Beasties

She blinked. The little voice pulled her from her thoughts -- pulled her back into the moment. She had been staring at a bottle of wine for three minutes. Lost. With a tilt of her head, she glanced down at a little boy to her side. There was a pellet gun slung over his shoulder. 

“Excuse me?” 

“There’s a beast in your woods. I saw it. Last summer. Me and Tom.” 

“Who are you, kid?” 

He looked insulted. “I’m your neighbor, duh. ‘Cross the street.” 

“How do you know there’s a ‘beast’ in my woods?” 

“I told you. I saw it last summer with Tom.” 

Her migraine was rousing its ugly head.

“Okay. What were you doing in my woods last summer with Tom?” 

“Hunting rabbits.” 

She sighed. “You didn’t see the ‘no hunting’ signs, kid?” 

“My name’s not ‘kid.’ It’s Colton.”

“Okay, Colton. Don’t hunt rabbits in my woods anymore, okay?” 

She swiped a bottle of pinot noir from the shelf and cradled it under her arm. The IGA in St. Joe didn’t have the best selection, but she wasn’t exactly looking for top shelf anything. 

“Hey!” She paused mid step and looked over her shoulder at Colton-who-saw-a-beast-in-her-woods-last-summer-with-Tom. “Didn’t you hear me? There’s a beast in your woods! Watch out.” 

“Yeah, I heard you kid,” she said before walking off towards the cash register. Paid out and in her car, she sighed and placed the bottle of wine in the cup holder. Should have bought another bottle. One bottle was never enough, but tonight, it wasn’t to get drunk. It was to just sleep. Three days since sleep. Maybe the wine would help. Sleeping pills were locked in her mother’s safe. Benedryl too. She sighed and pulled out, rattling down the country road, back home. 

It was early-winter. But there was no snow. She wasn’t sure the last time she saw snow. Two years at least. When they moved here four years ago it was the worst winter in two decades. She wondered if it was going to be the last. All the better for her, she supposed. She hated driving in the snow. 

The bass in the back of her car rumbled, rattling the wine in her cup holder. The noise quieted her head, made her chest fill and swell -- pulsing with the rifts and pounding. Eyes only half on the road, she fished out her cigarettes and took a deep draw. Menthol and heat filling her lungs. 

She flicked the cigarette out of her window before she turned down the long gravel drive of her mother’s farm. Her mother hated seeing her smoke -- threatened to cut her off if she continued. Whatever, she was addicted. 

He had been addicted too. He’d be hacking up a lung in the middle of the wind just because she offered one to him. They were trash. She had loved that. 

The car was still trembling with the bass, even after she shut off the engine. The dark speedometer was getting blurry. Fuck. She was crying again. Panic was swelling up in her chest. Hurried fingers reached for the wine in her cup holder. Cork sealed. She needed a corkscrew. Fuck. 

“Wine? It’s noon. What are you doing with wine at noon?” 

Her mother was supposed to be at the vet. She pulled the bottle out from behind her back and looked down at it. Apathetic. Annoyed. “I couldn’t sleep last night. Needed to… I dunno. Get a sleeping aid?” 

She looked disappointed. Concerned. She was currently praying that she didn’t reek of menthols. She walked downstairs before her mother could say anything else and shut the basement door behind her. She forgot the corkscrew again. 

It was the second week into the semester, and she wasn’t at school. She was home -- the progress on her degree had stalled. Her entire fucking existence had stalled. Crawling into the mess of her bed, she fished out her phone and started scrolling through their messages. Stupid memes. Blocks of text filled with either nonsense or philosophical revelations. Sometimes a little of both. She kept scrolling. Passed over to his page. Scrolled through the lines of condolences. Rest in peace. Thoughts and prayers. Thoughts and prayers. Suck a fucking dick. She set her phone down before she broke it and rolled over to stare at the bottle of wine on her bed side table. 

Thoughts and prayers. There’s a beast in your woods, you know. 

Her mother hurt her elbow that morning. Come evening time when she pulled herself out of that catatonic not-quite-sleeping, she convinced herself to venture out into the cold, to the barn, to pick out the stalls. Early winter -- not even winter just yet, even. Tomorrow she thought. Tomorrow it’d be winter. Tomorrow. No music tonight. Picking out the stalls sometimes required silence. Time to think. But she was always thinking. Always remembering too many memories. Too much to think about. She missed him. 

She broke a plastic tong off the pitchfork and flinched at the thought of having to tell her mother. The shadows around the manure pile were thick and suffocating. A chill ran up and down her spine and she opened her eyes wide to take in as much light as she could. The fingers of the trees reached out for her, contrasted by the blue-black of the sky. Reaching, reaching. There’s a beast in your woods, you know. She choked back a scream and scurried back to the light of the barn. She broke another prong off of the pitchfork with how ardently she shoveled more shit in the wheelbarrow. The menthols tasted best standing just outside the light of the barn. She needed the nicotine. She needed the aesthetic. The motion of lifting a cigarette to her lips was more soothing than the actual drugs themselves. The only problem was that it was difficult to slip away as often as she would have liked. One of many problems, really. One of many. 

Dull eyes bore into the dark line of the forest, the panic gone -- watching for beasts, watching for ghosts. She hissed suddenly, flinching when the cherry of her cigarettes kissed her finger tips, singeing the flesh -- embedding the stink of cigarette smoke in her skin. 

“Good,” she muttered, scuffing the dying butt into the dirt beneath her boot. “Great.” She glanced back at the treeline. Still and silent. Just as it usually is before she ducked down to pluck up the butt -- pinching it between forefinger and thumb. 

The wind curled through the branches -- caressing each leaf, brushing over each twig. Stirring it all with a faint rustling noise. She nearly jumped out of her skin. 

There’s a beast in your woods, you know. That fucking kid. Fucking stupid little kid. What was with the people in this town. In this state? Backroad country bumpkins only two hours outside of one of the largest cities in the entire country. It didn’t make any fucking sense. She narrowed her eyes at the treeline. “Fuck you beasty -- and fuck everyone around here.” 

Sullen, irritated, mildly frozen, she wandered back to the single-story ranch house and kicked off the clunky rubber boots she wore in the barn before slinking downstairs. Thank the gods. It was dark out. Practically bedtime. Granted her mother would be awake for another three hours or so -- but she had an excuse to go to bed early and she decided to take it. Only when she was settled in bed, did she reach under and pull out one of the bottles of wine.