Willow Shoop
Many nights have befallen these woods. The moon rises and falls all the same, tussling the sun for dominion over the restless sky.
This night is bleak; unloving, it spares no living thing the kindness of warmth. Heaven’s guiding light – the North star and her little sisters, twinkling from above – is absent tonight, trapped behind dense storm clouds rolling in above the cold earth. Gone is the beautiful moon; darkness is all that remains. A bitter wintry wind whistles a solitary song through thin tree branches, pushing and rustling the few brittle leaves that remain on their perches. They sing along with the air; their song is quiet, a hollow crunching adding punctuation to the wind’s melody as they are strewn about. A gentle snow begins to descend from the heavens above, twirling in illustrious patterns toward the frozen earth. It clings to every surface it can reach, indiscriminate in its ghastly touch.
No spirit is in these woods to feel the tender touch of mother nature. Bodies rest in solemn graves amongst the roots and dirt, reduced to nothing but frozen, forgotten bone.
One body lay above the rest, torn raw and red by the hands of a ruthless beast. She lays at the bottom of a steep hill, left uncovered to the elements by the being that left her there. Snow settles in her open wounds, white snowflakes stained red by coagulated blood and shredded pink muscles. The pulse; nonexistent. All life that may have once remained is gone, the woman reduced to a soulless pile of flesh. Blood has ceased to seep from her extensive wounds, now pooled beneath her, covering every pale inch of her body. Crimson is caked in her long, inky hair, sprawling beneath her head like a black halo. Claw marks – ones deep enough to expose the bony expanse of her ribcage and the lungs beneath – run over her torso and legs, the foul markings of a heinous attack on full display to the heavens. No part of this woman was spared in her final moments; not her chest, nor her fingers. Not even her weak bones, snapped and shattered within her, are salvageable.
Only her eyes were truly left alone; they now stare to the sky above her, cold blue gazing beyond the bounds of earth, piercing the heavens that had forsaken her.
Whatever creature had besmirched her was no human – the ruthless nature in which she had been torn was inhumane, impossible even for the angriest man. This crime was not one of a rabid wolf or of an enraged bobcat, either; it was far beyond their level, a desecration so unbelievable that whatever had taken her must have been a consort of the devil. It was fueled by pure wildness, hate etched into every scratch and bite.
She lays there for three days and two nights, undiscovered, soon buried by a thick blanket of ivory snow. Frost accumulates on her body, minute crystalline structures covering her in a dress of nature’s lace. She slowly begins to decompose in her bed of solitude. Though horrific to the eyes, she is peaceful, blind eyes covered, icicles clinging onto her eyelashes.
It is only by the gash on her chest that she is found, staining the sweet snow a sickly pink around her. Three children sledding down the steep hills of the forest are the ones to find her, curious as they discover the mass of red death beneath a white veil, brushing the snow from her face. The powder crumbles down to the ground; a girl shrieks, and soon a cacophony of fearful screams arises. Their crying fills the air as they run, shrill and tinged with panic, consequently forgetting their purple plastic sled at her feet. It is four hours before anyone is able to find the body, following the various sled tracks to her snowy grave. They remove her by nightfall, ending her short rest amongst the roots and trees and snow.
Her body is the only one that receives a proper burial out of all of the woods’ dead; her teeth are examined for a match, as are her remaining fingers. By the grace of God – and nothing more – she is identified, despite her ruined state.
Lucielle Bowen. A twenty-two-year-old aspiring filmmaker.