I'm Home

It was the brightest day I’d ever seen in months. I stood on a hill, at the precipice of the woods, and in the distance, the house where I lived stood in a clearing. My family would be inside, with my wife boiling a pot of venison for dinner. My son would be in the back digging deep in the soft ground for frogs.

I wouldn’t know what to tell them.

The clouds almost parted, revealing the shimmering silver sun beneath. Winter was ebbing, covering the grassy laden paths of the forest with slush. And when morning came the fog came with it, creeping silent and white through the dark trees and evergreen brush. I trudged downward, holding my rifle to the side as I did. With silent steps, I crept up to the door. With a deep breath, I opened it.

My son was sitting on the floor, with a long branch pointed at my heart. This moment was always one of my favorites. A week ago, he jumped on my back from behind the door. Before that, he hid himself under a blanket and grabbed my leg. Today, he was a soldier.

“Bang!”

I drop my rifle and collapse on the wooden floor. “Papa!” he shouts, running up to me.

My hand goes up to my chest, “You devil!” I say, trying to hold in the blood that was pouring out of me. He leaps up and grabs my neck, trying to wrestle me down.

“Alexander, let your father take off his shoes first,” came a voice from the back. The boy laughs with not a care in the world. I try to do the same, but all I could manage was a big smile.

I throw my boots to the side and lift him to my shoulder. He’s gotten bigger these past few months, almost as fast as I did when I was his age, when all we had were roots and bugs. He squeals in glee as I walk inside. My wife stood over the old wooden table, with a knife in hand and a board. She was shearing corn, with a yellow pile of kernel beside her. I grabbed her close, kissing her hair.

 “Something wrong, my love?” she asks, carrying Alex down to the floor when he began climbing on my head. Somehow she notices the difference today. The way I carried myself, and the way I talk, she knows it all. My mouth opens, waiting for the words to come out.

“Papa, papa, did you get to kill the monsters?” my son asks. I could feel my chest grow heavy. For a second, I finally laugh, ruffling his chestnut hair.

“Alex!” my wife says, crossing her arms. I take off my hat and place it on my son’s head, and it quickly covers his ears.

“Not today. But I did spot some deer somewhere by the ravine. How about you and I head out there first thing in the morning?” He smiles, peering under the hat, “Now go find my kit.”

He nods before running through the house, climbing the steps to the floor above. My wife takes a seat by the table, a serious look on her face that tells a thousand words. She’s always had a sense of mysticism, and as I always tell my son whenever he would wander about or do things as children do, I would remind him that her mother was born from witches.

“How is it?” she asks. A lump in my throat grows in size.

“Strong. It’ll hold a few more months.”

She studies my face, looking over every line and crevice on my skin. Her eyes probe for every single detail she could find. I look away into the window with gray light shining through it, trying to avoid her spell.

“Is there anything we can do?” she asks.

 “I’ll find a way,” I manage to say. It gets harder. Every word comes strained and painful. She stands up and wraps her arms around me. Something deep inside me longs for the moment to stay. To tell her the truth.

“I need you to throw these away,” she says, gesturing to a bucket and releasing her embrace, “Whatever it is, I’ll find out soon enough,” she mused with a playful and defiant tone.

She goes back to work on the corn. I walk towards the bucket of vegetable peelings, and head out through the back. The acre of corn stood short, with a few stalks slightly limp, next to the livestock. The harvest would come back to us just enough.

Chucking the contents of the bucket in a pit, my gaze wanders to the far edges of the forest. In the distance, the sky crackled blue, with forks of lightning snaking upwards to the clouds. Memories flash at the back of my skull, with dark eyes forming in front of me like a ghost. I didn’t notice my held breath until my son called out to me from the house.

I take a seat on the wet grass and he sits beside me. He hands me a metal box—an old battered thing with tools and ammunition. He looks to me expectantly, and I nod. Like a child opening a gift, he removes the latch from the box and swings it open.

This time, I teach him how to load the gun. Slowly, I show him how to insert bullets one by one in the chamber. I show him how to assemble clips. He doesn’t touch the gun, as I taught him. He’ll only ever hold it when he’s older.

“Papa?” he asks. I blink and find tears running down my face. Sniffing hard, my arm rubs across my eyes, and I laugh to ease his worry, but he looks down unconvinced.

We go back inside the house. My throat is dry, and my knuckles go white from holding the gun. My wife stands over a pot, stirring the inside with a ladle.

“Agnes,” I call out to her, as calm as I could. She turns to me with a line of worry on her face.

“Take Alex for a walk?” I say.

“What?” she asks, placing the spoon over the pot.

“I’d like some mushrooms later,” I lie, relaxing my grip on the gun.

For a moment she is silent, with her gaze eventually wandering to Alex. He holds my hand tighter with a confused look on his face.

“Come on then.”

Alex runs up to his mother, grabbing her hand. She turns to the door, grabbing a basket that hung on the wall. Eventually, they walk outside.

I follow them, but stop at the door. I look down at my hands, shaking furiously and drenched in cold sweat. My son looks back at me. From this distance, I couldn’t see his face. His blue eyes. But it was enough.

The rifle jerks to my shoulder when he turns back. My wife holds his hand. The metal stings my finger for the first time, and the tears won’t stop.

Then the birds flew.

My son drops to the ground first. My wife stands still, her form rigid and her hands placed on her sides, still grasping my son.

I pull it again.

Roars in the distance remind me to go back inside the house. My feet feel heavy. The gun feels heavy, but I don’t let go. I grab the clips Alex loaded for me and headed up the stairs. Each step sounds like gunfire. Vomit rises in my throat but I hold it back in.

In our bedroom, the window shatters when I break it with the gun. I drag a chair from Agnes’ reading desk and prop it against the window. My knee scrapes against the seat, as I take aim to the forest.

From beyond the clearing, deep within the woods, another flock of birds rises from the fog. The dome that protects us breaks in half at that moment, whittled to the bone. A flash of light crashes through the forest, and the horde enters.

I pull the bolt and a bullet falls to the floor.

My Agnes, my Alexander.

The light of my life.

Forgive me.