Heart of the Woods

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. Humans do silly things sometimes; they are so scared of the dark that they often don't think of the things they invite with something as simple as a flickering candle. They may have made it to the morning with their organs intact if they had just broken in and stayed quiet. The mental giant we are talking about was on the lam after accidentally killing the clerk in a failed liquor store robbery. The good choices roll to hiding in our woods in an abandoned cabin. Winner.

Lighting a candle was equivalent to ringing the dinner bell for the real owners of these woods, predators with great eyes. Usually, humans are hardly worth the trouble to eat; they take terrible care of themselves and barely have enough muscle to make a complete meal. So we typically leave them alone. But genuinely evil ones, though, taste fabulous, especially their hearts. As if a life of violence and desperation marinates them from the inside out. Occasionally, a hiker here or there is not a total loss; most people are horrible to someone in their life. And on the rare chance you happen upon a sincerely decent soul, it is not like you can put the insides back in them once you are a couple of bites in. Don't want to be wasteful.

This idiot's name in the human world was Nathan Miller, a wholly unspectacular child of the human god. His only true love in life was artificial happiness gleaned from frequent drug use, and what's not to like? They give so much and take so little. He was not destined to amount to much before giving up the little he had. These elegant elections lead to liquor stores, folly, and an unintentional murder. I think what probably kicked him up to a new flavor profile was that he genuinely blamed the clerk for being shot by him. How inconsiderate to postulate that the clerk wanted to die and "deserved" it for making the process more challenging than it had to be. The tasteless tend to be tasty.

Young Mr. Miller had many chances and many people who loved him, good parents, in a good home, but he pushed everyone away to make room for indulgence and apathy. It was a fitting end for someone whose mindful mantra was "everyone was out to get them." A meal for monsters in hungry woods.

"Monsters" is another farcical human concept considering the source. We were around when they were still monkeys playing with their waste and will be here long after they have drowned themselves in it in a much more civilized way. I wonder if they blame this one on wolves or a bear; that depends on what's left to find.

So back to the nieve human in the forgotten cabin in our sacred woods. Maybe it is a remnant monkey thing to be so scared of the dark, to fear what's in the shadows. Humans are terrible to each other and often do that face to face with the lights on.

One of the perks of his misguided candlelight is he will be able to see us coming; fear also improves the meat making it almost electric like the air after a thunderstorm. Hopefully, he puts up a fight that always helps build an appetite.

Maybe he will still have his gun and the false hope of that. We have bodies, kind of, but bullets don't do much. Most of the holes he manages to punch with his peashooter will close up before we finish chewing on his intercostals. Our design will outlast the hairless simians; I miss swords; they had more panache. I wish they would come back in fashion. Still utterly useless but shiny. Well, better start scratching at the door and toying with this genius. He will probably blame it on the wind; at first, they always do.