Happy Birthday

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. Julia was walking close behind Tasha pretending not to notice it as they walked up, and all the chatter on the other side of the door. When she opened the door it fell silent. Julia went in first. Then the candle started to move towards them with a low hum.

“Happy birthday to you,” they hear as everyone gathers around the light. Julia looks back at Tasha who has that smile she smiles only for her. She stands there awkwardly as they sing. And then she blows the candle and they all cheer and she feels like a kid again.

Julia spends most of the party drunkenly explaining to everyone how much it meant that Tasha did this here. Tasha always found her penchant for true crime to be at worst a troubling psychosis and at best basic. So she reluctantly follows along when Julia explains her podcasts, retaining all of the most inconsequential details about the stories, and then months later regurgitating a fact about Kirk Douglas being briefly investigated for murder.

But even she could recite the story of Ruthie Delgato from start to finish. Ruthie was there for a party too. She was 15 and all the adults in her life called her an old soul. She didn’t hang out with people her age, she spent most of her time alone. She reminded Julia of herself at that age and maybe that’s why this one felt different. Anyway she got it in her to go to this party. The cabin belonged to one of these rich kids’ parents at her school. She showed up here, alone. It was packed and everyone was more drunk than a teenager ever should be. She was nervous so she started drinking too. And drinking and drinking and drinking. Until walking became a wayward dance, a precarious caper against gravity. She fell into the fireplace trying to find somewhere to sit. Just as she was getting up, relieved no one had seen, one of the guys who seemed to be running the party, a football player, looked up at her and laughed.

“You got shit on your face Cinderella,” he said. She started to wipe her face with her hands that had more soot on them. He laughed harder as he walked towards her. Then his friends followed. They all picked up fireplace pokers and started jabbing at her as she struggled to find her footing. They were chanting in deep befuddled voices “Cinderelli, Cinderella, Cinderelli, Cinderella.”

Ruthie stopped fighting it, she tried to stay still hoping that would make them stop. But the crowd was getting rowdier and the boys were getting bolder. One of them swung at her ankles with the poker and she fell backwards. It took them a while to realize she wasn’t moving because everyone was cheering him on. Like he had just hit a homerun. When they realized, everyone-- in a panic began to clear. The boys, in drunken idiocy, took her and buried her about 2 miles from the cabin only three feet underground. She was found the next day when they sobered up and confessed. The cause of death was asphyxiation.

Tasha gathers everyone for a toast and Julia starts to get embarrassed again. “To my love, on her birthday, and to Ruthie Delgato may she rest in peace. Fuck football players!” She says and everyone loudly echoes, fuck football players.

Even though there weren’t that many people there it felt like it. Everyone was incredibly intoxicated, dancing in the living room to music that was both exceptionally loud and unheard by anyone else for miles. Julia stumbles around wondering who all the people in the house are. None of them look familiar. And she couldn’t remember if they were here when she arrived or if they came later. She makes her way to the kitchen and stands over the sink. She fills a dirty cup with water and chugs it. Then she stares at the blackness of the forest, so deep it looks impenetrable. She thinks of Ruthie, alive, in that grave. She thinks of worms eating at her not yet rotting flesh. Wet dirt secreted into every crevice, tucking itself between her eyelashes, lodging itself into her throat slowly over hours and hours through the very thin gaps between her teeth. And how in the end it was good that she was passed out.

Tasha comes up behind Julia. She puts her hands around her hips and leans into her neck. She says that everyone had talked about it and decided they had to go see the shallow grave.

“Everyone, everyone?” Julia said, confused.

“What do you mean? It's just six of us, an even number so perfect buddy system.”

Julia is trailing close behind Tasha as they try to breach the impenetrable darkness. The sound of their feet on the wet dirt makes her flinch with anxiety. Everyone is drunkenly screaming into the cold air lyrics to a song they still hear playing from in the cabin. Julia is meticulously counting and recounting the flashlight beams to make sure everyone is still relatively close to each other. In her neurosis she loses sight of Tasha. When she realizes, she has no idea how long it's been-- since she saw the back of Tasha's head, or since they got out here, or since she first walked in to the single candle in the window.

“Tasha?” she screams. She runs up to the nearest beam of light to tell them she lost Tasha. Everyone gathers around her as she continues to scream for Tasha. Then she notices that the music stopped. They all hurry back towards the cabin, Julia running in front of everyone. Then she stops in a choke at the smell of rotting fruit, sitting out in the sun on the hottest day of the year. They find Tasha standing at the front door, naked. She’s covered head to toe in so much dirt you could only barely tell she was naked. There were leaves and sticks in her hair, that looked like it had been fashioned into a nest by an animal. Her fingernails were black under the nail and red around the cuticles.

“Tash?” Julia says as she slowly tries to get closer. She reaches her arm out towards Tasha. Before she can take a step forward, what couldn't have been less than a gallon of stomach bile comes shooting out of Tasha’s mouth. All the chunks and liquid fly into the air as if out of a confetti cannon. Clumps of dirt explode on the ground like water balloons, freeing from inside them maggots and spiders and other insects that don't have names yet. Everyone starts stepping back. What’s wrong with her? someone asks.

Julia tries to take a step forward, and then she notices something in Tasha’s hand. It's long and black so it blends into the night, but even in the dark Julia can tell what it is. Run, she says. Before one of her friends can turn around, Tasha leaps off the porch, three feet into the air and lands onto him. She sticks the fireplace poker into his stomach, so deep that it reaches the ground beneath them. The stick uproots his insides as she pulls it out. He screams and she stabs him again. She stabs him six times, each laceration as deep as the last. His hands swing around in the air, grasping for nothing. She gets up and steps on his neck until there’s a crack and his eyes go blank.

Further into the forest, Tasha, seemingly emerging from the ground, grabs another friend by the ankles. Tony falls with his face into the dirt. Tasha stands over him, as he crawls on the ground. He reaches for rocks and throws them flailing into the black air. Tasha grabs Tony’s ankles and turns him around, as easily as if he were a throw pillow. She buries the poker into his open mouth, into the back of his throat until the blood curdling in his mouth is spilling over his lips. His body erratically flinches as he chokes, until it stops and he is lifeless.

Julia was running, blindly into the darkness, into Ruthie’s darkness. She could hear her friends, one by one screaming behind her as she ran. She went around the back of the cabin, through the kitchen. She locks the door and lodges a cabinet in front of it. Then she runs to the front door and locks it. She moves the couch in front of it and then runs back to the kitchen, grabs a knife and hides beneath the dining table. She holds the knife close to her chest with her knees, whimpering in exhaustion and fear. Forgetting that not so long ago she was standing at the sink, staring out the window with Tasha's arms around her. Forgetting every memory she ever had, except for Tasha naked on the porch with that poker in her hand.

It gets quiet. Julia listens for any sign of potential intrusion. Then she hears someone’s voice, from a distance, from outside. A voice that’s familiar but changed.

“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you,” the voice sings. Julia reluctantly convinces herself this was all a prank. She crawls out from under the table, the knife still in her fist.

“Happy birthday dear Julia,” the voice continues. Julia stands up and looks out at the blackness in the window above the sink. She stares into nothing.

“Happy birthday to you,” the voice vanishes into the wind. Julia continues to look outside. Then quickly, something moves in the trees and lunges at her through the window.

She falls backwards, Tasha on top of her. Tasha grabs Julia by her hair and bangs it against the floor. Julia settles herself quickly enough to stick the breadknife into her side. Tasha looks down at the knife in her abdomen. As she goes to pull it out, Julia tackles her. She puts her knees on Tasha’s wrist. Tasha’s grip on the knife loosens.

“Tash, baby, it's me,” she screams desperately. “Please. Please come back please,” she cries.

Using her legs, Tasha launches Julia off her and into the wall. She stands up and takes the knife out of her side. She walks towards Julia, who is quietly wailing on the floor.

Julia looks up at her. “What the fuck are you?” she screams. Tasha kneels down in front of Julia who shoves her back onto the ground. They wrestle and in the struggle Julia grabs the knife back but Tasha is on top of her. Julia turns the knife towards Tasha who is crushing her wrist with her fist. As the knife falls onto the ground Julia is weeping in defeat.

“I’m sorry Ruthie, I’m sorry I’m sorry,” she mutters as Tasha takes her head into her hands. They look each other in the eyes; Tasha’s filled with blankness, with the presence of nothingness, Julia’s filled with fear, the loneliness of death. Tasha bangs Julia’s head into the ground. Almost like a halo, blood begins to spill out of and around it.

A friend that was supposed to come the next day found all the bodies except for Tasha’s. Two were hanging up side down impaled by branches above the grave where Ruthie was buried. After knocking her unconscious, Tasha buried Julia alive there too. But Julia survived. She was in a coma for months before she woke up. She bought the cabin and lives there now. Apparently she spends hours standing over the sink-- watching into the night for something to come back to life.