As Moths

The cabin in the woods has been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. As you approach, you hear a faint sound. Was it a sigh? Was it a satisfied hum? But where’s it coming from? Was it from you? Are you hearing things in your exhaustion? It’s said no one's lived here for over 50 years. You, tired from the hike, and having found nowhere else to rest, enter the cabin. You push open the door and assess. The place is small and only illuminated by the candle. There aren’t any light fixtures to be seen. Otherwise, it looks normal enough. A one room space with a small kitchen, a dusty and firm looking bed, a door that leads to a closet sized room, most likely a bathroom, a mounted shelf, and 2 end tables beside an inviting looking couch. You take a seat on the small sofa and fall asleep instantly. Suddenly you’re awake. Hours have passed. How many, you can’t be sure, but things feel different. You can feel there’s been a shift of some kind, though everything looks the same. What other shift could there have been other than the passage of time. Your body is still tired and your mind still foggy so why are you awake? You lie back and drift again when you feel eyes on you. You bolt upright and look around the small room. Did you just see a shadow scurry away? No, it must’ve been an illusion of the dancing candle light. Or your overly tired mind playing tricks on you. You take a breath and lie back again and then you feel something brush lightly against your leg. You instinctively reach your hand to the spot you felt the touch, thinking maybe it was a spider, or some other insect. Your hand comes back covered in something sticky and damp. You rub your thumb across your fingertips. The slick and viscous substance is warm. Did you squish something? You look closer at your hand. The substance is dark and far too plentiful to be from a bug. It smells metallic. Is this blood? Is it coming from you? You reach your other hand to the spot on your leg but it comes back clean. Holding your hands side by side, you see they’re both clean. ‘‘How? What’s going on? Am I losing it?’’ you think to yourself. You just need some rest. If you could just get a few hours of sleep, you can figure out how to get home. You need to get to sleep fast because every moment of daylight could be critical to getting you home. You close your eyes and start some 4-7-8 breathing. You feel your body relax as you envision leaves on tall tree branches against a bright blue sky, swaying to your breaths, as if you were the wind itself. That vision transforms into a picnic in a lush park with your favorite person. A wicker basket atop a red and white blanket, filled with all of your favorite snacks and drinks. You two lounging, laughing, chatting. The chatting, it’s growing louder. Would you call it chatting? It’s somewhere between chatting and chittering. An almost human sound, too quickly spoken to understand. The sound increases to a roar, surrounding you. It’s deafening. You’re awake suddenly but the sound is still there. Your heart rate accelerates. But then it’s gone. Everything is silent. Was the sound here or was it just the lingering strings of a vivid dream? You shake your head and shoulders loose, shake away those cobweb like memories. You walk over to the window where the candle sits and peek out. Maybe there’s an animal there causing a ruckus? This late, it's unlikely, but you check anyway. And as you thought, there’s no one there. Just you, the candle, the shadows, and the silence. You sit back on the couch and allow your body and mind to take comfort in the isolation. “If there’s no one around, there’s no danger” you tell yourself silently. Most of your mind accepts this, and agrees. But that small, primitive, animal part of you, the sensing part, the knowing part, gives a small protest. You feel a squeeze in your gut, an ever so slight tearing of your eyes. You swallow the feeling. That illogical child-brained feeling that says every pile of clothes on a chair in the dark is a boogie man waiting to devour you as soon as you let your guard down. You swallow it and lay your head against the plush pillows of the sofa. You close your eyes and try to sleep once again. You breathe, you envision, you count, but sleep doesn’t come. Why? What’s going on? You’ve never felt more exhausted in your life. You rack your brain for any sleep inducing tricks you may not have tried when all the shadows in the room pulse as one, and the sound of the crackling candle shakes you to your core. It’s then you realize it’s been absolutely silent. Pin drop silence since…since…since you woke up. Are you even awake? This unnatural silence in the middle of the woods…no rustling leaves…no crickets. You must still be dreaming. You have to be. That’s why you can’t fall back to sleep. You’re already asleep. Well…what do you do now?

You place your hands on your legs and you close your eyes to concentrate. Figure out a solution. “What do they do in horror movies?” you ask yourself. You try to remember how to defeat the dream monsters of your favorite retro flicks. Suddenly the candle flame swells again and you feel a searing pain across the back of your legs. In that same spot. You quickly grab your Achilles heel and you feel welts there, swollen and painful. The kind you get when bit by a fire ant. That’s gotta be what this was. Blisters from fire ant bites. You stand up and as soon as you do, the candle flickers and swells causing the shadows in the room to dance madly. You feel dizzy and faint from the sight. You move to take a step and you suddenly feel something wrap around your ankles. You’re rooted to the spot. You look down and see your feet shrouded in shadow, like your legs end just above your ankles. The flame crackles and dances, the sound blares through the silence, the shadows of the room dance and spin, and suddenly everything is dark. Everything is silent. Everything is still. You stand there for an everlasting brief period of time. A single second that spans a lifetime. You laugh to yourself as you steady your nerves. As you take a step, and feel that searing pain once again as the shadows at your feet, that are somehow blacker than the surrounding darkness, constrict around your ankles like large hands and your legs are pulled out from under you. You fall forward to the ground, and feel yourself being dragged across the wooden floor. The shadow moving up the length, constricting over your limbs and searing your flesh, like gripping hands made of red hot branding iron. The more of your body that enters the shadow, the more of your skin that’s covered in burning blisters. You try to kick your legs free, you try to use your arms to pull yourself from the scorching grips, but it’s no use. You’re slowly dragged into a black nothingness, your flesh singed and welting, inch by inch. This absolute darkness and silence engulfs you, scalding you. Your throat is raw from your muted, pain and terror filled screams. As the last of you is overcome by the sweltering, consuming shadow, there’s a flash of bright light. So bright that your eyes ache and burn. Your vision adjusts and takes in the scene as you’re overcome by the darkness. The last thing you see, maybe the last thing you’ll ever see, is the candle reignite itself. In your pain induced stupor, you could swear you hear a satisfied hum. Moments later, you hear a deafening creak of the door, so loud amidst the quiet that your ears throb and bleed. The candle in the window of the long abandoned cabin has drawn its next victim.