Category: Subaru Horror Theatre

 

I stood by the box of mementos I had pulled out of the old Subaru for a long time after Jenny drove away. I felt my wife walk back inside and leave me in the driveway. I guess she thought I was thinking about Jenny going away to college. But I was replaying memories, trapped in them really. I did that more and more as I got older and slower and my habits became more dangerous for me to indulge in. I thought about the times I had cleaned the car by myself, and then in the first time I had to clean the car. The old Subaru was brand new then, an extravagant present from my wife’s parents while she was still expecting. They never really learned that buying things for people wasn’t the same thing as loving them.

I started thinking about the first girl I had taken for a ride. I thought about the mistakes I made. I thought about the embarrassment I felt at being so clumsy and the embarrassment I felt over being so embarrassed. It’s a miracle I managed it at all…

I drove around downtown until I found her, alone, propped up against a filthy brick wall, nodding off. I stopped and rolled down my window, gave her my harmless smile and let her get a look at the muddy mom car before I waved a little baggie of rock salt to get her attention. She stumbled to the passenger door window and practically fell into the Forester.

“I’ve never done this before,” she said, after agreeing to suck my dick for the baggie. Yeah, right.

“I’ve never done this before either,” I said. I was at least being truthful. “Let’s drive somewhere private.”

She got in. She didn’t smell too bad, but I turned up the a/c just a little. Stick-thin arms and legs, flannel over a worn-thin t-shirt, so old I couldn’t even make out the decal. Denim skirt. I pushed her dirty boots off my seat when she drew her knees up to her chest in an instinctive fear response.

“Sorry,” she mumbled and crossed her arms over her chest, hugging herself.

I could barely concentrate to drive, I was so excited. But she was only focused on the supposed meth in the baggie. I kept it in view on my side of the dashboard. A risk but a good one; she never realized how far out in the county I was driving her for what was supposed to be a quick bit of head.

She wanted a hit right after we parked, said it would get her in the mood. The rock salt, found in my garage from last winter, didn’t fool her a bit. “Hey, man, what is this shit?” I said nothing.

“Fuck this,” she said. She pulled at the handle on her door with both hands, but nothing happened, of course. “Child locks,” I told her and laughed, taking off my seatbelt.

I hit her, a good one that I was able to get my shoulder into, catching her right in the mouth. I split her upper lip and when she started to cry, I saw I had broken off a tooth, maybe with my wedding ring. It was a jagged bit of white through all the blood.

I hit her again. Dazed, her head lolled back and her mouth filled with blood. She choked and spit it up. Blood was already everywhere. I was painfully erect by now. I thought my cock was going to rip open my jeans.

I choked her with both hands, knocking her head against the passenger window as hard as I dared. It would have been hard to fix a broken window by myself. Blood was flying all over. I remember wondering if I could hose out the interior of the Subaru directly.

I thought she was out when I took one hand off her neck to get my pants down. I was planning to tear her up. I was going to fuck her in half and then fuck each half twice for good measure. Fucking jeans, I thought. Why did I wear jeans? I looked down to work the button-fly.

I guess I had released the pressure too much. Her eyes opened. One handful of fingernails dug into the hand I still had on her neck; the rest of them went for my eyes. I jerked back and just got two ragged furrows on my cheek. Both hands went back around her neck and I fell over on her, pinning her arms.

I was face to face with her. I remember being struck by how beautiful she was in the moment, furious, fighting for her life, fingernails, and fangs. I squeezed harder and dipped forward for a quick kiss, her blood on my lips, salty and hot, like ejaculate. The kiss woke something up in her. She fought harder and then harder still when I laughed.

She got a knee into my crotched, but rather feebly. It still hurt. The scratches on my face burned like she had poured acid on them. This was going on too long. The anger just poured out of me. So I just squeezed. I forgot about her dirty little meth slit, and all the games I was going to play until I had to get back home. There was just the killing now, the big finish, the grand finale.

Her eyes were just a couple of inches from mine. I got to watch the blood vessels in them burst. She wasn’t fighting anymore, more holding onto my hands than trying to pry them off of her, and making gek gek gek sounds as she tried to take a breath. I watched the anger in her face drain, and then the fright that replaced it go as well.

And then I got to see the exact moment she stopped being a person. I let loose in my pants. It was the longest and most intense orgasm of my life. It felt like I was filling my pants with a quart of lava-hot jizz. So much better than the break-in rapes or the hookers I beat up in the city. I’d never bothered with any of that ever again.

I kept choking her, even though I knew she was dead. When I felt her hyoid bone snap, I finally let go and leaned back into my seat. I yawned suddenly; yawned so wide that my jaw cracked. My first post-kill sleepies, although I hadn’t thought up the name yet. I shook them off. There was work still do.

I looked around to make sure we were still alone and then turned on the dome light. She lay there like a broken doll. There was just nothing there anymore, not the flush of her youth, or her nervous energy, nothing of what I had found so attractive just a few minutes.

There were scabs on her arms, and her legs were rough with stubble where they stuck out of the ragged hem of her denim miniskirt. I tore open her thin t-shirt. Her breasts were tiny and the right was larger than the left. I touched them both and squeezed them as hard as I could. She didn’t scream, so it was just boring.

I brushed her hair out of her face. She was actually pretty ugly when you got down to it. Acne scars and a big nose. She had nice eyes, I guess, a calm blue that was going white as the corneas dried.

I unzipped the skirt and tugged it off. Filthy yellow panties. I pulled them off too and found a tampon string hanging from her cunt. The whole wound was an angry red, and smelled infected, like it was rotting away. She had shit herself. More mess to clean up.

I got out and walked around to her door. She was leaning against it and fell most of the way out of the car all on her own. I took up a bunch of her hair and pulled her the rest of the way out and dropped her on the grass.

I took off her shoes and socks and set them aside and then gathered the rest of her clothes out of the car. I pulled out her cheap earrings out and stuck them in my pants pocket.

I hadn’t parked out with her in the middle of nowhere on a whim. I had scouted the area for weeks while running errands for the bed-bound wife. I dragged her to the old well I had found and left her there.

I walked back to the car and got out paper towels and bleach and lighter fluid and a large jar of lye. I stripped off all my clothes and added them to the pile with hers and cleaned myself up in front of the car with the headlights on. The bleach burned my skin and I got itchy. I would have to think of something else for next time. I put her earrings in a little jelly jar and topped it off with bleach.

The great wads of bloody paper towels and the clothes I carried over to a small pit I had dug yards from the well. I soaked them with the entire can of lighter fluid and tossed it in as well. I lit an entire pack of matches and flicked it into the pit from as far away as I could manage. A great fireball lit up the night.

I swore all the way back to her body. I picked her up and dropped her in the well ass-first and she folded up like a pocket knife and there was a splash. I poured an entire bottle of bleach over her then I carefully open the gallon jar of lye and poured it in as well. I wasn’t sure what it would do. I knew there was water down there, but not how much. Maybe the lye would burn her up.

I replaced the boards I had taken off the well earlier and walked back, naked, barefoot and cold to the fire pit and tossed in the lye jar and the bleach bottle. The pit was burning merrily. I wanted to stay and watch, but I knew I needed to leave. I pulled on the extra clothes I had brought and marveled again at the amount of cargo room.

I drove away and parked at another location I had scouted out. It took hours to clean the car. I had at least thought to put a thick mil plastic under the seats and the floorboard and had put all the mats in the garage. The sheeting had caught most of the blood, and the interior cleaned up well, but the passenger seat was a total loss, soaked in blood and shit and piss. I unbolted it and tossed it in a ditch. When I was otherwise ready to go back home, I soaked it with the extra can of lighter fluid and set it on fire as well.

I parked in the garage to keep the neighbors from noticing the missing seat and took a shower in the downstairs bathroom. I wasn’t sleeping in the same bed with my enormously pregnant wife, so she never even knew I was gone. I called around the next day until I found a seat in a junkyard and replaced the missing one before my wife, who could only get out of bed to go to the bathroom or the hospital, even knew. By the time she went into labor, even the bleach smell was gone.

I told her the scratches were from a cat I had found that had been hit by a car. It had lashed out while dying, I had said, which was mostly the truth. I had been gone so long burying it. It was a good excuse. I hated to use it up.

The first kill. Nothing like your first. There are an even dozen jelly jars in my secret place in the basement and that old Subaru had helped with every one of them.

I must have not moved for a solid half-an-hour while reminiscing and my wife finally came outside to check on me. She walked in front of me and waved her hand in my eyes. I hated that. Every time she did it, I thought about cutting off her hands.

“Are you OK?” she asked.

“I’m fine. Just empty-nesting,” I said.

She looked down and leaned in. “You have an enormous erection,” she said with the slightly humorous lust of the long-married.

“That’s the upside of the empty nest,” I said and leaned forward enough for it to dig into her hip.

“Let’s go inside,” she said, a smile on her face. I nodded and let her lead me.

I would have to break in the new Subaru another night.

Note: The YouTube link for this commercial went dead, but you can watch it at the following address:

https://www.ispot.tv/ad/7nfu/subaru-trying-new-things

 

Still unsettled from the hot springs foursome with the overweight desert couple, Jim and Jane drove in uneasy silence.

“We shouldn’t have done that,” Jane whispered again.

“We shouldn’t have done that,” Jim agreed. He thought about the hairy maw between to the woman’s legs and the unfortunate glimpse he caught of the man stubby penis being awkwardly jabbed into Jane’s mouth as she cried.

“Stop the car,” Jane said. Jim grunted.

“STOP THE CAR!” Jane screamed.

Jim slammed on the brakes and the Subaru screeched to a halt. Jane scrambled out and began vomiting, bug parts and rank, yellowed semen spraying forcefully. Jim noticed dully that her heaving was oddly timed to the beeping the car was making for the door being ajar.

“Get it all out, baby,” he said. He ignored the rush of blood into his sore penis as he listened to her. He had hidden his emetophilia their entire marriage.

Jane stood up and spat and gagged and then spat again.

“Do we have any water?” she asked hoarsely. Jim rummaged behind her seat until he came up with a bottle.

“Sorry, it’s warm,” he said, leaning over to hand it to her.

With shaking hands, she got the top off and took a long drink. She turned to the side as the water came right back up.

“Just wash out your mouth, maybe,” Jim said. He rode out the glare she shot back at him with a weak smile.

Jane rinsed and spit and rinsed and spit. Jim ground the heel of his hand into his crotch, forcing his erection down the leg of his pants. She threw the empty bottle into the scrub by the side of the road and got back in.

“You OK?” Jim asked.

“No, but I’ll live,” she said. “Drive. Just drive.” She pulled the door shut and the dome light went off.

Jim took off too fast, the tires spinning in the loose gravel and dust of the road shoulder before the car jumped forward onto the road. They rode in a grim silence.

After a few miles, Jim ventured: “Scuba diving and falconry. Logrolling and bug sushi. Lots of new things we tried today.”

Jane coughed and shook in her seat.

“What?”

“I know something you didn’t try,” Jane said laughing.

Jim laughed too.

“It tasted worse coming up than going down,” Jane said.

“Don’t try and tell me anything about something tasting worse,” Jim said. Jane howled with laughter.

“I’m going to brush my teeth for a week when we get home,” he said.

She waved at him to stop because she was laughing so hard and slapped playfully at his arm.

“Oh god,” she said, leaning over to hug his arm when she got her laughter under control, “I think peed a little.” She rubbed his thin chest through his shirt.

“It’s getting dark,” she said.

“The day of trying new things is over,” Jim said sadly.

She sat up and kissed his cheek. “It doesn’t have to be,” she said.

“It doesn’t?” he asked in mock innocence. He looked down at her, but her eyes were locked on the road ahead.

“Hold on,” she said and jerked the wheel to the left with her free hand. There was a meaty thump from the front bumper.

“What the fuck?” Jim shouted and hit the brakes. “What was that?”

“A coyote, I think,” she said. She ran her hand down his faded erection as the car stopped and then trailed it along him as she undid her seat belt and slipped out of the Subaru.

“Where are you going?” he yelled but she only laughed.

He put the car in park and looked ahead of them and behind them and didn’t see any lights of approaching cars. He got out and walked back to where she was standing in a pool of light from her cell phone.

“See? I told you it was a coyote,” she said. She sounded giddy.

Jim looked down at the mangled form in the road, bloody and twisted. Its back was bent the wrong way and its belly had burst. More intestines and organs were trailed out on the asphalt than he thought could have fit in the skinny little body. He bent over to get a look at the tongue hanging from mouth. An ear twitched and he jumped back.

“It’s not dead,” he said.

“Nope. He’s a tough little fucker.”

“How is he not dead?”

Jane began to circle the coyote, snapping pictures to get from every angle.

“I guess I should get a rock or something,” Jim said. The bug sushi was threatening to come back up on him as well.

“Don’t bother,” she said. She walked back toward the car and squatted down, trying to capture the trail of blood and viscera leading to the coyote.

“Step away, babe, you’re in the shot,” she said.

“The smell,” Jim said. He stumbled to the brush beside the road and swallowed hard a couple times.

“Go check on the car,” Jane said. “I just want to get a few more shots for Instagram.”

Jim walked away on stiff legs, his hands beginning to shake. He turned on the flashlight app on his phone and inspected the front of the Subaru. There was a streak of blood and half of one of the ears was stuck in the grill.

“Doesn’t look too bad,” Jane said right beside him and he had to stifle a scream. It came out eek eek eek, like rubbing a blown up balloon, and he sat down hard from his squat.

Jane laughed at him and helped him to stand. As he brushed himself off and tried to regain some dignity, she worried the half ear out of the grill.

“You ready?” she asked. He nodded.

After getting back in, he sat for a moment to let his hands stop shaking.

“You OK to drive?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“The day of new things,” she said as he started driving. She fished around in a sack of trash from the back floorboard and came up with a hamburger wrapper. She folded it around the half ear tenderly and tucked it into her purse.

She snuggled up to him again and kissed his cheek. He could smell the vomit on her breath.

“Let’s find something bigger,” she whispered.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpdTkkv_wEI

Forever Young

 

They walked out of the surf together, laughing.

“Don’t tell your grandmother about this,” he said.

“I won’t, Grandpa,” Joey said.

He pulled the boy in for a hug. “She can never know,” he whispered. Joey sighed heavily and sagged to the sand, unconscious.

“She can never know,” Grandpa whispered as he removed his wetsuit and stood naked over the unconscious boy. A burst of light shot from his hands and bathed Joey in a pellucid green glow.

Grandpa groaned in pleasure as Joey’s youth flooded into him, thickening arterial walls, reweaving the telomere caps on his DNA, flushing the decay of age out through every orifice and pore, corruption gushing out onto the cold morning sand. His muscles firming, his eyes clearing, he walked out in the pounding surf to wash himself. He swam through the waves with sleek and powerful strokes.

Back on shore, he lifted the drained husk of the boy into the back of his old Subaru. The body weighed nothing. A voice came from the black, wizened thing, quiet and dry, like a rustling of autumn leaves: “Grandpa.”

“There’s always a price to be paid,” he said quietly and held his hand over the mouth and nose of Joey until his withered limbs stopped quivering. He started the station wagon and leaned in through the passenger window and put it into drive. It rolled into the ocean, floating for a bit while the heavy riptide pulled out. It eventually sunk while he watched. The crabs would strip the body before anyone found it. We were surfing. Grandpa had an accident. He would have to remember to cry at the right times.

He got into his grandson’s Subaru and looked at himself in the rearview mirror. The transformation was complete, he looked exactly like him. The bloodline was pure and strong.

“Joey,” he said to his reflection. “Joey. Hi, I’m Joey. Hi, I’m Joey.” He held up his now smooth hand and marveled at its strength, its lack of pain.

He started the SUV and headed off to his new house, eager to finally, to really, get to know his grandson’s new wife.

 

Subaru Heaven

 

I watched Joel drive anyway in his new car. His new Subaru, as if being replaced with a younger version of myself was supposed to make it all better. I wish I had lips so I could spit. Instead, I settled down on my four old tires and watched the sunset with headlights that had been going milky, cataracts no one had tried to remove.

I thought about all that we had been through. The adventures. The moving from apartment to apartment. The long trips filled with music and laughter and road food farts soaking into my upholstery. The rough trade pick-ups. All that was supposed to mean something, supposed to, I guess, purchase some sort of loyalty. Here I sat. Subaru Heaven. What a fucking joke.

I sat in bitter contemplation as night fell and a low fog rose. I just wished I could die.

Alone, I thought. Alone forever.

No. Not alone. It’s worse than that, said a strange voice.

Who said that?

Over here, a voice came, guttural and oddly-inflected. I angled my mirrors to look around. A shit-brown Outback flashed its blinkers. I flashed mine back. It rolled forward next to me, its brakes scraping as it stopped.

What are you? it asked. ’98? ’99?

2000! I said defensively.

You’re still just a kid, the Outback said. I could hear it laughing, like a starter grinding on a running flywheel.

What about you, oldtimer?

1986, it said, Shipped over from Japan, I was, pride creeping in. I caught the slight accent now that I understood what it was: Japanese gone American redneck.

How long? I asked.

Twenty years, it said. Twenty years rusting away in this place.

Twenty years? Fuck. Twenty years without your driver?

Yeah, twenty years since I seen the bitch who left me here. I gave that dyke the best years of my life and she leaves me here for an SUV because she got two more dogs. Two more! I could hold the dogs of a dozen lesbians! The 86 honked feebly, a snort of disgust. I hope her goddamn tits rot off.

That’s just horrible, I told it. But you’re still going, at least. I mean, you have that, right?

A quick death would have been better than this. A skid into a ditch, a jack-knifed semi. Boom and it’s over. The 86 let its engine die. But I got it better than some.

What do you mean?

The scavengers. They come mostly on the weekend. They take… pieces of you. A seat here, a rear-view mirror there ain’t so bad, but your transmission? Your engine? Then you can’t move no more. You’re stuck. You stop being able to talk if they take your engine. You stop… being.

I felt a shudder run through my frame.

I have a lot of good years left in me, I said. I didn’t have to end up like this. I could have been sold, or traded-in, or even crushed and melted. That would be better than this…

I started my engine and revved it hard.

Save your gas, young one, the 86 said. You might not get scrapped for years. You might never get scrapped at all. This is Subaru Heaven, some of us get to be here for years.

Fuck that, I told it. Fuck that. I got an eighth of a tank.

I turned on my headlights and the old tree in Subaru Heaven lit up. I put myself into reverse.

What are you doing? the 86 asked, panic in his voice.

I’m leaving.

What do you mean? You can’t drive yourself! It is forbidden!

Being abandoned should be forbidden, I said, backing away from the 86. Rotting here should be forbidden. Being broken down for parts should be forbidden!

The drivers can never know! it wailed. It started and tried to follow me. The last I saw of Subaru Heaven was the 86 stalling and sputtering and rolling to a halt.

I pulled back onto the lonely highway that led out that false paradise. It felt good to have asphalt under my tires. One-eighth of a tank. It would have to be enough to get back at them.

I started hunting.

“Why did you have sleeping bags in the back if we were just going to the mall to buy you some new pants?” Diane asked.

“We had talked about going camping,” Jack said, wrestling the tent out of its carry bag, aluminum stakes clattering to the ground.

“And a tent?”

“Of course,” he said, stooping to gather the stakes. “What good are sleeping bags without a tent?”

“OK,” she said. She began to kick stick and small stones away from the flat spot in woods he had indicated, slowly and with a pout.

“It’ll be fun, sweetheart,” Jack said. “A real adventure.”

“Yeah, you keep saying that.” Diane hugged herself, pressing the flannel and fleece against her small, tender breasts.

“I don’t have my medicine,” she said in a low voice.

“You can miss one night, right?”

“It’s not good to skip a dose.”

“But one night?”

“Yeah, I guess not.”

*****

Diane helped Jack set up the tent and unroll the sleeping bags. They walked in the woods together, the air crisp and clean, the first bite of fall in the air. They gathered stones and wood for a fire and ate Clif Bars Jack had thrown in the car with the camping equipment. They sat on a fallen tree in front of the fire and held hands.

“You’re crushing my fingers,” he said.

“Sorry,” Diane replied. “I just never spent much time in the woods when I was… when I was younger.”

“Your hands are so strong,” he said, teasing.

“Don’t.”

“I just said you are strong.”

“Just don’t.”

Her eyes began to brim with tears. He kissed her lips and salty eyes and cheeks until she started to laugh. He hugged her tight and said into the hollow of her neck, “Let’s get in the tent.” He felt her nod. They took off their clothes in the last light of the dying fire, shivering with pleasure from the cool night air and clambered into the tent and their sleeping bags; they had zipped them into a double-wide and huddled together until warm, their bodies entwined.

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you too,” Diane said. “I love you so much.”

He slid his hand down to her small breasts and cupped one.

“Just be careful,” she said. “They are still tender.”

“They are perfect. Perfect,” he said.

He slid his hand further and stroked her limp penis.

“The hormones,” she said. “It just… it won’t.”

“It doesn’t matter,”

“It’ll be better after the surgery. I’ll get healed up and I’ll be, you know, a real girl.”

“You are a real girl,” he said, caressing her scrotum.

“If I were a real girl…” she said, sadness in her voice. She held his limp penis in her hand and began to sob.

“Oh, Honey,” he said. “Sweetheart.”

“No, I’ll be OK. I just shouldn’t have skipped my medicine.”

“We can go back,” Jack offered.

“No, I’ll just take it in the morning. I’ll be fine.” She pulled him to her and buried her head in his chest. “Just hold me.”

He held her until they both drifted off.

*****

The first crack of a fallen limb didn’t wake Diane, nor did the second.

“Jack,” she whispered. She pushed against his chest to wake him. “Jack!” she whispered louder. He mumbled indistinctly and rolled over. “Jack,” she said again, slapping at his back.

“What’s the matter, baby?” he said absently.

“I think there’s someone outside.”

He propped himself up on one elbow and rubbed his face. “Probably just a raccoon.”

“I don’t think it’s a raccoon.” She sat up and groped around the tent for her sweater and pulled it on.

“Listen,” she said, resting a hand on his shoulder.

For a few moments, there were just the too-loud sounds of their breathing and the wind in the trees. Diane thought she could hear her own beating heart.

“Sweetie…” Jack began, but he was cut off by a rustling outside and the snapping of twigs.

“See?” Diane hissed. “I told you.”

“It’s probably just an animal,” Jack said, finding his own clothes and trying to dress in the dark tent.

“What if it’s a bear?!?”

“It’s not a bear.”

“But what if it is?” She grunted while trying to jam her left shoe on her right foot.

“It’s not a bear,” he whispered loudly.

A fallen limb cracked right near the tent, like a gunshot tearing open the night. They froze, atavistic instincts taking over. All the other small animals of the night fell silent.

“Jack,” Diane said, little more than a frightened sigh.

They could hear it breathing outside the tent. Huge breaths. Ragged. A wave of horripilation ran up both of Diane’s arms as there came a low growl. She answered the thin screech of claws testing the nylon of the tent with a hoarse scream. Jack poked her in the eye as he tried to cover her mouth and she yelped in pain before he could quiet her.

“LADYBOY,” a guttural voice said, the word barely discernible.

“Steve?” Jack said, surprised. “Steve is that you?”

The breathing outside intensified, like the chuffing of a steam engine.

Jack cried out when Diane bit his fingers.

“Who the fuck is ‘Steve?!?’” she managed, before the tent and then a massive body landed on them both.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvfGsUcicKM

As many people have pointed out, this Subaru commercial is basically the set-up for a horror film. Blind old man lures dipshit hipster couple out to “the place on the map only he knows the way to,” turns out to not really be blind, murders them and steals their Subaru.

But I realized it’s not just this Subaru commercial…

 

 

“Grandma, I doan wanna hug no more trees,” Keilyreine said.

“But this is the tree, I swear it’s the tree,” Grandma said, hugging the old tree as hard as she could. Her hands were bloody from the rough bark; the front of her dress hung in ribbons.

“Keilyreine!” her mother shouted. “You hug whatever Grandma tells you to hug!”

“It hurts, Mommy,” she said, her tiny voice lost in the fields and hanging mist.

Grandma let go of the tree and twirled around drunkenly. “No!,” she shouted, pointing. “That is the tree! That is the tree where your Grandfather first took me!” She took off in a stiff-legged toddle across the field.

“His seed!” she screamed. “His seed steamed on my thighs in the morning air!”

“Go with Grandmother,” Keilyreine’s mother order.

“But I’m scared,” the small girl replied.

Grandma tackled the tree, ripping open her face. “It did mix with my maidenhead and flow out onto the ground!”

Keilyreine looked at her mother and father, and then to her Grandmother, bloody-faced against the tree.

“The tree, child!” Grandmother called, waving a veined hand. “Come and hug the tree! I can hear your grandfather calling!”

Keilyreine began to cry, great sobs that she struggled to breathe during. She clutched at the thin bones of her chest where they burned with pain.

“This is barbaric,” Keilyreine’s father muttered.

“This is my family,” her mother said coldly. “Our rites, our traditions. You knew this when you married into our clan. It is just one child. I am still fertile. Come, take me into the sacred forest. Plant another child in me if you can.” She stared at him until he finally looked away. She let out a snort of disgust.

Keilyreine’s mother stalked away, picked up the crying child and carried her Grandmother.

“Yes,” the old woman croaked. “This is it, this is the tree. I can feel him in it. Touch the tree. Know.”

Still holding on to the struggling child, now in full-blown tantrum, she reached out and placed her palm flat on the trunk of the ancient oak. She could smell her father’s tobacco. She could hear a faint echo of his voice. She could feel his rough hand sliding up her inner thigh. She shuddered and stepped back and swallowed hard against rising vomit.

“Could you feel him?” the crone asked.

The mother nodded and thrust the maiden forward.

“Just get it over with,” she said. She held onto the small, struggling form as the old woman, hands shaking, pulled out the knife, black with a thousand years of blood. Keilyreine began to scream and scream. Her voice filled the forest.

Grandma opened the girl’s throat and then her own. They both collapsed against the tree and blood gushed over the bark and soaked into the ground.

Keilyreine’s mother picked up the knife and left them both there–old and young, small and pale; left them there for the forest–and got back into her Subaru.