Beast in the Wood

That's odd . . . .

My mind went somewhere dark for this final post of Dragon Month, all thanks to the Bros Krynn and

The Iron Crown

challenging me to write fiction. It’s been a true pleasure to spread my wings. Grab some popcorn, strap in, and read on if you dare.

Anita and I are strolling around downtown Austin in the early evening. It’s warm and balmy, somehow comforting, snuggly even. Snuggly in a way that ensures the aggressive homeless man on this street doesn’t phase me today, when normally he scares me a little not gonna lie. We’ve had our dinner, along with a couple old-fashioneds for me. I’m slightly buzzy when we decide to visit the Museum of the Weird on 6th Street. Heading that way, I’m high on life. In this moment, there is only the effervescent joy of a balmy evening walk to do something silly. When we get there, it seems dark inside like it might be closed. Undeterred, we try the door and step inside. The gloom of the inside blinds us for a moment or two before we wander off into the fun.

. . . .

Speeding down the highway in this convertible is the second best feeling I’ve had, after the enjoyment of dinner, drinks, and the museum stop. I don’t normally speed, no really, I despise it because so many people in my family have died in car accidents. I need to moderate, but it’s simply too enjoyable in the balmy evening air to give slowing down more than a second of consideration before scrapping the idea as ludicrous. My hair has gotten long and I feel the wind tugging it into an obscenely large, crowning halo almost a foot off the the top of my head. I risk a quick glance in the rearview mirror and laugh, quite hysterically, at my insane-looking image. It reminds me of the bride of Frankenstein, especially as she appears in Young Frankenstein. I don’t know why Anita isn’t with me. She must have taken a cab back to the hotel earlier. I can’t be bothered figuring that out, wondering briefly if I’m intoxicated. I suddenly notice there’s not a single other vehicle on this three-lane highway and think ‘what are the odds?!’, which is something hubby and I say all the time when odd things happen to us. I miss him when I travel, so I can’t wait to get home. Focusing on the road again, I see my exit and whip the wheel to the right gliding to a text book stop at the bottom of the ramp, before inching out into traffic.

. . . .

Looking at the beautiful clear sky, I think ‘that trip was amazing’, but the trail is so peaceful today. Hubby must have walked up ahead when I stopped for that picture of the sky. He gets bored waiting for my constant photo stops and wanders off. This time I was catching the strange, almost gloaming, light with my iPhone. The sky is such a muddy, velvet, heavy, purple-gray I can’t stop snapping it through the trees. I’ve never seen it look this way. It’s almost like it’s getting dark, but there’s not a cloud in the sky so no storms in site either. I wonder why it looks like that on this particular Sunday. The air is a perfect nothing-burger. Not cold. Not hot. Not humid. Not dry. It’s kind of like there’s no air at all. I shrug thinking, ‘Oh well. Onward. I need lots of pictures today for my Sunday nature post.’

Up ahead is the turn for the first set of ponds we visit. I still don’t see hubby, but I take the right because that’s how we always go at this fork in the trail. The sky is getting darker and it feels a bit chillier than a few minutes ago. So, I call out for hubby - “Hon! Where are you. You left me behind.” No answer. I call out a couple more times while picking up my pace. I have a REALLY loud voice, loud enough to be heard quite a distance away. Why is he fucking around. He knows he’s the navigator in the woods. I get all turned around, even though we’ve walked these trails a hundred times. I pick up the pace to a light jog, careful to watch my footing because in my old age I’m becoming a klutz. My heartrate picks up too, easily riled now that I’m almost sixty, with A-fib. I regulate my breaths, using my meditation and breath training to moderate my heart beat. I take another right jogging up the small hill to the far pond, where we always go first. Stopping short at the top, I call out two more times. Now, I’m furious.

Then inexplicably, like lightening on a perfectly sunny day, I realize he would NEVER do this to me. Something is wrong. He is hurt somewhere along the trail. Not only hurt, but unconscious because he’s not responding to my calls. My heartrate shoots up again. I stop, leaning on the trunk of the giant pine tree at the top of the dead-end trail. I gasp for a few seconds before, again, forcibly moderating my heart and lungs. I turn and backtrack, knowing we were almost to the turn when I stopped for pics. I return slowly and methodically continuing to call out. “Hon! Where are you? Are you okay?” As I approach the main trail, I stop and look around slowly. The woods are really quiet today. I mean REALLY REALLY quiet. No birds, no wind, no dogs barking from the kennel that borders this area. Nothing, except my heartbeat in my ears and my breath on the air. After catching my breath and because I don’t think he was that far ahead of me, I turn right continuing along the main trail away from the parking area we enter from. I don’t make a sound now, choosing to listen closely in case he groans or calls out from wherever he is.

I’ve gone a considerable way, coming upon another fork. I’m not comfortable making a turn here, because hubby is the trail master. I don’t want to get lost while trying to find him. I sit on the log that’s fallen across the trail and pull out my cell phone. What?! It’s 5:45 p.m. What the hell? How long have I been looking for him? We started at 9:00 a.m., I think. I must be getting distraught and a little loopy because I can’t remember when we started. Thank goodness I brought a water bottle today because testing my new hiking shoes meant a longer walk. Removing it from my jacket pocket, I take a drink and notice it’s almost dark. WTAF?! The clocks changed two weeks ago.

My heartrate soars when I see there is no service. Fucking Verizon!!!! At strange times of the day, my phone randomly goes to ‘SOS Only’. This is no time for that and no time to panic. I’ve finally realized I need to take the main trail back to the parking lot and ask one of the families living at the trail head for assistance finding Russ. I turn around and suddenly feel the ground shake. Doubting my own sanity I keep walking quickly, almost at a jog. ‘Slow down a bit’, I think, knowing there’s no way I’ll be able to jog back because it’s uphill the entire way, not to mention rocky and littered with tripping hazards. The ground vibrates again harder. Thinking the farm at the end of the trail must be using heavy machinery today, I keep hoofing it. Then I hear something in the distance, like a growl. It’s low and guttural, maybe a bear? We’ve never seen one here. The woods here are almost sterile, even though we sometimes see white-tailed deer. I look around carefully, giving my eyes time to adjust to the pending gloom of twilight. I stand very, very still watching and listening. I don’t see or hear anything, so I resume the walk. There’s no other way to get help. The growl comes again, from somewhere up ahead, deep and long - extended like the T-Rex in Jurassic Park when the kids were trapped in the jeep.

I hunker down, freezing in place with a hand an inch from my mouth to muffle the sound and (maybe) the smell of my gasping exhales. It’s getting harder to clearly distinguish the outlines of objects in the gloom but whatever is growling sounds huge. I mean, monstrously, humongously huge. I stay where I am, frozen like a rabbit in the face of the farmer’s tom cat. My heart is pounding so hard and fast surely it can be heard or felt a mile away and I’m slightly lightheaded. I hear a scuff a ways ahead near the trail. There’s no hiding the crunch of leaves on these trails, so I turn to my right to go off trail, which is not much quieter but requires whatever is up there to make a lot more noise if it tries to intersect my path. Wishing I’d been a stupid girl who joined boy scouts for the mountaineering, I don’t rush. I take huge steps thinking that fewer of them might confuse the predator. The ground begins to shake more frequently, a type of radar that helps me because my pounding heart is all I can hear. The heavier, more frequent vibration indicates both the size of this thing and that it’s speeding up. I know if I go far enough to the right, I can scale the six foot tall chain link fence bordering the parklands along the property of the kennel owners. Although they have signs warning to keep out because of dogs, my dread of this predator far exceeds my terror of dogs.

The vibrations become a run and I suddenly hear a crash at the chain link fence. The creature has cut off my escape. Oddly, there are no dogs barking as there surely would be if they were there. The fence is there but the dogs are not. What the hell?! At this point, it’s completely dark. What looks like a blood moon is up and full and glowing through the canopy. While realizing the blood moon was supposed to be Thursday, I thank God that I can see just enough to pursue plan B - the old stone foundation up the hill and back the other direction. I start for it, now hearing what might be heavy breathing not my own. It must take an enormous amount of effort to move whatever is in these woods with me. Trees are now crashing around it as it breaks through the forest in pursuit. I am sprinting now, shedding my clothing as I go in some mindless panic where the only thought pounding on repeat in my brain is ‘Get rid of my scent, confuse it! Get rid of my scent, confuse it! Get rid of my…’ the crashing stops although I keep sprinting and tearing off clothing - down to my underclothes, socks and hikers now. I hear a bellow followed by loud grunting. The grunting lures me to do the unthinkable - stop and look back.

What I see is a creature, a being really, with dragon-like features a head the size of a movie screen towering above me but hunkered down to the canopy height as if it’s hiding its behemoth presence from the world beyond the parking lot. The eyes are huge, yellow, intensely focused on the ground where my clothing is strewn in a misguided attempt to hide myself from its nose while forgetting its eyes. Its head is swinging back and forth, a movement that reminds me of a cobra hypnotizing its prey. I tear my eyes from the motion scanning the space around the creature only to realize it has wings. WTF?! The body itself is bigger than my house and with the wings spread the remainder of the forest is blocked from my sight. Sensing my presence it looks up. The growl that follows is so blood-curdling I begin to involuntarily weep and mumble ‘Move you stupid bitch, to the foundation’ over and over again as I sprint the last few feet. I leap to the bottom of an ancient staircase and begin frantically digging, digging, digging my nails torn from my hands in the bloody frenzy. I hear another bellow and the crashing resumes. Digging and digging I turn onto my back and begin covering myself in the wet, loamy earth of a hundred years of decaying life, utterly frantic to completely blot my presence from the dragon’s senses. I pat my extremities ensuring nothing is above ground then bury my torso and finally my face, leaving a pile of dirt on my right into which I immerse my right hand and arm just as he bursts through the trees surrounding the ruins. I feel him vibrating towards me, smelling the air confused again. I can see the most miniscule bit of that blood moon through a thin layer of dirt at the bottom of my right eyelid, but I feel him come closer, closer to the ancient staircase and stop. My heartbeat accelerates to what must be in the two hundreds per minute because I’m getting lightheaded when suddenly I hear his leathery hide creak like new shoes then I feel a scalding hot, wet puff of air - carrying the putrid stench of carnage - ever so gently waft across my right temple carelessly fanning a piece of my hair. The hair I’d forgotten was a foot off my head from the convertible ride, wait…As I lose control of my bodily functions I begin screaming at the top of my lungs, but it comes out as a breathless whisper “Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh my God. Wake me up! PLEASE, I beg of you God, wake me up! ! !”

I feel my body rocking in the gloom, gasping for air. ‘He must be tearing me limb from li- -’ I hear “Cori, wake up! Stop screaming! Cori! Wake up!” The pale green walls of my bedroom come slowly into focus as the forest gloom subsides. I frantically feel my chest and arms and legs weeping uncontrollably and mumbling ‘Oh, God. Oh, God’ over and over again. Hubby says, “You had a nightmare. What the hell were you dreaming about that made you scream bloody murder?” I open my mouth to reply and nothing comes out. “That’s odd”, gulping in air, “I can’t remember.”

**I created the cover art for this post by altering an incredible photograph by Tyler Dewland, of Dewland Photography, which was posted on the Fbook site for Beaufort, SC. I added a dragon’s eye to the moon and claw coming out of the sky to get me, and used color and mood edits to suit the tone of this piece.

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Let me know what you think in the comments. This foray into fiction about dragons has been a growth opportunity so - you, me, toe to toe trading insults. Oh sorry, I mean share some feedback with me.