Chapter 4
Edward~
With the light of morning came reality, and in that reality came relief. The dreams that plagued me were over, banished to uneasy sleep for another eighteen hours.
The smell of coffee shook off the cobwebs from another dark night and urged me out of bed. I put on the few civilian clothes I owned, the ripped shirt and worn jeans of any Joe Schmoe working around his house, and entered the kitchen as the pot was finishing. Patting myself on the back that I'd successfully programmed the machine, I filled a flowered teacup as much as I could before I stepped out onto the front of the gray-washed wraparound porch to survey something I'd never had.
Land I owned. Land that wasn't destroyed, temporary, or sad.
There was nothing across the road. Nothing to the left or right of me. Just barren farmland that had been used up or made infertile, and I loved that I was completely alone.
I had another itch to do field work. Harvest vegetables or milk cows or build a barn from scratch or some shit. Using muscles and hand-forged tools like in depressing movies where they have nothing. I looked up, and the storm from the night before had been replaced by big blue sky, and the sunshine had all but dried everything up. I felt good, strangely serene and secure, as I took a big, clean mouthful of air and sucked it deep into my lungs.
I hummed it out, content to have the noise I made be the only human sound for once. I sipped my coffee, then walked around and looked at parts of the porch that needed fixing, letting the rustling of the tall grass in the field behind me time my breaths in and out, in and out.
But the grass wasn't all standing stately and shifting with the breeze when I turned to look at it. Sometime in the night a clearing had formed, land flat as pavers created some sort of opening. I moved to the other end of my wide porch to get a better view of the mouth on that thing and saw a lane, cut on a diagonal, leading directly towards another house. A dilapidated, gray blemish against the bright blue sky.
I slurped loudly, my eyes narrowed in frustration at the fact that if I could see this house clear as day, they would be able to see me as well. I tried for a while to regain the feeling of freedom I'd just about reached before I'd noticed this unwelcome development, one I was pissed the realtor hadn't mentioned, when I heard it.
A sort of groan and a crackling in the grass that was not from the gentle wind alone.
Inherently freezing at the sound I assumed was distress, I tried to assure myself that it was just the foreign sound of nature, my own mind trying to trick me. A mind that wasn't yet willing to let go of everything I was trying so hard to get rid of. Draining my cup, I stared at the field feeling angry that I couldn't just bask in the solitude of my blank thoughts. When the sound came again, I sighed and took the creaking wood steps two at a time, out to prove that I was, in fact, making it up and hearing ghosts.
Empty cup in hand, my bare feet felt the dead hay that had flattened in the night, and I cursed my brain as it switched automatically from peacefulness to combat mode, senses high and on alert. It's my job to follow screamed my old sense. It's not your job anymore cried my new one. I went down that lane anyway as I heard the repeated sounds of movement and something that I was relieved sounded like an animal, but I stopped short when I heard murmurs of… something else.
I inched forward, accompanied only by the listing sound of my own movement until my heart jumped in my throat as the next sound met my ears.
Was that a human voice?
I paused before continuing, my soft gait changing and beginning its learned shuffle, ignoring the prick of the sharp ends of dead grass that cut my feet. They stayed close to the ground on instinct, instead of stepping because that's what you do. You never know what or who you might be stepping on. The shuffling sound also served as a warning to give whatever demon that lay in wait in front of me the chance to leave. My head snapped up a moment later in the direction of a sound on my right, and I left the path, my body slicing through the tall grass.
The sound came again from out in front of me, something or someone caught there in the shoulder-high grasses. I pushed apart the wall in front of me with one hand but saw nothing, so I went further in, the sound of the weeds swishing closed behind me, trapping me in and revealing what I'd instinctively felt needed to be found.
A circle had formed, the flattened grass much like the path that I followed to get here, but an area I couldn't see from the porch. And in that circle, was a girl.
She was curled there, in a white sort of dress that didn't match the era we were in. Her hair was in chaos, tangled on the trampled hay, and there was a smudge of dirt on her cheek. She lay completely still, and my first thought was that I hoped she wasn't dead, but I knew something had made the sounds. I studied her a moment to see if I could detect any sort of life, and then something moved, but it wasn't her. I squinted and craned my neck to figure out what it was, what my mind was trying to show me, and then I saw.
Nestled in her arms was a brown fawn, its tiny, shivering body snuggled up against her. I stared at it as it stared at me, and suddenly the thing turned, concentrating on the girl who was whispering to it, smiling at it. And fuck me if that animal wasn't smiling back at her. Then the unnatural mother holding this animal turned, and her hair shifted, forming a halo around her with little white flowers and green bits of foliage caught in its web. It was a sight so natural in its unnaturalness, so worthy of existing, I nearly choked.
I felt dizzy, nauseous at the fact that for the first time in months, I wished for the camera that I'd amputated from my life because I knew that this would've been the one picture I'd hang on that goddamned wall.
It would have captured life, not death.
Mad love to LayAtHomeMom, Hadley Hemingway, and CarrieZM for making us pretty.
Enjoy, and leave us your thoughts!
HB&PB