The Last Birthday

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. In that moment, the forest seemed to swallow Sasha whole. She stopped running.

The cabin’s walls were pale yellow, the color of aged paper. The yard was filled with odd disfigured shapes that looked like warped graves. On closer look, they were actually hundreds of small weather-worn crosses, made of rotten wood, scarlet-rusted metal, or pockmarked concrete. And tonight, in the far left window of the second floor, there was a light.

The light burned in the window of the second bedroom. Sasha knew this because she had once lived in the cabin, in that very room, for the first nine years of her life.

The rundown building had once been a caretaker’s cottage on the property of The Convent of Eternal Mercy. But that was long before Sasha and her mother’s time, Sister Genevieve said. Sister Genevieve was an older nun who lived in the convent. The other nuns took care of her once the beginnings of dementia overcame her. It was Sister Genevieve who had convinced the convent to allow a struggling single mother, Tallulah, and her little girl, Sasha, to live in the neglected cabin. Since Sasha was an infant, Sister Genevieve had adored her.

Despite the sister’s ailing health, she would make sure to see the mother and daughter often, bringing little gifts of citrus or soap with each visit. Because Tallulah worked all day and sometimes into the night, Sister Genevieve would often let the daughter accompany her to the convent. Sasha had many happy memories of kneeling in the dirt of the garden, eating mint leaves and berries and helping the sister pick tomatoes and peppers from the bright green bushes. Sister Genevieve was the only other family Sasha had besides her mother.

That was an age ago, back when her mother's disappearance was raw and still seemed reversible. Sasha had been running past the old cabin almost every evening for the seven years since her mother had vanished. Tonight was Sasha's sixteenth birthday.

And tonight, from the window of the second bedroom, a light was screaming—screaming through the shadows, from Sasha’s past into her present, each flicker of the flame wrapping its fingers tighter around her blistering heart.

The sycamore branches scraped miserably against the tin roof of the cabin, a spine-tingling sound that she swore wailed the name—

Sasha!

She froze. The candle had moved in the shadow of the room. It was a couple of inches higher now.

She realized with a chill that someone was holding the candle.

She couldn’t see them, but could they see her? Sasha felt they could see everything.

She should go home...well, to the foster home. She should turn around, back away from the person looking down on her from the window and never come back.

Without knowing how or why, only knowing that she had no will in the matter, Sasha stepped off the smooth earth of the path. The light was louder now—a beacon she had no choice but to follow to its source. Her feet crashed into the thick dry leaves of the abandoned yard. They seemed to be trying to warn her.

Then the candle shifted, moving back and illuminating the face.

Sasha let out a silent scream and began sprinting towards the cabin. She ran until the cabin swallowed the sable sky. The pale gold vision shivered as she ran to it. She halted abruptly at the rotten teal porch steps and craned her neck upwards. The candle was gone. But the light, and the face it ignited, blazed in her eyes.

Mama.

Sasha hadn’t seen her mother since her disappearance, seven years ago—

It was Sasha’s ninth birthday, and she was very excited about Sister Genevieve’s visit, since her mother worked that day and they wouldn’t be able to have cake and presents until later that night. But Sister Genevieve didn’t show up at noon, as she had promised. After an hour had passed, Sasha followed the little trail to the convent, as she had so many times, and knocked on the nun’s door. There was no answer, so Sasha pushed the heavy door open.

Sister Genevieve was slouched over her favorite torn armchair, breathlessly still. Her eyes were frozen open. She was clutching her rosary, and her habit was oddly twisted, as if someone had tried to tear it off her.

Sasha gazed silently for a long moment. She felt an overwhelming need to fix the habit that the nun normally positioned with such immaculate care. So, in her bare feet, Sasha slowly inched across the wood floors of the cavernous bedroom. She paused a foot in front of Sister Genevieve. Sasha’s hand moved out, as if through water. She reached for the crooked habit.

Suddenly something squirmed in the nun’s left eye. Sasha fell backwards. The black spot leapt out. It was a fly. It faded into the darkness of the wooden rafters. Sasha was so terrified she could only run. She dashed down the hollow courtyard of the convent, through the biting brush and vicious thorns of the forest, back into the desolate cabin, and collapsed tearfully onto her bed.

Sasha waited under her covers for hours for her mother to return. She waited while the warm orange of noon became the red of late afternoon—until the deep blue of dusk engulfed the somber cabin. Finally, she heard her mother’s weary but enthusiastic call from the kitchen.

Sasha could still remember the relief that burst in her as she rushed out of her bedroom. She could still remember how she had stopped short at the kitchen table. On it, there was a small cheap giraffe toy that looked like it had been snagged from an arcade claw machine. There was also a white cake—vanilla, not chocolate—with no candles in it.

Sasha couldn’t help it. The weight of everything fell on her like a torrent of water. She began to cry helplessly.

“You’re the worst mother in the world!” Sasha sobbed. “You’re never here!”

Tallulah’s face contorted in pain, then rage. She exploded, snatching Sasha by the collar of her t-shirt—

“I’m never here? I work myself to the bone for you!” Tallulah screamed, shaking her daughter with every other word. “Why can’t you appreciate all I do for you?”

At that, Sasha only cried harder, and so Tallulah threw her back and stormed over to the wall. She snatched the big unlit wax candle out of the sconce that hung over the table, and she slammed it down into the middle of the birthday cake. Only a stub stuck out from the split icing. Sasha fell silent, staring numbly at the ruined cake.

Tallulah grabbed a box of matches off the kitchen counter. Then she lifted the cake up, trembling with rage.

Sasha opened her mouth. She tried to tell her mother about Sister Genevieve—but the image of the nun’s frozen body, the fly jumping from her eye, flashed into mind. Sasha found no words could come.

“Come with me, Sasha!” Tallulah cried.

Wordlessly, Sasha followed her mother—who still held the cake—up the groaning wooden stairs. Tallulah stopped in front of Sasha’s bedroom door, which was ajar. Her mother shoved it the rest of the way open with her foot. Inside, the small room was lonelier and more barren than it had ever been.

“You can spend the rest of your birthday in your bedroom,” Tallulah snapped. "You will wait there until you learn to be grateful for the things you have.”

With that, Tallulah pushed the cake with the fat unlit candle into Sasha’s arms. Sasha stumbled backward, blind with tears, into the dark room. Tallulah threw the box of matches onto the floor and slammed the door behind her. Sasha heard the lock click.

Slowly, Sasha wandered to her bed and carefully placed the cake down. Then she bent and picked up the box of matches. She lit the first one, setting the candle burning.

All night Sasha sat crisscrossed on her bed, by the window, until her toes went numb. She sat staring at the white-iced cake sitting on the faded daisy comforter in front of her. She stared at the stab wound the candle had made in the center. She imagined the cake bleeding, becoming redder and darker, until a deep crimson stain burned all the way through her comforter and sheets and into the heart of her mattress.

Now, no longer a child, no longer too afraid to act, Sasha carefully mounted the rotten planks of steps leading up to the obscure, shadowy porch of the cabin. Sweat burned icy cold on her neck.

The rust-red door glided open on silent hinges.

Sister Genevieve grinned down at her. But she wasn’t the Sister Genevieve that Sasha remembered. Her habit was missing, though she wore her usual black robe. Her hair hung out, blanched and knotted. Her once wide eyes were dense and gluey.

But something was much more unsettling. Her face kept twitching, spasming. The wrinkles around her mouth and eyes seized and contracted so rapidly it was almost nauseating. But the most disturbing thing—the most unbelievable thing—was that Sister Genevieve was aging rapidly. It was as if Sasha was watching a time lapse video. The nun seemed to be passing through a whole lifetime in mere seconds, repeating the cycle over and over again until Sasha felt dizzy.

For a moment she was too disoriented to be afraid.

Do you need…to sit down little girl? Sister Genevieve uttered onerously, as if to keep her voice from shattering into pieces.

Sasha’s head cleared. She was no longer a child.

“I’m sixt—“ she started to assert.

But as her teeth hissed around the sibilance of the word, she glanced down and felt a shock of terror.

Her hands were not her own. At least, she had not known these hands for many years. Sasha suddenly had the hands of a young child.

“Where is my mama?” She demanded, her voice trembling fiercely.

To her horror, the words whined out in a child’s tone. It was her voice, but from when she was much younger. Seven years younger.

“She is inside,” smiled Sister Genevieve. Her face twitched more than ever. She seemed unbothered by Sasha’s transformation. In fact, she seemed to be growing stronger, more real and confidant than before. Her voice was louder, too, echoing across the porch like an old church bell.

“Would you like to see your mama?”

Sasha nodded violently, speechless. Her tongue felt like a vast stone, the kind too big for a child to pick up.

Sister Genevieve turned around and shifted into the house. As Sasha moved towards the threshold, she could feel her t-shirt touching her forearms, a cold sweat running down her back. Her running shorts were sliding down her waist.

Stepping through the threshold, Sasha felt extremely warm—like stepping from the shade into the sun. The feeling passed as soon as she entered the shadows of the musty home.

The doors had not been opened in years. The air was so stale, so concentrated, that it felt more like slime than oxygen. Sasha could see grey shapes all around her, floating like deep-sea creatures in the milky dark.

Where is my mama? Sasha tried to yell out into the gloom. Nothing came out. But somehow, Sister Genevieve heard her unspoken question—

“She’s right here, dear,” came Sister Genevieve’s voice from the other side of the room.

WHERE? Sasha mouthed, desperately willing her voice to work. She was sick with fear.

“Here,” whispered a foul-smelling voice into her ear—and two monstrously strong hands seized her by the collar of her t-shirt. Sasha recoiled, crying out into the death-smell of the cabin.

You ARE your mother! hissed the demonic voice of Sister Genevieve, right into her mind, it seemed. You are your child!

And all of sudden Sasha remembered everything that had happened to her after Tallulah had locked her in that room. And a whole lifetime—a birth and a death—brutally flooded into her.

In the first month locked in that room, Sasha regressed to an infant. She spent every moment in the small bedroom, not able to leave if she wanted to, not remembering the world outside her existed. She ate one slice of cake.

The second month, Sasha gazed out the window, still hopeful. Her imagination ran wild, painting the dismal yard and the sinister forest beyond in exciting adventures. She imagined she saw herself—older and stronger—running down the crooked path that ran parallel to the front of the cabin, to freedom. She ate a second slice of cake.

Sasha developed the strength to venture out of bed the third month. It was difficult to stand, but she managed to stagger across the cold pine floor. She repeatedly ran her hands over the walls until her fingers were stuck with splinters. She ate a third piece of cake.

The fourth month, Sasha made games out of her boredom. Her favorite one was testing how far she could jump across the room. She would sometimes stumble and skin her knee, but she never let herself cry. One day she made it all the way from the bed to the door. After this, she stopped playing the game. Half the cake was gone by the end of this month.

By the fifth month, Sasha had counted every floorboard and every wood panel on the walls. She spent the days hunched morosely on the windowsill, staring out, sometimes sitting so long it made her bottom sore. She spent the nights haunted by gruesome dreams. Starvation made her nightlife surprisingly vivid—rainbow streamers choked her and jet-black insects burrowed into her skin. She woke up panting one night to find she had eaten a fifth piece of cake.

Starting the sixth month, Sasha began lighting the candle each night. She would hold the half-eaten birthday cake in her lap and gaze out the window, hoping someone would pass by and see the light glowing. Used matches littered the windowsill, until every last match was gone, save one. One time she thought she saw her mother racing down the path, but it was only a deer. Though a human soul never passed by, the night was surprisingly loud. An unexpected rainstorm hammered upon the tin roof. A bird flew into the window. But no one ever came for her. She ate a sixth piece of cake.

The seventh month was bleaker than the ones before. The window had become so dirty with the accumulated dust of the room that Sasha could no longer see through it. It was as if she was peering through a cloud. Sasha soon forgot the window existed altogether, so dark was the room—and no longer able to see the silver glint of the doorknob, she forgot the door existed too. Fumbling through the blackness, Sasha felt the gooeyness of icing, and she ate a seventh piece of cake.

The eighth month, Sasha realized she would never leave the room. And so, she fought not to eat the last piece of cake, for as long as she could. She shoved it under the bed, willing herself not to think about it. She counted every spiral of grain in the wood. She thought everything she could remember about her mother: her warm black hair, her talent for playing Checkers. But all she could think about was the cake. Finally, the last night of the eighth month, Sasha devoured the last piece of cake. She cried the whole time, and after, she lay in bed, choked with shame, clutching the single match in her palm.

The ninth and final month possessed an eerie kinship to the first month. Except this time, when Sasha would lie on the bed and squint into the darkness, it was not with wonder or longing, but with the knowledge that escape was not possible. Her room was now her coffin. It was the last night of the month, and Sasha’s stomach moaned hopelessly. She reached over, feeling for the match box. With tears in her eyes, she picked up the last match, rubbed it aggressively against the side of the box, and lit it.

The room flamed to life around her. She saw the muddy window. She saw the cake-stained comforter. She saw a silver knob gleaming from the far wall. Suddenly, Sasha remembered what a door was.

With a thrill of hope, she lifted herself off the bed. Her joints shot up with needles. Ignoring the pain of movement, she hobbled towards the door. Her aching fingers closed around the doorknob. With all of her strength, Sasha threw it open.

What Sasha saw outside knocked the breath out of her, sent her screaming, clutching her face, collapsing.

Sister Genevieve stood solemnly outside the door. She wore her habit, askew. Her eyes were threatening, accusatory. One pupil was large and black, as if a fly were trapped inside it. But in her arms was the greatest horror.

The nun held the emaciated body of a little girl. A girl that could be no more than nine years old. That would never be more than nine years old.

“Now do you realize how she suffered?” The nun asked. “Now do you see your daughter?”

The little girl’s eyes were beetle-black, inhumanly wide and wet with perpetual tears.

“I’m sorry,” Tallulah whispered, “I’m so sorry.”

“She would be sixteen today,” Sister Genevieve murmured, reverently running her hand over the little girls’ cheek, smearing the white icing that coated the girl’s mouth across her face.

“I remember,” Tallulah said, her eyes shiny with tears.

“Now you know why you can never leave,” the nun continued in her cold tone. “Go back into your room.”

“Please,” Tallulah sobbed, almost choking. She stretched out her hands. “Let me hold her!”

Sister Genevieve ignored the gesture, continuing to hold the limp child in her arms, continuing to rub the cake icing further across the girl’s face, onto her nose, into her eyelashes.

“Say Happy Birthday, Sasha,” Sister Genevieve prompted, as if she were talking to a child.

Talullah gasped as tears ran down her face.

“Say it.” There was danger lacing the nun's voice.

“H-h-happy birth-birthday, baby,” Tallulah stammered.

“Now, go back to your room!” ordered Sister Genevieve.

Tallulah shook her head. She wouldn’t turn around. She couldn’t bear to see the room she had left, the little wooden box that was so much hotter and oppressive than anything she had ever known.

“Now Tallulah,” Sister Genevieve admonished in a singsong voice, "You know what happens after the ninth month is over. It's time to begin again.”

Tallulah shook her head, aggressively now. She wouldn’t go back in there. Not again. Not this time.

“I can't. Please.”

Tallulah had spent her own sixteenth birthday in the delivery room of The Convent of the Eternal Mercy. She remembered Sister Genevieve standing above her with gentle eyes, holding her hand tightly as she howled. Tallulah hadn't wanted the baby. Sasha’s father was an abuser, a boy who attended church with his mother by day and left bruises on his girlfriend’s legs and back by night. The only good that came of the baby was that it triggered his disappearance from her life. She had been on the cross-country team. She had won a scholarship to the University. All her dreams evaporated with the birth. She became a maid at a local motel, working until there was nothing left of her. She lost everything. She never had her sweet sixteen.

“Please,” Tallulah tried, one last time. “Give me one more chance.”

Sister Genevieve’s face flashed, from child to mother to old woman, to something too old and evil to be human.

"Your punishment isn't over, my dear. Now think about your child, and go back to your room.”

The nun advanced on her, still cradling the little girl with the face ghostly with frosting.

“Don’t make me go back,” Tallulah insisted, backing up against the wooden structure behind her. “Anything but that, anything…“

The shriek of a rusted metal hinge sounded, and suddenly Tallulah could smell the putrid-sweetness of shame and fright and eternal rot. Sister Genevieve and the dead girl filled all the space around her, and Tallulah shrieked as she fell back into the oppressive box.

“You should have thought of that when Sasha was still alive,” said Sister Genevieve, malevolently. “Rest well, little girl. You have a long nine months ahead of you."

“NO! GOD PLEASE NO NO PLEEEEAASSE—”

And the casket closed over the whole world, leaving the skin-colored planks a few inches in front of her gaze, leaving the wood splinters digging into her back, leaving the hot odor of her own breath stinging her eyes, forever.