Drip. Drip. Drip.
The condensation on the cracked glass of the window did an excellent job of obscuring the interior of the abandoned building, but it did absolutely nothing to conceal the noises coming from inside.
Drip. Drip.
Drip.
Footsteps in the forest around it, cracking branches and crunching leaves. No human had come near this part of the forest in years; nobody and nothing at all had disturbed the area in which the building sat. That was about to change, however: the footsteps were growing closer, heedless of the noise they were making, accompanied by a voice panting and hissing out the occasional curse. The voice was growing louder, the words more distinct with every passing second; as the leaves crunched and crumpled underfoot, the entire forest grew still, as if watching, waiting to see what would come.
What came was a child, a boy hardly older than fifteen, covered in dirt and sweat that very nearly obscured how well-made his clothes were. He was slight, and small for his age; his feet were bare and bleeding; his pupils were blown up, very nearly obscuring the green of his eyes. He stumbled forward into the clearing and, surprised at the sudden lack of vegetation restraining his movement, fell forward onto his hands and knees into the wet, soft dirt surrounding the cabin. He pushed himself up just enough to look around at his surroundings. He looked at the rotting walls of the cabin with the same incredulity as he did the woods surrounding it, and then he slowly turned over and sat up, drawing his knees up towards his chest and then carefully rolling up one of his pant legs and then carefully beginning to pick at the duct tape around his ankle. It had been on his skin long enough to warp into it, slightly; the boy was not at all willing to rip the tape off alone with the hair on his lower leg and the top layer of his skin, and so he only picked at the tape, his back to the cabin, his eyes only on the one leg.
Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip.
Eventually, he gave that piece of tape up as a lost cause and repeated the process with the other leg. It was in a similar state: old duct tape around the outside, nothing on the inside, the edges of the tape jagged and peeling up, as if cut apart with a sharp knife. There were a few small cuts on the inside of this ankle, gummed up with dirt and dried blood, and the boy grimaced as he tried to avoid picking at them as he picked at the duct tape. This leg was even more painful, so he was even less successful with it, and eventually he gave up, resting his chin on his legs and letting out a little sigh. There was not much sunlight here, though the night had long since passed and with it the storm that had been so devastating to the town outside of the forest. Here, in the strange clearing among the thick old trees, the ground wasn’t even wet—the soil was moist, as though it had recently been upturned, but it wasn’t wet at all. There were no signs of rainfall, or of any weather changes whatsoever.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
The boy’s head tilted towards the noise in the house; after a moment he pushed his hands into the soft dirt and stood, leaving behind clear handprints, and then turned and walked towards the cabin, shuffling his feet to avoid stepping on anything sharp. By the time he reached the broken window, his handprints had vanished, though soil was still caked onto the palms of his hands; as he peered through into the darkness of the cabin, the footsteps he’d left behind him vanished, too.
He moved back from the window, began circling the building until he reached the door. Though it had nearly rotted off its hinges entirely, there was a shiny new padlock holding it shut; the boy frowned, and took it in his fingers, and looked closely—and then his face went pale and he dropped it and hurled himself away as though it had bitten him. It hadn’t: he had no new injuries, and he stared at his hands as if to confirm this before carefully, carefully, ever so carefully approaching the door once more and picking up the padlock and fiddling with the letters of its combination lock.
Drip.
L
Drip.
A
Drip.
C
Drip.
I
Drip.
E
Click.
He opened the lock and threw it as far into the woods as he could, and then the boy pushed the cabin’s door inwards. The hinges complained; the room inside was dark and stank of blood and piss. The boy took a careful step over the threshold
drip, drip
and moved into the main room, eyes darting wildly from side to side. Maybe it would have been smarter for him to flee, but he had been running for hours. He was not a persistence predator; he was the prey, and now he was looking for a safe place to curl up and hide.
After the entryway was the sitting room; rotted furniture sat waiting to be sat on once more, with moldy and moth-eaten cushions decorating each and every one of them. Teacups sat waiting on the table, their insides long since dried brown, and a plate of rotted cookies sat square in the center. The boy eyed them hungrily, but did not touch—there would be a time for food poisoning later, when he wasn’t alone, when he might need to be weak and vulnerable. He didn’t need that now. It was safer to starve.
After the sitting room, the bedroom: bunked beds, each made neatly, with bars on the one window in the room. The closet was filled with once-beautiful dresses, now rotted and moth-eaten; on top of a chest of drawers, there was a portrait of a girl with black hair and red eyes, smiling next to a blank-faced boy with black hair and violet eyes. The bottom left corner of the picture frame was covered with dried blood; the boy ignored this and moved on. He had been taught never to linger in a girl’s bedroom.
After the bedroom, the kitchen, with a woodstove and a pot above it filled with boiling water, and above the pot, a rabbit, sleek black fur and terrified red eyes, suspended by a rope above the pot. Blood dripped from the rabbit’s mouth to the pot drip, drip, drip and the boy stared, eyes wide and mouth open. He tried to take a step back, but his legs jerked to a halt, and then he slowly walked forward, almost as though he were in a trance, and placed both of his hands on the rim of the pot. There was a sizzling sound, and the smell of cooking meat; he stared down into the water, and his reflection was the rabbit’s.
Nobody is coming to save you now, Oz Vessalius, a voice whispered in his ear. Nobody cares enough to save you now.
“Nobody ever did,” said Oz Vessalius aloud to the empty room, and took the only way out he knew: he climbed directly into the pot, and sank to the bottom, and let the heat sweep him away into oblivion.
