back at the giant with a fierce yell. ‘Stupid, stupid!’ He couldn’t even get a swing before the beast moved and tossed him to the other side without a huff. He curled in that patch of wet grass, clutching his stomach with a strained face before gritting his teeth and trying again. All I did was watch him be flung side to side by this colossal monster like a rag doll until my vision was tainted by tears. The harder you fight, the more the woods fight back. He was going to die and I couldn’t stop it. I leaned over my cuddled form. This is where I got us. The only thing I could hear in my mind was what my brother said to me. I chose to be a coward. My power, the one thing that sought to kill all the things that mattered in my life, was the most powerful evil and it belonged to me.

After everything I knew I was, I wasn’t the own fighting to stay alive as I sacrificed my being to keep who I loved safe. I didn’t battle with any greater evil than myself. The tears clung to the cold skin of my cheeks. My legs were never any good, it had been like that since I was a child. My father made me that wicker wheelchair to finally set me free, but my disability wasn’t what I felt caged by. I gasped amidst a broken cry that ravaged my body. In front of me the stage of my brother’s savagery torment as he was pitched from the grass to the trees, reeling as he impacted but never staying down long enough. He just kept going, and that served to torture me. And each time I did fight back, it was at the expense of who I loved, without me stopping it from happening.

My hand curled into a fist as I grasped my hair, finally letting out a wrenching sob from the deepest pit in me. I was a chaotic rage of venom and fire that wrecked homes and lives without a blink. My father was just a victim. I touched my forehead to the ground and prayed for my brother, prayed for my father to find peace, and prayed. I killed him. And I prayed that night, too. My idiot brother, in all his weaknesses, shined brighter than I ever could.

In such agony that tore my soul apart, it wasn’t long until my vision started to haze, though I could barely notice it with my eyes fogged in tears. But it was there. That prying, drowning darkness pushed me away from my center and into a struggle with my failing consciousness. I screamed out for every living thing in the night to hear me. As I stayed huddled in that mess, I felt the jagged shadows tear from my flesh and race towards the enemy present. My mind was reeled in every emotion I thought better not to feel, raging tenfold as blackened spikes from my essence shuddered out and flew at the beast that was too preoccupied with my brother to even glance. The shadows struck with an unnatural force that waved through its wailing body with exact violence. Its body titled in pain, leaving Ian in unconsciousness, then swung around its antlers in sudden distress at the spikes of shadow that pierced into any unprotected area that weakened its resolve. Through the hollow ribs, up into the veins of lichen, and stabbing into the skin of bark that felt brittle as it ripped apart like paper. I could feel it crying at me, hopeless to let it happen. I gritted my teeth and grabbed at the grass below me, my fists squeezing the blades. It was too familiar. A hoarse whimper escaped my throat as I felt myself reliving the worst moment of my life. Those dark tendrils that shook like an animal were the same that ripped through muscles, nerves, and bones. My panic lasted until the moment I realized he dropped to the ground. The force of a murderer. Each cry from me made the force stronger, an emotional instability that it was dependent on. And as I sobbed until my lungs could burst and my heart could give out, the monstrous giant gave in.

In brilliant rays of burning moonlight, the giant swung in its last rebuttal against the enemy with no apparent source, before it found itself unable to turn its head around. The dark swords had pierced into its forehead, and its entire body was littered with blood and shadowed blades that ran through its shell. It dies in a moment of fury and consuming darkness, bursting into ashes that grace the dark sky like singing stars. The world around me went silent as I collapsed.

I had killed the beast, and I will never forgive myself.

Fiction