Red Wood

Word Count: 499


The window shatters. “Damn kids,” I mutter under my breath as I explode from the back door. They see me giving chase, and veer suddenly towards the dense forest that stands across the road from our small-town home. I refuse to let them win that easy, so I follow. Being well into my thirties, my stamina runs low long before that of the young boys, and I have to stop to catch my breath. I lean my weight against a mid-sized redwood tree in the middle of a small clearing, holding on to my own knees as I try to get my breathing back to normal. A strange feeling settles into my stomach, and I turn quickly to face the whispers that I hear behind me. No one there of course, just my imagination. Still, they sounded so real. They had a sadness to them; like a desperate cry for help from some place way off in the distance. I brush off the feeling and look towards the lone tree that stands out here in the middle of no where. Sad looking really; almost to a point where one could imagine the whispers originating from it. Looking closer, I realize to my disgust what was gathered around my feet--spiders! Yet no movement? I crouch down to get a closer look, noticing immediately that dead spiders surround the tree. The whispers come again, gently touching on my mind. There they remain for the entire duration of my walk back home.

*

Pulling out the chair, I sit with my arms crossed on the kitchen table. My wife, Cindy, enters the dining room carrying two plates steaped with an oven roast. She places one in front of me and sits across the table with the other.
“I’m sorry darling,” I say, “but I’m just not feeling very hungry right now.” The whispers I heard earlier were still greatly bothering me, and my stomach hadn’t settled since I returned.
“Don’t be silly,” she countered, “if you don’t eat you’ll just shrivel up and blow away.”
I looked up at her, a cold realization crossing my mind. With the whispers speaking to me louder than ever, I wrapped my fingers around the steak knife next to my plate. I pushed my chair back and moved towards my wife. She looked up at me with confusion and fear in her eyes. “Tom?” was the last word that she ever spoke.

*

By midnight I had finished digging a large hole under the red wood. As I dug I uncovered countless other skeletons and human remains in the soft dirt beneath the roots. I tossed the already stiffened body of Cindy into the hole and covered it back over. Spiders scurried across my shoes, heading up and down the tree in numbers that made its bark look alive. I smiled then, hearing the whispers again, but more faintly. That’s alright, I know what they are saying. “Your welcome,” I say in return, then head for home.