Wood Smoke: Nature’s Rustic Scent

Rugged white fragments crash to the dirt, settling on the wood stacked below the cabin’s frosted window. Fuel for the, as it were, remaining supply of warmth since the control ran out.

Carmen extricates her hand from the back of the vomit-green couch and confronts the open living room. A circular floor covering spans between her, a corresponding chair, a stone fireplace, and oak racks showcasing antique cookbooks and a small wooden train.

Viola reappears from one of the two other rooms, bringing with her a sweet aroma that combines with the smell of burnt wood. Two cups, a hot pad, and a reusable basic needs bag are among the items that she is carrying in her arms. Even though she is so far away from society, the phone that she has tucked under her chin emits a bright light. This is, in a sense, vital labor.

"I discovered cocoa. It is peppermint, which is your best choice.

There is no way that snacks should ever taste like toothpaste; it is yours to keep. Carmen swallows the answer, sinking to the floor. "Great."

The ruby necklace that Viola wears is a cruel insult to the fires, and she bends the cast iron pot away from the flames. At the same time as she is filling the glasses, steam is rushing up and capturing her palm as it flows over the lip. She fumes a breath between her teeth.

Carmen grabs her container, clicking her trendy nail trim against the exquisite porcelain. "What kind of ninety-year-old ancient lady lives this distant out, has reinforcement cocoa but not a generator?"

"I think it's sweet." Viola shrugs. "Kinda reminds me of my gran, but less racist."

Carmen never met the woman who consented to pay a complete stranger to housesit. But when she informed Viola it was an awful concept to go alone, really to provide aid to a charming aged lady, Viola urged she join along. Carmen ought to have declined.

"Cheer up, she'll be back to take us down the mountain in the morning, and," Viola scavenges in the loot, at that time with a flourish reveals two packets of marshmallows. "Your choice of little colored or large?"

Carmen concentrates on the protuberance of pastels.

"Great choice! At that point, we can do s'mores too!"

Carmen's tummy whispers as she takes a thoughtful sip of chocolate. Minty magma sears the tip of her tongue. "Is there anything more substantial?"

Viola looks the pack open. "There are chocolate pretzels."

Carmen runs a hand over her face. Did the elderly woman have any teeth? With a weighted whisper, she recognizes them. For a moment, the noises, as it were, are those of sweets being spent and wind assaulting the small cabin.

Then a roll sounds out front, followed with a puncturing howl. A bit like an agitated engine.

Carmen scrambles for the sofa. She gazes into the eerie light of a frigid night, breath clouding the glass. But there's nothing in the carport. The sound shuts off.

In the span of a flash, the shadow from the base of one tree shoots out across the scope of white and into the next. A breath coils in Carmen's throat, her stomach twisting into terrible knots.

"Did you see that!" Carmen doesn't remove her eyes from the tree's base. "That shadow, it moved."

"Maybe it was a raccoon hopping between branches," Viola adds, a tremble to her voice.

It's no doubt chilly enough to force any regular animal to its burrow, even if raccoons really bounce like that, but Carmen motions.

Viola moves back to the fire, employing her mug-free hand to persuade another wood atop the blazes. "Ok, crap."

Carmen's eye flicks to her buddy. "What?"

"We're down to two logs." Viola changes the material of the tinderbox, and her brow droops. "Make that one and a modest bunch of sticks."

A shudder slithers down Carmen's spine; she might have sworn the box was full a little ago. "We may as well go to bed."

"Come on, it's as it were," there's a fast push, and light explodes from Viola's phone, "like seven, and we do not require control to have fun."

Carmen's confront scrunches. "Doing what, freezing?"

Viola throws her gaze aloft. "There's more wood right exterior the door."

Carmen's chest chokes; she glances back out the window.

Viola's lips bend. "Need to..."

A piercing scratching shreds the fabric, burrowing into Carmen’s brain. She clamps her hands to her ears, in spite of the fact that the sound is gone. Time expands out into an amorphous object that may be a minute or an endlessness. At a few moments Carmen’s lungs start to operate again.

Viola pulls on her coat, faux-fur tufted around its hood and sleeves.

“You aren’t truly going out there!”

“We require more kindling, and I’d like to know what that was. But we’ll never figure out cringing in here,” Viola says, a slight tremor behind her unforgiving words. “If a tree fell on the roof, we may require doing something to keep snow from getting in.”

That didn’t sound like a tree falling, but having never heard one, Carmen’s disagreement flips and passes on her tongue.

Viola flips her phone light on. “Be back in a minute.”

There’s a wave of cold, upending each follicle on Carmen’s being, as the doorway clamps closed behind Viola. Snow crunches, wind weeping between the trees, in the hollows of the house. At that moment, nothing, not so much as the whisper of a falling leaf. An odor, as rot soaks in gingerbread, oozes through the cabin’s seams.

Dark rain stains the snow, producing amazing dark crimson areas. Not rain, blood. Sound returns. With a moist plink, a maimed hand falls on the wood heap. Carmen grabs her lips, withdrawing from the window.

“Viola,” the word came out a choking query.

The entrance shakes. Carmen glances around, pounding roaring in her ears. Her eye lands on the poker, and she takes it up. The handle turns. She fixes her grasp. Smokey claws surround the entrance outline. They become denser, assisting, becoming wrinkled human fingers.

The doorway opens wide, and in strolls a stooping woman with gray wisps of hair. Carmen’s shoulders drop, blood returning to her fingertips. The elderly woman tilts her head toward Carmen and grins, revealing spiky teeth oozing blood. And lying on her age-spotted breast is Viola’s ruby pendant.

Carmen sucks in a breath. Smoke coils from the aged lady, her body beginning to be less robust. The poker rattles in Carmen’s hands. Sound squints out, and gloom covers her.