The Loop Path

Autumn showers were rapping on the glass and Celia was sitting on the floor, lazily petting Maeve's fur.

"I guess we could go to the forest if it lets up in five minutes."

The border collie huffed at the dreary weather outside.

"I don't feel like it either, but it'd be good for us, huh?" Celia felt stupid trying to convince a dog to go on a walk.

"We'll go. You'll get rid of some of your zoomies. And I'll get out of my head a bit," she gave the dog a tight hug and got up to get ready.

***

It had been two hours since Chase arrived home and both Celia and Maeve weren't back from their walk. Those two liked hours of roaming so, normally, it'd be fine. But the weather was getting rougher by the minute and there was a moldy pot of one of Celia's concoctions on the stove.

***

The rain had subsided into a fine drizzle. Celia didn't mind the damp weather, she liked when it matched the feeling in her brain. It's probably why autumn was her favorite.

Maeve too livened up at the sight of her owner's lifted spirits and the freedom of the forest.

***

Normally this would concern Chase. Even if everything was alright before, now there was a full-blown storm raging outside. But instead of worrying about his wife, he was turning from annoyed to angry.

This is not how you mend things after you walk out on a fight.

***

It seemed like the moss, forest floor, pine needles—everything in the forest was breathing in the autumn. And in Celia too it felt like the air had dissolved some weight squeezing her lungs.

Maeve occasionally picked up and gnawed on fallen branches, and brought them over to Celia in hopes of a good game of catch.

***

Chase stared into the moldy pot long enough to start to feel vomit rising in his chest.

Was this an angry prank from Celia? Was she sick again? Or was she still?

He considered for a moment letting her deal with this mess herself. But then he looked outside again where the wind was attempting to break down the tree in their back yard. The sight of the storm softened Chace—if Celia even manages to get home, she'll already have enough to deal with. So he threw the pot in the sink and started scrubbing.

***

They had reached their regular turning point in the forest. An old fallen pine tree with a giant anthill at the roots.

But, while Celia felt a bit better, she still didn't feel like she was good enough to go back home yet. She looked to her left and there was a curious path there. It almost looked like someone had carved a hole into a thick wall of trees and grown twigs around the edges.

***

Though the storm had turned into an almost boring October shower, it was now pitch black outside. 

He was just about to spew an angry text when there was a faint desperate meow from upstairs.

Chase walked up to the bedroom and instantly threw his hand over his mouth and nose when the scent of ammonia hit his face. Miserable in the middle of the room was their cat Maurice. The pathetic little animal hurried past Chase and downstairs where it greedily munched from its bowl.

Celia got lazy during her episodes, but never like this. The room was full of at least 3 days' worth of cat shit, piss, and a small puddle of vomit. By the sound of the cat inhaling and almost throwing up the food again, it might as well had been a full week.

It was when Chase was pulling his phone out to call the police when red and blue lights illuminated their walls.

***

Celia and Maeve hesitated a bit before entering the path that resembled a child’s attempt at a bird nest turned cave. But there was nowhere else to go, except for home, and Celia didn’t feel like it yet.

So she stepped over the path’s edge and tsked at Maeve, motioning her to come with her and stop standing there like a statue.

The path didn’t go for as long as it looked like it would and they soon found themselves in a pleasant meadow in the middle of the forest.

“Wow, I didn’t know the forest went on for so long,” Celia sighed and pulled a twig out of her hair.

“Come on, let’s explore further!”

***

Chase stood by the stairs for a few seconds. For a few years now, he nursed a subconscious feeling in the back of his mind that told him that one day things would end just like this.

***

Crossing the path and playing with Maeve in the new-found meadow felt like breaking ties completely with her latest episode. For a couple of minutes, she even forgot about her fight with Chase.

“I should apologize, shouldn’t I,” she asked Maeve.

“Bleh, alright, I will,” there was something bitter about apologizing for your own depression. But there was probably something bitter about watching your partner fester with mental disease too.

“Come, let’s go a little further, see what else’s hidden here before we go back,” she motioned Mave ahead.

***

Outside there were two cars—one ambulance, and one police. Chase fell out of his trance when there were booming knocks on the front door.

***

Celia and Maeve had walked about 2 more minutes when Maeve started stopping in her tracks.

This started to bother Celia. Maeve always had to go first. She had to be in front of everybody. She always started walking on before someone could pass her. And what was with Celia having to almost beg Maeve to move along now? It was usually the border collie who’d hesitate to go home; who’d probably never stop the walk and go on a forever hike if it were up to her.

They’d reached a small hill when Celia started to feel uncomfortable with this. Looking down from the hill, ahead was another bottleneck in the forest, with a path almost like the first one.

This time Maeve didn’t just stop and stare ahead. She started to lean down, as if before herding. Or hunting.

“Come on, let’s get home. I’m craving the leftovers now anyway.”

***

There was a policeman outside their door when Chase opened it. While walking down the stairs, he started to feel hopeful again.

An ambulance was a good sign, wasn’t it? If Celia were dead, they wouldn’t bring a body home.

“Mr. Clearwater?”

“Yes,” it came out of Chase’s mouth in a hiss so he cleared his throat, “Yes, that’s me.”

“We’re here regarding what happened with your wife.”

***

The walk back to the first path started to make Celia eerie. Maeve continued her weird behavior of stopping dead in her tracks, this time though staring backward, at where the little hill was.

“Come on now,” Celia pretended to be annoyed. Annoyed was better than scared. Annoyed was unbothered, bored even.

She felt a sense of relief when both of them walked through the path and into their familiar forest again. Then Maeve turned back and started a low growl at the path.

Celia was over it, she just wanted to get back home. And it had started to rain again. She latched Maeve’s collar onto the leash and started to tug her back home.

She tugged Maeve, walking backward herself, trying to ignore the fear rising from her feet to her knees, to her throat as her dog wouldn’t stop growling at nothing. When Maeve finally gave in, shut up, and started going in the right direction, Celia sighed in relief and turned herself around.

She stopped and watched in horror as she found herself back on the hill, looking at the new forest and meadow far ahead.

***

“Where is she?”

“Wai-”

“Wait? I want to see my wife, please!”

Chase impatiently walked past the policeman and towards the ambulance.

He tugged at the locked door.

“Sir, I recommend you don’t–”

The policeman was interrupted by the ambulance door opening. Chase, however, wished it didn’t.

***

“Let’s go, we’re just a little lost,” Celia’s voice quivered as she held back tears.

“We’re just a bit lost, honey,” so much for holding back as her tears dissolved into the rain.

Maeve didn’t need any more encouragement, as she started to pull the leash anxiously. A habit that Celia had meticulously weeded out in 2 years but was now thankful to see it again.

Halfway back to the first path, they started to pick up the pace. They reached a full sprint when they ran through the path.

After which they landed on the hill. In front of them was the meadow.

Behind the meadow, far ahead, was the first path again.

***

In the ambulance, Celia was lying on a gurney, with her hands frozen around what looked like a sticky, muddy Maeve.

***

Celia and Maeve kept running through their loop.

But the rainy day turned into night.

And after they passed out, it turned into day again.

And the day turned into a spectacular sunset and then night.

And then day again, after which Maeve was the first to get hungry.

***

“Cee? Are you . . .” Chase didn’t know how to finish that.

“Sir, we need to ask some questions.”

“What happened? Where did you find them?”

“If we could all go inside, perhaps . . .”

“No!” Chase didn’t want this. Any of this. He just wanted his wife back. Even if it was the moody, depressed one he left back home before going on his trip. Even if it meant fighting again. He didn’t want the wife or the life he’d have to pick up from an ambulance and carry home.

***

“STOP!”

Celia yelled at Maeve who kept making leaps at her. Teeth a little too much out there for playtime.

“WE’RE JUST LOST!”

She realized she was begging not just her dog to stop, but herself as well. Not just for Maeve’s but for her own grumbling tummy to stop as well.

***

Chase pushed past a doctor into the ambulance and kneeled beside his wife.

“Celia, what happened to you? Are you both ok?”

He reached to touch Celia’s cheek but drew back when his hand touched the bloody fur of their dog.

***

Maeve’s neck snapped in Celia’s hands like the twigs in the path.

Celia looked down in shock and hugged her dog, covered in both of their blood.

It was only when she stopped crying that she realized that the meadow now looked much like their familiar forest.

***

“Cee, what happened, what did you do?”

Celia’s eyes were wild, looking somewhere through Chase’s.

She clutched Maeve closer.

“We were in a loop,” she blurted.

****

A month passed by and Celia was still in the hospital. Chase had already finished packing up the boxes days ago, the only things left were Maeve’s stuff.

But Chase didn’t have the heart to pick up her little toys, raincoats, snacks, and leashes from around the house and box them away. Unlike most of their stuff that was to be either brought to the new apartment or Celia’s sister’s place, Maeve’s stuff had no new home.

Chase wiped away a couple of tears and started looking for her collar. If he couldn’t bare the thought of throwing away her favorite toys or donating bags of dog food, he at least wanted to find her collar for himself as a keepsake.

He rummaged around the house, turned the hallway closet inside out but couldn’t find it. The collar wasn’t on her the night she and Celia were brought home. So they must’ve lost it somewhere along their walk. Whatever that turned out to be.

There’s a built-in breaking point for everybody. And curiously it’s seldom anything grand.

It’s not coming back from your trip angry to an empty home, realizing your wife hasn’t been there for almost a week. It’s not meeting the police outside your house in the middle of the night. It might not even be finding your almost-dead wife in the back of an ambulance, clutching your definitely dead dog in her freezing hands.

It’s sometimes not even the moment you get the creeping realization that the wife’s responsible for your pet’s head swinging unnaturally from its body like a bobblehead. 

Usually, it’s the holding yourself together for weeks after. It’s when you squeeze little notes of insults and crying, and fighting, and we’re doing fine's, and she’s just a bit tired these days's in an overstuffed glass bottle that the cracks finally begin to appear.

Chase got up, grabbed the keys, and went outside for a walk.

***

Maeve lay limp in Celia’s arm as the primal scream in her began to brew. You would think that a glitch in the universe, a loop in space would feel impossible.

But that wasn’t it.

***

Chase walked outside of his home and into a trance, walking out of it in the middle of the forest.

He aimlessly kicked around moss, stupidly still seeking out Maeve’s collar.

***

What really felt impossible was reality. The reality of a fallen down pine with a giant anthill sitting just there as always. As if waiting for Celia to pass it by and finally go back home like usual.

***

Chase had walked for half an hour. Once he reached the anthill tree, he got the feeling that he should turn back home. Like they always used to.

***

Celia screamed herself hoarse for good 20 minutes. Both because of her grief, and her desperate wish to drown out the car sounds from the highway outside the forest.

It couldn’t be, it simply couldn’t. How could she be running around in circles while they were all still here? Did nobody really notice her imploding?

***

Chase was turning around when he saw the gleaming baby blue out of a pile of leaves and twigs.

***

For just a few seconds Celia thought her scream had an abnormal echo. Repeating itself for way too long. But then the echo slowly grew louder.

She realized, the echo wasn’t her own at all. Instead, they were sirens.

***

He hoped it would turn out to be just litter. Just trash left in the forest by drunken teenagers or homeless people.

But the closer he got, the more the baby blue took shape of Maeve’s collar.

***

She knew it could be help, but it didn’t feel like it would be. So instead of calling out and walking towards the sound of people, she lay still. Arms wrapped around Maeve’s body, clutching for the warmth leaving her dog’s body.

And just like being plucked from a bad dream, she was woken up into an even worse reality.

It’s strange how just a few What happened here?'s made Celia wish she was back in the loop.

***

The collar lay in the shade of a strange path, almost a hole in the forest.

Chase leaned down and picked it up.

Memories of the dog, of Celia, of Celia hugging what no longer was their dog, crept up like bile.

No, it was too soon to go back home now.

Chase gave out a sigh and looked up at the darkened path.

He took one more breath and entered.