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MURDER 1389 words By her first moonrise alone in the woods she could hear the crows speak. "How long do you think it has?" one crow said to another. "About two days if it doesn't eat," said the second. "And I don't think it'll catch anything on that leg." She had put the bone protruding out of her knee out of her mind. If she thought about it, she would have to feel it, and she preferred the hunger pangs and the aches in her arms as she pulled herself towards nowhere in particular. "Can you hear me?" she called to the slowly gathering birds. "Do you know the way to the nearest town? Campsite? Anything?" "You mean the human territories," said another crow, perching on a naked moonlit branch. "I think there's a colony on the other side of the river. Nothing that you'll make it to in time." "I agree," said a fourth bird. "Might as well just wait. We'll wait with you." She pulled herself harder through the dirt. The crows kept talking through the night, discussing, wagering, bickering over how long they would have to wait. And the other animals started talking too, but the beetles and crickets didn't have much to say but lonely love songs. And the empty night was filled with chatter, and she preferred it to the silence. "Why did he try to kill me?" she groaned as she pulled herself against a hollowed oak. "Why did he throw me off that cliff?" "To eat you, of course," said a crow from the shadows. "That's why everything kills." "No," she said. "Humans don't kill other humans for that. Not usually." "How strange," said the crow. "Your meat's perfectly good." The crows were there in the sunlight, but they were silent. And she was glad that the pain from her wounds kept her from sleeping, because she didn't reckon she'd wake. In the evening, the crows started flying off, and she wished they could speak in the sunlight so they could tell her why. And by the time the moon rose, they were all gone, and she was left to her hunger pangs and her aching arms and her bloody knee and her sleepless delirium without company. She dragged herself to a thin path and felt relief until she saw the hoofprints in the mud. And in her hopelessness, she felt every pain at once until they were one and screamed at the moon. As if in answer, something started moving in the trees. "Is someone there?" she shouted. "Help me! Help me please!" An old man in a dark hooded cloak wandered from the woods onto the deer trail, silhouetted by the moon. She kept screaming for him to come and slowly, he did. And just as she was thanking him, he knelt down and she could see under his hood. Crows. Dozens, hundreds, uncountable; writhing, cawing, hungry crows wrapped in ancient torn cloth. It had a face of ravenous beaks and hands a mess of woven clasping talons. As she screamed and sobbed, the Murder spoke. "This is the first time you've ever been hungry, isn't it? Not just the first time you've been starving, the first time you've even been hungry beyond a dull craving. You never even expected to be hungry. You got to forget that hunger even existed. We don't get that luxury in the wild. The bugs, the bears, the birds, the germs... we never forget what hunger is. Even now, we're just as hungry as you are. Every day and every night in the woods is lit with patient desperation. Scream and cry and shout, if you'd like. Drag yourself a little closer to nowhere. It won't matter. We'll be waiting." "Get away from me, you animals!" she cried. "Animals?" said the Murder. " Don't pretend that you're not made of meat. Your kind comes to the wild with your guns and your traps, thinking you're above us, that you escaped your meathood, that you can turn all the world into one of your hungerless hives. But you're all made of meat. Count yourself lucky that you got to learn all that this late." So she kept crawling, and the Murder followed, sometimes out of sight but always present. And the bugs sang their songs, lonelier and more desperate than the night before. And a coyote joined in, singing, "I am lost. I am alone. I am scared. Where are you?" "You know that song well, don't you?" said the Murder. "No," she said. "I just learned it yesterday. Will the coyote come for me?" "I don't think so. It's hungry, like we all are, but food isn't what's most important to it tonight." She thought the sun must have risen again, because it was much brighter, but the sky was a yellow she had never seen and the trees seemed to breathe and to moan. Everything she saw wriggled and waved. And the Murder was a flock of crows again, and they filled the sky screeching their caws until they became a singular droning call. Then it was probably night again though the day seemed too short and too long at the same time, and the world was drenched in purple silver, and the groaning trees bled from the holes in their bark and a thousand crickets cried about how he and he alone was the loneliest. She stopped crawling. As she spread herself on the forest floor, the Murder reformed and stood above her. "You're almost there," said the Murder. "Did you ever find out why he killed you?" She didn't have the strength to move her lips, but she knew the Murder could hear her. "I have a guess." "Tell us. We want to know." "I think he wanted to be with me. And when he figured out that wasn't going to happen, he got mad. So he threw me off a cliff." Something in her belly moved. Through the pain and hunger, she still knew how to laugh. And the crows under the Murder's hood started laughing too, not with words but with their crow calls. They collected themselves, and the Murder said, "Say what you will about we wild folk. We would never kill over something that stupid." "Am I going to die here in this nightmare?" she asked. "It doesn't have to be a nightmare. Close your eyes." She did, and she felt everything: each mite, each germ, each fleck of moonlight and caress of grass. She felt her body being absorbed into the Earth, and into the air, and into the stars, and into nothing. "It's not that bad, is it?" said the Murder. "No," she said. "Is this death?" "Yes," said the Murder. "And it's life. We have been to places where humans put their dead in boxes under the Earth. Nothing can eat them, the living parts of your bodies doomed to die uselessly. Who knows? After we and the worms consume you, maybe a tree will be born out of your bones. Maybe a city of ants will be founded in your skull. You will be part of all of this again. You will be home. You will...just a second." The Murder sniffed the air. "What's that? Open your eyes." She did. She rolled over in the direction of the Murder's pointing talons. The man who threw her off the cliff was hanging by his neck from a tree. "Why did he die?" asked the Murder. "He killed himself," she said. "No," said the Murder. "That makes no sense." "It's something humans do when they're in pain. They quit." "How odd," said the Murder. "What was he hurting from?" "Probably guilt," she replied. "What's guilt?" the Murder asked. "Oh, who cares? Let's eat." The Murder ran to the hanging body, and she crawled there too with the last of her energy. Together, they shared a meal, the Murder pecking at his face and her tearing at the flesh of his thighs. And as she ate, the trees stopped breathing, the crickets song became a chirp, and at last, the Murder dissolved into a flock of ordinary, cawing crows. The crows dispersed when they heard the shouting and saw the flashlights through the trees, but she kept eating. After all, the crows were right. It was perfectly good meat.
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Oct 25, 2018 03:53
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Brief critique notes: Watchers of Santa Lucia: Takes too long to get into, and I didn't like the exposition infodumps. Ghost Tour: I liked this more than the judges did. It works pretty well as a mystery with a spooky twist. The Numbers Station: a weirdly nostalgic, nicely written post-apocalypse. I dig it. Sexy ghosts: no comment Not 6666 words: where is our protagonist? Is she on the plane? Is she in the wreckage? Is she describing the events later? No clue what was happening, and also yeah, why so many words about the kid's dick? Can't you just say he's naked and move on? The Lady of Milwaukee: Inoffensive. What happens here? They encounter ghosts, don't really interact with them, then go about their merry way? No sense of conflict. A House That Breathes: would have been my pick for the winner. I like the twist on the haunted house: it's not a monster, it's not trying to hurt anyone, but it has needs and desires and will reason with people to acheive them. Good job. Untitled: I like it. Don't have much to say past that. Screams in the Basement: great job. It knows what it is, it hits quickly, then leaves. The stuff of classic creepypasta.
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Nov 1, 2018 18:20
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Yeah, those extraneous "and"s sounded cool in my head. Still, I'm proud that my story still worked in spite of such a glaring issue. I might try another draft. I based MURDER off of my Halloween costume, which will be my avatar once I figure out how to navigate this early-thousands-rear end message board. Thanks for reading, writing, and judging.
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Nov 2, 2018 19:27
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