by Alan Chains
was yanked away. Frantic and desperate, I turned every direction, howled her name and tried to search in the dark. As I lowered my glance, a pair of terrifying red eyes rose from the ground and pierced through mine, and I was so frightened that I started to cry. So I turned around and ran. Crying, I thought about her ripped body laying on the ground waiting to be gnawed on by that wolfish beast and ran some more. Still crying, I thought about the pack that could be hunting with it and ran faster than I thought I could. By the time I saw light, I heard the beast howling back to me, triumphant or mocking, and yet another faint scream from a great distance. I slipped into frenzy, but I did not go back. I told myself- it was good as dead. Good as dead. My feet stamped my shame and terror onto the snowed ground as I walked toward the little town, but I never made it there. As far as I know, nobody found me either. The next time I woke up, the world was white as ever, but the cold had gone, and I-"
A small voice echoed weakly in disbelief, but Stutter meant to finish his half of the story.
"All I could think of was to go back and find her. But I-"
The other voice became resolute.
"This isn't my war femur!"
The skeletons halted in the presence of an overarching Bryson and the femur in his hand.
"Good grief, show some respect!" Clifford said.
"This isn't MY war femur!" Bryson thundered again.
Attempting to calm him, it was Bree who noticed something and began to grasp it all. She lost her shawl and seized the femur, laying it in her hands for everyone to see.
"This is a woman's femur," she declared.
The skeletons immediately turned to look at each other, but they could not decipher each other's expressions. In the end, it was not at all lost on them.
"She's here!" Stutter stood, and everyone who still sat stood. "By God, she's here!"
And no more needed to be said. Each one drew a piece of long wood from the pit to hold up as a torch, and the pack swarmed behind Bryson as the veteran made his way to where he'd laid down his bone. He found it exactly where he'd left it and placed the two bones beside each other. Then the skeletons got to work.
They reached blindly everywhere, digging up stick-like figures as soon as they felt them in the snow. With great apprehension, they poked their hands into tree holes. They shook the white sheets off of trees and bushes, hoping a skull would fall out. There were entirely too many sticks lying around, and in these woods winter was eternal. Damning was the moonlight, working against the torchlight and concealed her whereabouts. Punishing was the wind, snuffing their fire altogether and wheezed grim warnings in their phantom ears. Consuming was the melancholy, swallowing the skeletons whole. The forest smelled of cold decay and loss. But they could sense it. Someone was here, silent but screaming.
The skeletons scattered to search some more. The moon has had enough of their travesty and began to retreat, or perhaps it was the more sympathetic sun that forced it out of the picture. In any case, the day broke early. With the first glimmer of light, the skeletons began to make out better shapes in the world. All the sudden, they heard a cry from afar, and each looked further into the horizon.
There, he found her. Missing just a femur, her frame was otherwise intact. Her head was facing sideways, and her death was final. The skeletons rushed to his side but didn't know what to do.
"What do you want to do?"
"They took her leg first, and then finished her back here," he said catatonically, brushing her remains softly and removing the icy powders off of her bones.
The friends waited a moment for acceptance to sink in.
"What do you want to do?"
"Is there anything more grotesque than death?" Clifford sat beside him.
"Memory." Bree knelt, too.
"Vivid." Her husband joined her.
"Prayer won't help," said Bryson, then walked off to retrieve the femurs.
And Fay waited some more.
"We agreed to not let our past shackle us anymore," he finally bent a knee as well. "We promised ourselves to move forward. This is the other half of your story, the closure you have been looking for. Now we bury her, and we keep moving forward."
"Please? not here. I-I-" The stuttering returned. "I can s-see the red trail she left behind. It was here. Y-you'll see. The grass underneath is red, their roots remember. Those beasts, th-they, they. They tore the life out of her, and every fiber of her being terminated as they sank their fangs, and she shut down. Concussion, contusion, incision, avulsion, intrusion, revulsion, profusion, confusion, illusion, contortion, convulsion, exhaustion, despair, then dying. That's why sh-she looked away."
He picked up the skull but was shattered the moment he faced its front as if he saw her visage.
"You said you were going to climb on top of some mountains," Fay said to him. "Let's bury her there. On the summit."
"Would that make you feel better?" Bree asked gently.
Stutter nodded slowly.
"Because you don't want to be left here alone, do you?" Clifford patted on his shoulder.
"No." Stutter said firmly and lifted his gaze from the skull. "I don't want to be left alone."
"You won't. We will move forward together."
A long pause.
"What if she wants to find us? I mean, what if one day she decides to move on?" He caressed it.
"We will leave her a note." A voice said behind them. It was Bryson who had returned.
"Saying what?" Stutter turned to him.
"To find us in the world."
The dewy morning further decomposed the moving skeletons as they staggered toward an undefined destination. Seclusion, corrosion, repression, reversion, depression, impulsion, emersion, evasion, elusion, confession, compassion, redemption, salvation, then living.