The Hand that Feeds

When three of her classmates are waiting for her on her walk home from school, Misty knows this time will be especially brutal. Prescott has that nasty smile on his face, Harrison holds a slingshot, and Olive leans on a stick as thick as a bat. The hairs on the back of Misty’s neck prickle in warning a few seconds before she sprints off the trail and into the trees.

It is generally understood in her town that the woods are not safe for kids, especially past the creek that splits the land almost down the middle, a jagged smile separating north from south. The canopy is too thick for helpful light when navigating the lurching terrain. The cougars and bears too plentiful.

But when the first rock hits her calf with a force that makes her cry out, Misty decides she’ll take her chances with the woods.

She goes as carefully as she can, abandoning her backpack after it gets caught for a third time on a branch. When another rock smacks her in the back of the head, she runs full tilt toward the creek. She can hear it cackling at her as she gets closer.

The taunts behind her grow faint once she jumps over the creek. When she can’t hear them at all, she slows down just enough to find a bramble of vines and dead branches to crawl under. She wipes the tears off her face with filthy hands.

Hugging her knees to her chest, she worries about her dad arriving home, no lights on, and no food on the table. The woods coo and click around her and as one fear fades, a new one settles in.

Eventually, Misty heads back to where she thinks the creek is and walks for several minutes before panic starts to set in. She strains her ears but can’t hear the running water.

Instead, she hears something else—a high-pitched keen, like a lost puppy.

For years, people have lost their pets to these woods. Maybe a dog had gotten hurt? She follows the sound in the growing dark until she sees a shape curled up in a clearing.

It is the size of a golden retriever. Misty had had one when she was very little, before her mom died and they had to sell their house. She called him Bunny for his floppy, cheerful ears.

Rather than Bunny’s soft waves of golden fur, this creature is black and has a texture to it she can’t quite make out from this distance.

As she slowly approaches, the keen deepens to a growl. Her eyes begin to register that the thing is covered in black spikes. A pair of green, glowing eyes open and stare at her.

Misty’s heart races. Her instincts tell her to run away even as her curiosity keeps moving her forward. “Hello,” she says quietly. “Are you hurt?”

The thing’s eyes narrow to slits. Its spikes shift and twitch as it unfurls itself. She sees two legs bent back like a flamingo’s. Two arms so long that the knuckles of the bony hands drag on the ground. A gray mouth overstuffed with teeth. A snapping tail.

Misty stumbles back. In the dying light, the spikes—thousands of them as thin and sharp as porcupine quills—shiver in her direction. “A-are you...hungry?” she squeaks. She reaches into her pocket for a half eaten granola bar from earlier. “Do you like chocolate?”

The thing tilts its head. The growl softens to a purr. Her hand trembles as the thing, standing no taller than her hip, stretches its long neck and sniffs her offering. Misty feels its acrid, hot breath on her palm.

“That’s it,” she coaxes as it comes closer. “You’re just hurt and hungry, like me, huh?

Misty watches a purple tongue uncurl from its mouth. It sweeps the food out of her hand. The orbs go black then green again. It purrs louder. Misty smiles. “You can be my friend. I can bring you all sorts of snacks. Would you like that?”

The thing opens its mouth again. Misty sees the barb on the tip of its tongue a split second before it sinks into her cheek and tears.

Misty stays home sick for days, face aching from stitches as her body burns with infection. The night she returned from the woods, her dad had been ready to beat her good before he saw her ruined face and glazed eyes.

After the emergency room, her dad had let her retreat to her room and left her alone for days. Even bleary with fever, she enjoyed the solitude. She had time to read, to listen to the radio, and to think about the thing in the forest.

Misty hoped it was okay. She had screamed so loud when it licked her, startling them both. No wonder it stung her. Next time, she would bring it more food. She would train it to heel and beg and not sting.

“Your face is even grosser than ever,” Prescott says from where they wait for her by the trail. The other two laugh.

Misty stops several yards away and, as if in replay of a couple of weeks ago, she starts to edge toward the woods.

“Did you cut yourself trying to shave your beard?” Olive says. The others give her high fives.

Harrison takes his shot. “Nah, she probably cut herself from the mirror.”

His companions pause in confused silence.

“Like, from when it broke. Cuz she’s so ugly,” he clarifies.

Their laughter resumes.

Misty tries to lose them in the trees again when they charge after her. But she is sluggish and tired, still not fully recovered. This time, they catch her. They shove her to the ground and her face hits the dirt. Her stitches tear. She curls into a ball as they kick her and hit her with fallen branches.

After a while, the blows stop long enough for Misty to take a few gulping breaths.

“What was that?” Olive says. “Did anyone else see that?”

Misty hears the high-pitched, desolate whine. It is eerily clear in the sudden silence of the woods. She laughs. “You’re gonna get it now,” she says, wiping blood off her mouth. “My friend’s going to beat you up for hurting me.”

Misty hasn’t been able to teach the thing any tricks yet. She has only been back to the woods twice since her fever went away, keeping her distance as she threw leftovers and half-finished candy bars over the creek. It won’t let her get close enough to pet yet, but she’s learned that the secret to stopping it from charging is to hold very still and never ever look away if it’s watching you.

It’s her secret. And she isn’t telling anyone.

Prescott spits on her. “Shut up, trailer trash. It’s just some dumb dog or something.”

The whine descends to a low, rattling growl. Something rustles nearby.

“Who’s there?” Olive squeaks at the trees. She whirls back to her friends, dropping her stick. “I wanna leave. I mean, I—I have to be back for dinner.”

“Me, too,” Harrison agrees in a rush.

Prescott’s face twists. “Don’t be stupid. It’s—”

Whatever he says next is lost in a wet gurgle as something long and sharp punches through his chest and yanks him away.

Olive and Harrison leave Misty bleeding in the dirt. She hears dull crunching and smells something coppery and sweet. Eventually, the growl goes quiet.

By the time she gets up, the chittering of the woods has started again.

The next afternoon, no one waits for Misty along the trail.

Misty convinces Olive to come back with her, telling the girl that she had seen Prescott living in the trees like some feral cat. And Olive, wanting so much to find her friend and to believe that the thing she’d seen wasn’t real, follows Misty with a flashlight and a bag of cookies to convince Prescott to come back home.

The thing isn’t as hungry when it hooks Olive from between her shoulder blades. It takes its time with her.

Misty tries only once to bring her dad. She tells him she spotted a rabid o’possum that skittered into the cover of the trees. He brings his rifle and at the first hint of the thing’s approach, he fires. He goes searching for a body but only finds a mess of shattered black quills.

She cries later that night, remembering the squeal the thing made, how little it sounded like a golden retriever, how it saw her bring something that made it bleed. She worries that it won’t forgive her, but when she brings Harrison a few weeks later, it doesn’t seem mad at all.

In high school, Misty lures a boy who groped her painfully in his car into the forest, promising him that he would be her first as long as she got to pick the place.

He barely even notices the thing, bigger and with more eyes now, unfolding itself behind him, barbed tongue reaching. He manages to tear open her shirt and make her cry right before his blood arcs across her face and he disappears in the thing’s embrace.

“Thank you,” she whispers. She hopes it can hear her over the squelch of the boy’s organs in its teeth.

When Misty is eighteen, she leaves her home in the middle of the night with the money she saved while working as a cashier at Lenny’s Stop n’ Go. Her dad, drunk and exerted from smacking her around, snores as she starts his car. She takes it as far as the Greyhound bus station and leaves it there with the keys in the driver’s seat.

She doesn’t look back at her hometown when the bus pulls onto the highway, but she hopes the thing in the forest understands.

Ten years later, Misty’s husband smokes in the passenger seat as she drives their Toyota Corolla. She sees the exit for her hometown and has to grip the steering wheel tight to keep herself from tearing at her own throat.

Dad is dead, she reminds herself. She is only coming back to get rid of all his things and sell the trailer.

“How long is this going to take?” Leo asks, flicking the butt of his cigarette out the window.

She says it for the fifth time in the exact same way: bright and sweet. “Just a few days.”

“Hm,” he responds and she spends the next twenty minutes in the car trying to understand that sound. What it might mean when they get off the road and into a room where no one can see them.

They arrive at the motel just a few blocks from the trailer park. That night, Leo merely gets ready for bed and falls asleep. The next night, she is not so lucky.

With one of her eyes swollen shut, it is harder to see the mess of the trailer. Which might be something in her favor, all things considered. She fills trash bag after trash bag of empty bottles, food containers, and other detritus that made up the whole of her dad’s life.

She is tired when she gets back to the motel. After she takes a long shower, she finds Leo waiting for her, his eyes greedy on her body as if the marks he put there are enticing and not gruesome at all.

When he steps toward her, she backs away but remembers to smile. “Let me show you something first. It’s special.”

Misty was worried that she would forget the way, but the moment she steps into the woods, she knows where to find it.

Leo gets impatient, swatting at the mosquitos buzzing greedily in the summer air. He yanks his hand out of hers. “Where the fuck are you taking me, Misty?” he snaps.

She keeps smiling, beckoning him over her shoulder. “Don’t worry, baby. It’s not far. I promise, it’ll be good.”

A few minutes go by and the sweat on her skin cools as she begins to panic. What if it’s gone? What if it died here, alone and starving, while she set off on her own without even a goodbye?

But then she hears it—that same, sad whine. She stops and throws her arms out. “I’m back! I’m here!”

The woods go silent for a heartbeat.

Then, in a rush, all the birds in the trees take flight. Deer and rabbits and foxes and squirrels burst through the trees in front of them. She screams and Leo curses as they streak by, the whites of their eyes bright with fear.

Leo starts to retreat but she reaches for him and holds fast. “It’s too late now.” Her face splits into a wide smile. “My friend is going to eat you up.”

She feels the thing get closer, its growl so deep that it makes her molars vibrate. She keeps her eyes fastened on Leo and watches his face twitch and stretch in a scream. Behind her, a shadow grows and grows and grows.

“You’re never going to hurt me again, you piece of shit,” Misty says triumphantly.

Leo tears out of her grip and stumbles away. The thing chuffs a breath that ruffles the hair at the nape of her neck. As she watches Leo run away, she starts to remember something, a truth, a learning. The one rule she and the thing had—

There is a tearing sound and an unnatural jostle of her own body. Misty looks down at herself and sees a long spike through her belly. Then the pain explodes through her body and she screams but no sound comes out. She is impaled on its tail and when the thing lifts her, she slides back on it.

The thing raises her up, up, up to its face. It has dozens of eyes, all green and glowing. It is wide as a bus and the spikes all along its body are as long as her legs. It opens its mouth and its purple tongue whips out and stings her in the throat.

As she takes jagged, wet inhales, the pain begins to dull. When the thing opens its mouth wide and she gets closer to those gleaming teeth, her head sags forward.

Completely numb but still awake, she watches it rend through her legs. She hears the burst of her skin and muscle and bone. None of this makes any sense. The thing loves her. After all, she knows love can cut and bruise and snap bones. Hadn’t she learned that from her dad? From Leo?

But doubt hums just beyond the numbness.

Because she suddenly remembers Bunny with the floppy ears, who loved her just for her hand through his fur and her arms around his back. Bunny, whose kisses and attention cost nothing. Bunny, who forgave her everything, even her failure to stop her dad from shooting him for bringing home ticks.

Misty thinks she shuts her eyes, but maybe it’s the dark as the thing’s teeth close on her one last time.

After a while, the chirrups and buzz of the woods start up again. The thing’s satisfied purr goes quiet. It settles and waits.