This is a draft chapter from my work in progress, please keep that in mind as what you read here may not be exactly what makes it to publication.
Time for Flowers to Sleep
Wet wheezes wake her from the numb darkness. Panic, claws through every cell in her body. A rope constricts like a hungry python around her neck. It denies her starving lungs a taste of the cool autumn air teasing at the edge of her lips.
There is no room for clear thoughts. Still, shards stagger through the remnants of her broken consciousness. Her feet find no ground; her body swings in time with the breeze.
How can he do this? … I love him. I trust him. … Why is he hurting me? What did I do wrong?
Rarely ever did she come into the woods after dark. His request was urgent, so urgent she didn’t dare refuse. The sound of pain in his voice made him sound broken. The lover—no—the mother in her, needed to soothe that.
Parking her car beside the old meetinghouse, the world outside greets her with an eerie silence as she opens the door.
She steps into the woods, flashlight locked in her white-nuckled grip…her only weapon against the oppressive darkness of the October night.
At the edge of the clearing, she feels someone behind her. Twigs and leaves crunch beneath heavy steps. Close. Too close. Coming too fast. She turns, catching sight of a dark silhouette before it crashes into her. Her head bounces off the cold ground. Sharp. Sudden. Then, the world ruptures; her consciousness falls into darkness.
“Get up,” he hisses from behind her. That voice… not his normal, soft, tender tone. Dark. Almost sinister. She rolls to her side and feels the weight of the coarse rope cutting into her flesh.
Pushing to her knees quickly becomes a failed attempt to climb the hill. She’s almost immediately brought back down by the jarring yank and strangulation the rope delivers. Down again. Still aware.
Her gasping breath and the thump of blood in her ears almost masking the crunch of leaves as he steps closer. Clawing into the forest floor she scoops mounds of earth into each hand. When his shadow looms over her, she turns, hurling the debris into his face. Too little. Not enough to stop what the Devil has sent him to do.
He backs off. The woosh of rope flying through the air, followed by it clattering through the branches of the tall pines lets her know this is about to get much worse.
Her mind screams. Run! Her body won’t let her. The same brain commanding her to run keeps her tethered to the ground. He comes back to her, slinks down, grabs her by the waist, and throws her over his shoulder like a carcass after the hunt.
He carries her over, setting her down beside one of the pines. The rope around her neck pulls tighter, choking her. She’s forced to rise up the tree with its insistent pull. Now standing upright, he brings over a log and places it near her feet. Still, no words from him.
The rope tightens more as he pulls at it again. Fighting up to her tiptoes she has no choice but to step on the log if she wants to continue breathing.
The log is odd shaped and is slick from the moisture of the nearby swamp. Her feet twitch as she attempts to maintain any semblance of balance. He again yanks the rope tight. Just tight enough that she can still breathe, but her head is pulled upward with the force of the pressing rope. Satisfied with his work she watches him tie the rope off to a neighboring tree.
He comes back to her, placing a piece of paper into her coat pocket. Before she can mutter out his name he delivers a kick knocking the log from under her.
The rope, too slack. Her weight, too little. The fall leaves her neck unbroken. So she swings. Every crick of the rope, a path to slow suffocation. Darkness now claiming her light.
She names her sins as the reason she’s woken back up. It is because of them she is in this position to begin with. It is because of them the raw wheezing slips from her lips. Each breath, a struggle. Her life is over, she’s sure of this. A cool numbness continues to spread through her extremities.
Her body gives out. She can feel the warm piss running down her leg as her bladder loses control. Her will to fight—carried off with the leaves on the autumn wind.
The light of the full October moon reflects on the Old Meeting House windows. They look so close. Her car is not more than a few hundred yards up on the hill. She’s within a yells distance of where someone might hear her. Might save her from this; from him.
The lack of fresh oxygen starves her brain. This is it, she thinks. Her mind grows fuzzy, the world dim. She takes in a final glimpse of him still watching from beyond the tree line.
One final attempt to cry out to him, “Why?” The words run dry, too silent to be heard.
A stone on a stump in the swamp. That’s where she hangs. So close to the center of town. Yet, in this fading moment she knows just how far away she is.
He’s taken notice of her twitching and comes back to whisper in her ear, “It is time to sleep now, flower. Soon you will bloom again.” Grabbing her waist, he pulls. The crack echoes in her head as her neck brakes, then nothing more.