Adam scratches his sternum where
the thick branch pins him to the driver’s seat.
I
am a tree now.
The windshield is cobweb-cracked in
an abstract of greens and browns, the pine tree blown up in ugly proportions. The
protruding branch, which seems to hold him at arms-length from the tree, had
saved them all from plunging to the bottom of the ravine. It doesn’t hurt too
much, although it itches around the edges—it’s the smell in the car that’s
concerning. A violent smell. It rises above the stench of sap and burning metal,
blood and shit.
Amazing how the windshield had
stayed intact, with just the hole where the branch juts through and the ripples
of glass around it. The car’s airbag, for whatever reason, had failed to
detonate.
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Adam opens his mouth to speak, but
his bloated tongue sinks into his mouth. His mouth is completely devoid of
spit. He tries again.
“Miguel’s been gone a long time.”
His girlfriend stirs, a tangle of
hair masking her face. Once she complained of ragdoll limbs, the pinpricks of
glass shards; now her head rests in the remnants of window. When she speaks,
her voice is so flat and dead that it causes his heartrate to increase—a budding
panic that he forces down like an acidic belch.
“He’ll be lucky if he sees anyone,”
Josie says. “We passed two cars the whole way here.”
Her voice stirs a memory. There’s
something nagging him, something he’s forgotten. He tries to retrieve whatever
it was, embedded in the tar-pit depths of his mind.
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“There’s glass in your hair.” Adam
reaches over slowly and brushes hair from her face. He touches something
sticky. “I can’t get your other side.”
Josie’s cracked lips curve back, a
side grimace, exposing teeth full of blood. Her head remains against the
doorframe at a 90-degree angle, but one eye rolls wildly to survey him.
“Hey Joe,” Adam says. “Pass me a
water? It’s hot in here.” When he doesn’t hear anything, he cranes his neck to
the side as far as it can go. It isn’t far.
“Josie, what’s he doing?”
Joe, the inconvenient twin of his
girlfriend, who for the first leg of the road trip lectured about staying
vigilant in nature, had spent the hour through the mountains asleep. He had acted
strange since the last rest-stop with the filthy toilets, at the base of the
mountains, when he surprised them all with an uncomplaining silence. Adam was
relieved to have a break from Joe’s juvenile wisdoms, the wisdoms of a churlish
and oily twenty-something who never left his room. Somewhere in the narrows,
Joe collapsed into sleep and Josie told them to shut up after they joked about
nature vigilance (there was something he was forgetting, something important)
and Miguel complained that he took up all the backseat, sprawled like starfish
over him.
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Josie, with excruciating slowness,
lifts her head a millimeter from the window.
“Where’s Miguel? We’ve been here
forever.”
“There’s a lot of hill between us
and the road.”
“I knew I should’ve gone,” Josie
says. Her head flops back to the side with a sickening sound, the mechanical
rasp of bones. It sounded accusatory. “He’s always been like this—unreliable.”
“Joe, buddy, how’re you doing back
there?” Adam twitches, pinioned to his seat by branch and seatbelt. Beads of
sweat bleed from his forehead.
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A breeze agitates the pine trees;
an animal screams in the distance.
Josie blows her lips, a horse snort
that lifts her hair, a bored sound. Earlier, she had argued with Miguel about
who would go get help. Cars stop for
breasts, she said. That’s sexist, protested Adam and she shoved him. Miguel
countered that he could get to the road quicker. But when Miguel started up the
hill—they watched him through the rearview mirrors—he staggered. There was
something wrong with his back. It looked off, disjointed, spine bending into an
S.
They heard his grunts long after he
disappeared from the mirrors.
How long was that now?
A shadow rises from the base of the
mountain and swallows the umber of light. The trees made cathedral shadows in
the growing gloom. Didn’t Joe talk wilderness awareness (that’s not it, that’s
not it, there’s something else), how the trees were full of eyes and rustling
things, and how you were never alone?
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Joe had never been camping before. Adam
didn’t even want to bring him, but Josie insisted. Her brother holed up in his
room all day, only coming out for food and shits. She told them it would be a
good bonding experience.
“Joe!” He can feel him moving around
back there, feel the tremors through the seat.
“Let him sleep,” Josie says.
………..
When he opens his eyes again, the
trees around them are gone. A spew of fog obscures everything, and the gray
mist and ensuing darkness makes him feel as if they were being erased. The
smell from before hits him all at once, a furious assault that has the gorge
rising in his throat.
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“We need to get out of here,” Adam
says, suddenly desperate. He claws at the tangle of seatbelt, at the branch
inside him.
Josie’s head slumps off the door,
and she startles awake. She rocks in jerky movements from side to side until
she straightens again. Adam thinks of the time he killed a snake with a shovel
and it spasmed in the dirt, flashing its white belly then dark brown scales in
an endless death tumble.
“Stay awake,” Adam tells her and
nudges her arm. Josie moans.
“You need to stay awake,” he says,
suddenly furious. He shakes her harder. That smell is overwhelming, filling his
head and turning his stomach. He feels, for the first time, a distant agony in
his legs.
“What the fuck is that? Josie do you
smell it?” It was rancid, whatever it was. Josie says nothing. In the backseat,
Joe says nothing. Adam (the tree!) is alone, in the growing dark, with stink
settling in his flesh and fire growing up his legs.
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“Josie!” His voice is unrecognizable, piercing and too
loud. His nails dig into the slack skin of her arm and her arm is cold, too
cold. Stiff. He tears into her skin and the flesh came apart, but refused to bleed.
Josie cries out.
“Adam, what the fuck—”
“I hear something. I think Miguel’s
coming.”
“Thank God!” In her excitement, Josie’s
head raises several inches. They listen to the sounds of approaching nightfall,
the strange calls and insect hums. A single distorted scream in the
distance—loons maybe. They listen a long time.
Josie makes a sobbing sound deep in
her throat, guttural and full of glass.
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“You liar.”
“I swear I heard something.”
Josie’s head falls to the side with
a meaty thunk. She doesn’t speak again.
………..
A scream breaks the night, and it’s
directionless, it comes from everywhere. It curls the hairs on his arm and he
fights against his branch. Everything urges him to get out of there, to run
into the night.
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“Joe,” Adam pleads. “Wake up now.”
It’s too dark and the wood sounds
that were unsettling earlier are horrifying and unwelcome now, in this new
blindness. His limbs burn. And there’s pressure in his chest—he realizes dimly
that the branch skewering him is moving up and down. He can feel it inside him
below the sternum, widening the hole, reopening skin. Violating him.
Another scream, deafening and
hideous, and now he knows it’s in the car.
“Stop
it,” he whispers. “Stop—”
Movement in the dark, loud
breathing in his ear. And it reeks of death—how did he not notice it
before?—rancid nubs of garbage pork, sweating corpses forgotten in humid autopsy
rooms. Adam thrashes his head from side to side.
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The branch jumps up and down.
“Joe?” It ceases to be a name, a
recognizable sound, now it’s just a maniacal spurt of syllables crowding in his
throat. “JoeJoeJoeJoe—”
Adam pictures Joe’s limp marionette
body affixed to the other side of his branch and here they are, end to end, a
human shish-kabob, his face blank and vapid the way it looked when he came back
from the bathroom and they yelled at him for taking so long; the way it looked
when he collapsed into sleep.
But
he woke up eventually, yes he did, he woke up and grabbed the wheel from him—
Screech of tires burning out.
Screams. An eternity of a drop, through brush and close calls with trees,
until—
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Adam laughs, high-pitched and
hysterical and climbing. An answering hyena shriek sounds behind him.
The smells turn from rot to roast, from
maggot-cheese to charred haunch and campfire smoke. It taunts the desiccation
of his mouth; a wash of saliva flows down his chin. The branch in his chest
bounces again, giddy giggles rising in the small space, and hunger explodes in
his stomach, turns his clenched fists to claws, turns his howl inward until it
breaks, until it shatters him. Distantly, he hears something howl along with
him and he grins, lips wet and spittle dripping onto the branch. He’s no longer
alone.
“Joe. There you are,” Adam rasps
over his shoulder. “Where’ve you been all this time?”
He gropes blindly, tugs Josie’s arm
toward him, raises her hand to his lips like a gentleman in those historical
dramas she loves so much.
Her skin smells like tenderloin.
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Behind him, Joe laughs and laughs.
J. Motoki is the Short Story Editor of Coffin Bell Journal and the Strange Editor of Rune Bear. Her works have been published or are forthcoming in Blood Song Books,The Other Stories Podcast (Hawk & Cleaver), Black Hare Press, Coffin Bell Journal, and others. You can read more of her at www.jumotki.com.
Continuing our AI journey from last time exploring Little Red Riding Hood herself as the Big Bad Wolf… All of these are based upon the AI generated art and prompts using NightCafe and then created as posters in Canva.
How very… Phantom of the Opera predatory… this is definitely not what I had in mind. Maybe something more cutesy?
Ugh. Maybe not.
Wow, that seems like such a cop out, cropping off the head so you don’t have to depict it. And I don’t want to lose the Little Red Riding Hood reference completely.
So no surprise there, I knew that was too many references to work.
And as promised in Big Bad Poetry, we shall embark on our next AI journey, this time looking at Little Red Riding Hood. I had wanted to depict her as the Big Bad Wolf one and the same, although maybe not so big nor bad. But it just wasn’t happening quite as planned. All of these are based upon the AI generated art and prompts using NightCafe and then created as posters in Canva.
So I actually like this even better than my original vision, it is playful and even a bit serene (especially given the Sinister style). The wolf is just being a wolf. It’s quite lovely, really. But it wasn’t what I had in mind, so I revisited the idea later to see if I could get that result…
Over the river and through the wood flashed the fleet-footed Red Riding Hood on her way to her “grandmother’s” house.
When running past, who should she see but just one of the little pigs three cowering like but a tiny mouse.
“But my dear piggy, what do you fear?” Red Riding Hood asked as she slunk near, teeth hidden under a sheepish smile.
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The nervous small pig looked up in fright and decided that Red was alright, missing the subtle clues by a mile.
“The Big Bad Wolf, that horrible beast upon the other wee pigs did feast!” the last little pig said with a squeal.
Red Riding Hood laughed with a great growl and threw back her heavy long-robed cowl, in a vast terrifying reveal.
For she was really the wolf Big Bad hidden beneath the cape that he had stolen from Red Riding Hood at point.
“And now I’ve caught you too my pretty and surely t’wouldn’t be a pity if I gobbled you up in this joint.”
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T’was then the wee pig leapt to his feet And cried, “Big Bad Wolf, I shall defeat, for I am no ordinary swine!”
The little pig also wore sheep’s clothes spun in spells every woodland witch knows; Old Granny herself was quite divine.
“Now give me back my granddaughter’s cape, before I grab you by your ruffed nape and send you pig-squealing down the road…”
The wolf dropped the cape and ran, that cur, but Granny was swifter and hexed his fur and the wolf she turned into a toad.
Thus the moral of this story goes, when in the woods, no one really knows what sheepish sheep’s clothing is a ruse that big bad wolves and old witches use.
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So this is actually an intro to my next AI art journey with NightCafe which developed from me not getting the results I wanted (Little Red Riding Hood herself as a wolf). Here’s a preview with Eric’s versions as he is much more literal in his prompting than I am, but where’s the fun in that? 😉
Prompts (from left to right) in Dark Fantasy style, executed Aug. 1, 2023:
Bipedal wolf in Red Riding Hood’s cloak
Bipedal wolf in Red Riding Hood’s cloak close up portrait
Bipedal wolf in red cloak close up portrait
Portrait of myself with dark makeup and crow skull headdress, backlit by the sun.