Prompt: “Heart of my Own” by Basia Bulat

***

Its a long walk back to town. The moon is up. The trees are whispering tall and shuddering with secrets. Andie walks a strong, steady pace not quite a stride, not quite a jog. She doesn’t let herself panic, though the edge of it ices her heart.

She would curse him but she is trying to save her breath, to make it match her steps. It is a kind of meditation, lost in fury. The miles unreel behind her. This night has already been the longest night of her life and it will only be longer still as she walks the long, narrow country road, trying not to worry too much about the hundred or so horror movies she has seen featuring a woman just like her walking a trail just like this only to find herself sunk deep in perdition.

And bears. There could be bears. Andie keeps her eyes straight ahead, not letting herself notice how sinister and vague the world appears around her, rocks and fallen limbs wrapped in shadow and the frequent flash of eye shine staring back at her from the road just ahead.

She would be walking all night and, unless some car came and rescued her, any one step could be a fatal last step into the slavering jaws of a waiting wolf.

These thoughts fueled her stride. These thoughts and the impetus of fury that had pushed her out of Freddie’s car. Freddie with his sour breath and his too big hands that knew no boundaries.

It was no kind of date to drive deep into these woods, isolated and alone. He said he wanted to show her field where they could watch the meteors fall far from the neighborhood lights. She had wanted to believe him, but as soon as they pierced past the last of the streetlights, his hands had grown restless and friendly and deaf to her refusal. Kind at first and then insistent and then forceful.

What is it about men that keep their hands and lower parts separate from their minds?

The night air was cool and damp with the falling dew.

The moon is bright, silvering everything, but not quite full. No worries of werewolves this night. Make yourself grateful for few traveling mercies.

And the predatory hoot of owls in the distant trees. They are watching her. The entire forest is watching her. The woods have eyes and they are following her with voracious interest. If she stumbles, if she falls, they will press in around her and liberate the meat from her bones.

Andie keeps walking. She looks not to the right. She looks not to the left. She is only straight ahead and bent on reaching her destination and doing so in one piece. She wants to arrive without being eaten. The forest has a hundred hungry stomachs, each clutching and slavering at the scent of her passing. The forest is deep. The forest is dark. The forest has voracious appetites. Andie promises herself she will thwart those appetites and reach her destination having denied the night creatures their moon-salted meal.

I wrote this thing. It scares me. You don’t need to read it. I just needed to post so it could think I wasn’t afraid.

***

I see you. Sitting there at your computer screen, waiting for something to happen. For something to occur.

You are terrified. This awful bath of feeling. All of the dread. All of the anxiety. All of the frustration. All of it bathing you, rending your nerves, bathing your best intentions.

I wonder. Can you see me staring back at you? Can you feel my breath on your face?

I am here, right with you. Think of me, if you can, as an angel of mercy. An angel of deliverance.

I bring release. I bring relief. I bring apocalypse.

Where have you gone? Was that too much?

Why does this word frighten you so much?

Would you rather the truth be more palatable? Would you prefer an easier term for it? Transformation? Change? Personal growth?

Pardon me, while I swallow down this little bit of puke. It is vile, a terrible thing to see.

There is so much waste. So much potential unspent.

You sit there in your chair, aching for something you cannot touch. You have built a throne from the unspent coin of your dreams.

You ache to be ferocious. You ache to share this devastating beauty.

It cannot last. It cannot last.

This voice. Its truth makes you frantic. It will steal your purpose and your poise. It will rob you of the thing you most need to do.

And the hurtful thing, the diabolical reality, is that every part of it is true. There is no escape but to swim through the hateful center of it.

Dark things. Dark things. Swallow them down. Digest them. Let them nourish your mind.

You will say I am a cruel keeper. That I bring darkness and decay.

But that is not the entire truth of it. It is only the part you have let yourself see.

This thing is true. I am darkness. I am decay. But stay a moment longer and you will see what your mind could not prepare you to see. I am the darkness after the decadence. I am the rot after disease.

And when, at last, you learn to recognize these feelings for what they are, only then can you become what you are meant to be. Lean forward. Recognize the truth of this and know the true meaning of apocalypse. I am not death. I am not the end.

I am an angel of mercy. I bring with me only truth. I bring deliverance. I have come to set you free.

I am apocalypse. The full eruption of your truest self.

Are you ready? Lean closer. Breathe deep. Pull it into you.

Now, clear your mind. Let everything that is not you float away. Everything that is left is you.

Does it surprise you?

Good.

Lean forward. A friendly kiss on your furrowed brow.

Now you can begin.

Prompt: Hallelujah (performed by Matthew Schuler)

He sits in the chair, gritting his teeth against the thunderous ache inside his head, while the woman, Delilah, cuts his hair. Just a trim, he had agreed but quickly sickened at the sight of so much hair falling down around his shoulders, sliding down the front of his shirt, and the constant biting teeth of those furious scissors working their way toward his skull. And the pain inside his head, how like a bare, bright lightbulb scorching the surface with incandescent glow.

This is not a metaphor, he tells himself. This is happening. And the fear rises up inside again and he knows it will be such a simple thing to stand, push himself away from this chair and have her carried out of the kitchen. But it is three in the morning and the smell of her, her expert, nimble fingers, the sultry flash of that subtle smile. And he is kept sitting while hair falls in luxurious brown drifts. The piles of it at his feet.

The dog is whining and will not look at him. The kitchen is dark. She is working with only the light from the open refrigerator door.

She dips the comb into the bowl of water. “Almost done,” she promises, feeling the sudden tense of his muscles desperate to push her out and away from him.

He presses his hands against his thighs, careful to keep them occupied and from seeking mayhem. She would not be the first woman he had ever hit. The thought did not make him proud. But before he could finish it, she kissed him on the back of his neck. His skin prickled at the flower petal press of her lips.

She lay down the scissors. Stood back, admiring her work.

He was dizzy, nauseous with fear and shame. How could she do this to him? How could he allow it to happen?

He studies her face, her uncertain smile sliding into some other, stranger expression. She was hard enough to decipher in the daylight. At night, impossible.

And he stands, unsteady on his feet, watching the dog scurry away at the terrible sight of him.

She reaches out to steady him but he pushes her away, reaching instead for the kitchen counter.

“Show me,” he mutters. And she reaches up with a small silver hand mirror. The mirror gleams in the frigid kitchen light. This smallest of hours, where nothing good or useful is ever made. The hour where only regret is born. He pulls the towel around himself, suddenly feeling cold as a corpse.

She is there, waiting, and the dog is there, whimpering, and he is there, bathed in the meager gruel of moon and appliance light. And in the mirror is some new, smaller person. A shorn person. A hindered and crippled face.

He howls. The dog howls.

Lights in neighbor’s windows are lit as people part their curtains, glance out, then pull them closed. They wake up and brew the first pots of heavy, dark coffee. A melancholy beverage for a melancholy morning in this new kind of kingdom.