Page 63 of Together We Rot

It’s been hours.

Maybe longer. It’s impossible to tell. So many corpses lie littered around me, clinging onto their secrets even in death. I’m plagued with the image of them rising, lifting on skeletal legs and closing in on me. I think I’d welcome it. A quick death would be better, cleaner.

Hunger scrapes at my ribs and I wonder how long it will take for me to die. Humans can survive without food for thirty days or longer. Water, ten. But I don’t want to wait that long. Can’t wait that long. I don’t want my chest to cave and my skin to rot. I don’t want to be conscious when Death claims me. I huddle in on myself, knees drawn in as close as my chains allow. It’s better down here without the bite of the wind, but that hardly makes it pleasant. Parts of me have gone numb, and I doubt the feeling will ever truly return.

If everything has gone as planned, Wil’s as far away from helping me as possible. I hope Cherry took Wil as far out of this wretched place as she could get.

I claw at the hardened ground to feel something. Dirt traps itself inside each of my nails, pushing all the way back to the skin. My wrists and ankles are rubbed raw. The metal chains cut deep, along with the burning emptiness in the pit of my stomach. My resentment streams down my cheeks, dripping off my chin and scorching the ground below.

I’m Elwood. I’m Elwood. I’m Elwood.

Each time I say it, the words lose meaning. Which Elwood am I? Am I the demon inside me, the darkness swirling in my gut? Or am I the boy—staying up late hours with forceps and pins and wings?

My misery morphs and takes shape. Grief and rage walk hand in hand and I spiral between them both. I want to thrash and scream and curse.

“Reveal yourself,” I plead. There’s that door again in my mind. Only this time I’m not knocking. I’m ready to kick it down. I want to see the wood splinter and collapse. I’m ready for whatever is lurking on the other side. I’m sick of waiting for the inevitable. Let it be on my own terms.

Nothing happens.

“Show yourself! ” I howl, gritting my teeth to summon all of my remaining energy.

Then comes the first knock. A heavy hammering against a frail door. I reach for the handle, and it’s no longer locked. It swings open in a violent gust, pushing open not to reveal a monster but an open clearing in the woods. A moth weaves its way through the trees, as if it’s a beckoning finger guiding me forward.

I follow it. My toes crunch barefoot through the underbrush, leaves and twigs and skittering bugs. My legs effortlessly walk me through the tired woods like the forest belongs to me.

Like I’ve wandered here before. But this forest is far from mine.

Snow spills across my ankles. White coats everything, swimming up the night-soaked bark and curling around the highest branches. Above it all, the moon hangs in the sky, heavy and full.

Farther and farther I go. Quieter the world becomes. There’s nothing but the snap of my feet and the cloud of my breath. I freeze, catching sight of the scene before me.

I see the imprints of wings against bark. The creature is biblical in size but unholy in nature.

This is where it all began, it whispers. Its voice is the rattle of the trees, the wind running along branches, the screech of an owl in the distance. Everything and nothing and all the little things in between.

A scream peels off the bark, buzzing back and forth across the forest. It’s the horrific in-between: not quite dead but certainly not alive. Every inch of me goes still.

I listen.

Wet noises—like tires running over ribs, bursts of blood gushing from an artery. Dry ones too—the wicked scrape of nails across the earth, limbs chopped off as easily as a knife slicing through the throat of a hare. The noises spiral and rebound, playing around me nonstop. A melody that doesn’t end, only loops over.

I see it all. Four men have got ahold of a boy. He is bleeding profusely, the red of his blood staining the green around him. Dirtying it. His scream cuts through the soul of him.

“Don’t cry,” the man closest to him whispers. He’s got the same honey-blond hair, the same dead eyes, the same emaciated, hollow look to him. Hunger has made a home in his cheeks, in the thin strip of skin hanging over his ribs. A father bleeding his son out like a pig. Tears bubble down his aged face, dripping off his sharp chin. “The Lord wants this.”

That doesn’t stop the screaming.

It stops only after the boy has been bled dry. His crying cuts off with a gurgle of blood and the color bleaches from his skin. Everything ends. I wait for something to happen, but nothing does, at least not immediately.

Then he coughs. A quiet sputtering building to a deafening choke. He hacks something up and then his body falls still.

It’s a seed.

The men cradle it in their hands, teary-eyed and overjoyed.

The door has returned beside me. It appears in the bark, carving itself in the tree closest to me. The knob swings open on its own, and a new scene waits for me on the other end. A familiar forest, a familiar family.

A tree plunges from the cold dirt. It’s the largest in the entire forest, its tips scraping the sky, its bark bloodied and black. There’s a man strung among the branches, his chest oozing like the tapped core of a maple tree. His scream isn’t alone; it’s tangled with my mother’s shrill cry as I break into the world.

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