Victoria and I had hiked the trail many times, but never this far. I tried to imagine the map of the trail, and assumed that I had at least traveled thirty-five miles. It felt weird, almost uncomfortable. There were usually people coming and going, having conversations, children shouting as their parents hiked, and even the animals seemed to not to bother this far out. I was utterly alone.
I didn’t ponder too much, focusing on the trail, to the burning in my legs.
Sometime later, as I took a short break, there was a noise from deep within the woods. I capped my water bottle, and craned my neck, pointing my ear skyward.
Nothing.
Maybe a trick of the wind?
I lowered my ear, but it sounded again, clearly now.
It was a wind chime.
Her wind chime.
A cold wave washed over me. My hands prickled and gooseflesh rose on my forearms.
How?
I focused on the silence, anticipating the sound—
It came again, from my right, radiating through the air like mist. I stole a glance down both ends of the trail. No one was around to make the sound. I waited and when it rang again, I raced towards it.
The twigs crunching beneath my feet, the wind blowing through the trees, my heavy breath as I ran; every sound but the wind chime pulled away, reeling into the ether. The trees lessened until they completely stopped around a clearing. They leaned into the clearing, their long branches heavy with ash-colored bells dangling from their ends, jingling with her chime. Scratchy, gray symbols marked each one.
I looked from the bells to the hut in the center of the clearing. Tightly woven crimson hide covered its sloping roof, and its walls were dark wood, save for the rounded ash-gray door standing over a smell set of moss-covered logs serving as stairs.
The breeze weakened, stopped, and Victoria’s chime silenced. I wanted it to start again, wanted to hear a remembrance of her, but it never came, but another sound did: laughter… A woman laughing from inside the hut.
I slowly walked around the clearing, coming to the hovel’s rear. There were holes in the back wall, symbols that matched the ones on the bells. I crept to an opening, and peeked through.
A short woman wearing a heavy brown and red stained cloak leaned over a table off to the side. She tucked her long chestnut hair behind her ear—
Victoria!
Her beautiful blue eyes, her warm cheeks, her full lips—
No, that’s not her— it can’t be her.
I shook my head. It looked like her, but it was impossible. My Victoria was gone, scattered into the woods miles and miles back, nothing but ash and dust… But this woman could’ve been her twin… She smirked Victoria’s smirk as she turned the page in a book on the table.
My head swam when I straightened and ran around the hut, lunging up the stairs, and pounded on the door.
It didn’t matter if it was impossible, it didn’t matter that she was already gone, scattered in another form into the trees. Logic, reality, rationality: those became just words. There was a chance of her being beyond the doorway, of her being in an isolated place in the woods, like she had always wanted… If I was wrong, if I stumbled onto a woman who only looked like Victoria—
I pushed the thought away. I didn’t want it to be true, didn’t want to lose her again, even if she truly wasn’t there to begin with.
The door wrenched open. I held my fist in the air, mid-knock. The woman before me looked up with beautiful, wide blue eyes. She smiled with lips I remembered kissing countless times.
“Oh, God…” I muttered. It was her; it was my wife, it was Victoria. Tears formed, spilling down my face, and my lips quivered as I tried to speak. I swayed as the weight of the world lifted from my shoulders.
She placed her hands gently onto my arms, steadying me. She set a delicate finger onto my lips and wrapped her arm around my neck. I smelled lilacs on her breath when she kissed the tears on my face. She took my arm and pulled me inside.
* * *
For what felt like years, I lay nude on thick animal hide blankets sprawled on the floor below the rear wall openings. I inhaled the rich scents of smoke and leaves that seemingly radiated from the hide. I tried to recall where I was, tried to remember if I had ever worn clothes, but as I aimlessly groped through my foggy memory, only Victoria's fingers moving down my chest, her lips on mine, her tangled hair dangling over her breasts could be found.
I pushed the images away, pushed the desire to remember down. I was with my wife now, that’s all that mattered, except presently, for she left hours ago to retrieve food.
She hunts now, or always had.
I propped myself up on my forearms. Shelves lined the ceiling, brimming with rusted trinkets and wax sealed vials full of earthy colored liquids; lit candles in gnarled root-like holders jutted from the walls; books bound in twine and blackened leaves and small corked bottles containing gray-black sand littered the uneven table; opposite to the table, a black steel pot hung above a patch of still smoking kindling within an inlaid hovel.
I smiled, and lay back down, closing my eyes. Victoria would return soon. I allowed the hut’s smells and the hide’s warmth pull me back to sleep.
Crackling wood and a sour stench woke me. A blazing fire licked the pot’s bottom as smoke billowed out from burning leaves. The smoke stung my eyes and burned my lungs. Coughing into my arm and sitting up, I went to call for Victoria, but before the words left my lips, she was before me. Her cold hands gripped my arms, pushing me back down onto the hide. Her cloak rustled like dried leaves as she placed her palm onto my forehead, as though I was a sick child.
She straddled me, put her soft lips to my ear, and whispered the sounds of a babbling brook, of wind-stirred leaves, of swaying, groaning trees. Her hand slid down my face, my neck, and her fingers uncurled over my chest. A numbing chill slithered from her fingertips, blanketing my flesh, before her nails suddenly dug into me. A sharp, fiery pain shot through my veins.
I hissed through clenched teeth, reached for her wrist, but she knocked my hand away with a flick of her wrist. She licked the sweat beading my neck as she leaned forward, pushing away the blankets, taking my member, forcing me inside her.
I gasped. She exhaled the scent of wildflowers.
She set her nose to mine while her nails burrowed deeper. Smoke swelled in the hut, over us, into her, me… Her eyes glowed within the dense gray, but not the beautiful blues that I loved, the ones I could look into forever and more, but deep-seated pits brimming with smoldering coals.
The world rippled with her hips’ movements, her eyes brightening as though someone blew on the coals, giving momentary life. My strength vanished, drained from me into her.
Please.
I couldn’t buck her off.
Stop.
I couldn’t breathe.
Please Victoria.
Everything swam, the smoke thickening, building pressure like a vacuum around us.
A coldness filled my lungs, ran through my veins, numbing my extremities. A darkness enclosed around me, pulsed over my eyes like a heartbeat.
Stop.
Then, like a tree snapping, like the clapping of thunder, the pressure, reality gave way. My head trembled, my chest rattled, my muscles sighed. My groin and legs spasmed and tingled.
I don’t want—
She sat back, vanishing into the smoke.
—this.
Soon, there was only darkness.
I stared up at the wall.
The openings were dark, or always were.
Something bubbled in the back of my mind, raising from the haze.
Weren’t those holes to the outside?
Windows, without glass?
I rubbed my face, shaking my head. The smell of smoke still radiated from everything, even after two — five? ten? thirty? — days.
Deep-seated pits brimming with smoldering coals, burrowing into me, searing my flesh, like her fingers.
I sat up, wincing with pain. Her fingernails had left small red pricks on my chest, forming a symbol, like a constellation.
Another thought formed, but it felt like only a sliver, the rest still hidden behind the mental fog.
Clothes, where are my clothes?
And then:
Where is my hiking gear?
I stood, my knees popping and legs moaning, and searched the hut, but my things weren’t there. When I moved towards the door, the room shook, blurring. Lightheadedness rushed over me, and I put my hand out to catch myself on the table, but it was like moving through gelatin. The books on the table were splotches of dark paint, their outlines snaking across the desk, through smudges of corked gray vials and smeared brown walls. It was as though I was inside an abstract painting. I spun to right myself, slipped, and crashed to the floor.
Her marks on my chest burned like brands beneath my skin.
I drunkenly looked at the door, finding the same marks drawn there in dark mud.
The door opened as the feeling in my arms and legs disappeared.
Beyond Victoria was a field of white and snow powered trees.
“How long…” I said, gasping, “how long have I been here?”
She closed the door and set down a weaved basket, animal hide and carcases spilling out, and knelt before me. She ran her freezing fingers through my hair, kissed my cheek with frigid lips.
She took my face in her hands, turning it towards her, and our eyes locked. Victoria put her lips to mine, and moved her hand from my face to my chest—
No, I’m begging you, stop!
The world darkened as she pressed her mouth harder against mine. Her fingers roved down my body, beneath my waist. Her breath smelled of burnt leaves, her roaming tongue the taste of wet loam. Bile surged up my throat, but she moved her tongue deeper into my mouth, exhaled, and a numbness flooded into me, calming my stomach.
This isn’t her; this isn’t—
She grasped my member and exhaled more until darkness swirled over my vision and solidified.
I awoke underneath the hides.
Something sour bubbled in the steel pot above the crackling fire. Victoria hunched over the table, her hands flat on top, focusing on what must’ve been one of the books. Her hair—
No, no, that’s not right…
Her patchy hair dangled over her face like seaweed clinging to wet stone.
I rubbed my eyes.
She tucked a piece of her slick hair behind a dirtied ear. Parts of her head were bald, oily with sweat. Her eyes—
Those aren’t her’s…
Her eyes were no longer blue, but deep-seated, bottomless pits of smoldering coals. Her nose was no longer adorable, but gnarled, and her lipless mouth formed a grin, revealing black tinged gums.
The pot was boiling, frothing a dark liquid that spilled and hissed onto the fire. She turned to the pot, a vial of grayish black sand in her hand. She uncorked it with her mouth, and sprinkled some into the pot. Deep, umber smoke streamed over the pot, blanketing the flames, the floor.
She removed an empty vial from the table, and dipped it into the pot, lifted it out, and put it to her mouth. Earth green, maroon sludge slopped into her, spilling from the sides of her lips, falling in clumps on her cloak.
Her seaweed hair—
Her deep-seated, dark eyes—
Her lipless mouth—
Victoria’s hair.
Victoria’s eyes.
Victoria’s lips.
“Oh— oh Jesus, no,” I moaned, tears falling down my face. The haze suffocating my mind lifted, revealing the connections that were until now hidden.
The vials, her ashes—
The marks on the door matching my chest—
Never to leave the hut, my prison.
Vic— that hideous woman faced me, threw the vial into the pot, and the hut became washed in umber smoke. Then, she was upon me, her long fingers reaching for my groin, her now full lips on mine, her breath filling me with the taste and smell burning, wet earth. She used for what felt like eons until I shuddered, giving what little was left of myself to her. I lay against the hides and closed my eyes, allowing nothingness to pull me away, to free me from her bonds…
The nothingness throbbed like my temples… I became lighter than a feather… Brown, dark tan colors underneath, above… They were casted aside, revealing a door…
Creaking…
Whining of rusted hinges…
My stomach churned with each step down, down into a colder place…
I heard a man say, “See your wife too, eh?” in the darkness. Then, there was laughing — throaty, dry chuckling…
