It’s always difficult to explain one’s self in writing. It is especially hard to begin such an explanation, but there isn’t exactly anyone else with whom I can talk. I’ve never really had anyone to talk to on the farm. I never even wanted to be a farmer although it’s not like I really have a choice. My parents used to be good company, I have an issue you see with sleep walking. The first night my affliction was discovered I ended up bruised battered and bloody at the bottom of the stairs of my house, so after that my parents took to the habit of tying me into bed with a thick rope we used to lead the cattle. I must not have appreciated the company of my parents very much because I remember spending most of my time with them reading old books they had stored around the house. I’d be happy to accept that I was a distant person, but neither my mother nor my father ever tried to disturb my reading. Actually I take it back, my mother did do one thing for me though, she would tell me what adventures I would try to go on at night. She would talk about how I would try to grab my rain coat so I could adventure around the town, or how I would try to turn my sheets into wings so I could fly away making her rip up my sheets so she could keep my company. The explanations were southing to me in my youth. But my parents were all too happy to leave me. One day I woke up and my chords were untied, I was in the woods, my face runny and I had bruises around my neck and chest. Mother and Father didn’t come home. Perhaps I tend their farm in the hopes that they do come back, maybe so they can tell me why they left or how the ropes came undone. But after years of tending and tilling they haven’t made any attempts to contact me. This is unfortunate because I don’t particularly like the farm. Plants die under my watch, and more recently animals have been attacked by a beast skulking about the woods. About every month at night the beast finds its way into my barn, jumps into one of the cow’s stalls, kills it and eats its guts out. I find a mangled corpse in the morning with no track or trail to follow to my cow’s assailant. I tried steaking out to get to the root of the problem. I got a gun from the shop in town and sat out on my porch every night from eight at night to three in the morning waiting to capture my pest. I did this for about a week and never caught anything. Staying awake in it of itself was a challenge, especially by the end of the week when I had a near debilitating head ache. To add insult to injury, when I went to get some water for my head the sun had come up by the time I got back and another animal was found dead. I then decided enough was enough and I went to get help from the town sheriff Bill. He wasn’t really supposed to help with mundane issues such as mine, so I decided to invite him over for dinner to propose a steak out in shifts to keep me from drifting off. The night he came I decided to cook some shreds of beef I had shoved into my refrigerator. I am not a particularly skilled chef, but I thought the sheriff was a little too dramatic with his meal. He took one bite winced for a split second and looked glumly at his plate for about a minute before announcing that the beef was underdone. I helped myself to his portion, being ravenous at the time, and found no problem with it. He made a little small talk before we got down to the brass tax, how long have I lived on the farm, how long has the house been here, questions like that. I told him what he needed to know but he still looked sick from what little of the meal he ate. So I cut to the chase and asked him to stake out with me that night as it was about the time of the week where the creature attacks the farm. The sheriff pretended to be a little apprehensive at first, but I saw he had brought his shotgun so I figured he was just angling for something I couldn’t pick up on. He sat out on the porch and I offered to bring out some beers. I came back and we sipped and sat for about an hour before I began to suspect I had undercooked dinner. My stomach began to feel as though it were a glass sphere punched with a set of brass knuckles, I curled forward bellowing in pain, stumbling to get inside and lie down. I was blacking out, I didn’t know what kind of bug had gotten into me, but whatever it was made me regret eating anything at all. Before I faded out I saw faintly the sheriff bursting back through the door, the bright white moon at his back with a look of shock at my illness, then everything went black. I woke up in the woods as I had normally done since my parents left, but this time I was in much greater pain. I must have stumbled into a briar or tree branch since there was a deep evil looking wound at my side which painted my abdomen, the ground, and my hands, a reddish brown. I shambled back to my house. Another cow had been attacked just the same as the others that had been slaughtered under my watch, only this cow had less meat on it, perhaps as the beast’s way of taunting me for being unable to capture it. The sheriff was gone. He didn’t leave a note explaining what happened but he did leave 3 beers in the pack along with his shot gun by the fridge which had been replenished somehow from last night. I kept trying to hunt down whatever was killing my cows of course, but after the sheriff left it seemed as though there was no life near my house, like to was an island in the middle of a vast empty sea. I don’t know what the sheriff told the town the night he was here, but every now and again a stay child or hiker will stumble upon my farm. But much to my dismay none of them stop and talk to me, they give me a short panicked stare and scurry back off towards town. It gets awful lonely you know, living with yourself. I can’t even really say I live with myself honestly, because my own mind doesn’t even seem to be about me half the time, leaving more questions about the world around me than it does answers. Sometimes when I lie awake at night, unable to sleep because I remember the tight chords that used to bind me to my bed and keep me from wandering off. I miss my parents even though they were distant. But really all I want is for anyone to be there with me, hold me close and tie me tight so in the morning they can tell me what happened when I can’t remember what I did.
Submitted September 29, 2016 at 09:08AM by CursiveofDragon http://ift.tt/2dsPW2V shortstories
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