My Deliverance

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. I am standing in the woods. I can see the candle in the distance, glinting, calling to me. Who lit a candle in the old abandoned cabin? Nearby I hear the soft crackle of leaves. I am alone. Is there someone else in the dark with me? My pulse quickens and my breath catches in my throat. But then I realize, it’s me. I am crushing the leaves. I am walking toward the candle in the window. I am drawn to the candle. Suddenly I am face to face with the window. I press my forehead to the glass. The flame dances and flickers. It is trying to tell me something, but I don’t understand.

I look around. Darkness. How long have I been standing here? I am in the woods. Alone. I am cold. I am so cold I can’t remember why I am here. Someone is watching me. The night sounds become deafening. It is as if the creatures of the night are inside my head and someone has turned the volume all the way up. I can’t think with the cold and the noise. I feel someone’s eyes on me. I am so cold. I am so cold there must be tiny ice crystals forming in my blood and slicing me open from the inside. I look at the soft flesh of my arms. Darkness is spreading. There is a cabin with a window. I try to peer in, but I can’t see anything through the dirty glass. Suddenly, I am standing in front of a wooden door. How did I get here? I look down. There is a hand on the doorknob. It is my hand. I am turning the doorknob. It is like I am watching a character in a movie. I go in.

I have been here before. A candle flickers on the window sill. Someone has set the table. They have been waiting a long time, everything is coated in dust. I pick up a plate from the table. This is my mother’s china. Green vines with delicate purple flowers wrap around the edge of the plate. I set the plate back down. I hate this china.

I look around the room.

“Mom?”

“Coming sweetheart, I’m in the bedroom getting dressed. Can you get your brothers ready for dinner?”

I hear giggling, I turn my head and see my brothers playing by the fireplace with wooden cars. Someone has lit a fire. I can feel my body, cold from the chilly autumn air, warming by the heat of the fire. I take off my coat and hang it on the coat rack next to the others. I don’t remember wearing a coat.

My mom walks into the room and she is radiant. She has on red lipstick and her hair is pulled up, away from her face, showing her soft jawline and slender neck. She looks at me with love in her large, open eyes. The boys are standing at the sink washing their hands. Their backs are to me and their curls, which need trimmed, are wrapping around their ears. I hear the door open behind me.

I remember now.

The candle was a signal. The candle was my freedom.

I can hear him talking behind me, but I can’t make out the words. I feel the cold blade of the knife on the small of my back. I had placed it there earlier in preparation for this moment. The same way I lit the candle to signal it was time. I summoned you, my savior, with the light of that candle. We slit their throats one by one and wait for the blood to stop. I am now free. I will rise like a phoenix out of this destruction. I will break the chains of my past and start over. Time is not a flat circle. I am reborn.

We are sitting at the table. There is a roast chicken with berry sauce. This was my father’s last meal. We are eating the chicken and sauce. But we aren’t? We are sitting there waiting to eat, the food untouched. We are eating again. I look at the food and it is covered in dull grey mold, I keep eating. My head is starting to spin. I am sweating. The room is stretching. I feel faint. Everything is clicking into place like one of those picture puzzles where you have to shift the tiles to see the big picture. Her berry-stained lips – click – her dilated pupils – click – her dewy skin – click – his last meal – click. Now I see it. This was her siren song, her modus operandi. I look down at that belladonna china that I hate. Did I know?

I am in agony on the floor. I feel as though I am being eviscerated. The poison is pouring out of me, but not fast enough. I am writhing in a pool of my own excrement. Then, I see you and our eyes connect, and I know that I knew. I know that I did this to you. And I know that you know too. Your sad trusting eyes. You killed for me and then I let you die. I let you eat the poison food my mother prepared for my family. They never got the chance to taste it. How sad and poetic. But we feasted and now we will die together like it was always meant to be. You were my savior and now you will die for my sins. I feel fire in my veins, explosions are going off in my head. Everything is turning black and I can feel there is no bottom to this unendurable pain. Lifetimes pass as our bodies undergo unimaginable torment, but eventually we are still and you slip away. But I am still here, watching.

I watch as the candle flame goes out. I watch as our bodies decompose into a pile of bones and the green vines from the china creep over my body, strangling me, trapping me, tethering me to this cabin forever. The purple blossoms and small berries envelope my body, as if they know I now belong to them.

I lit that candle as a beacon of hope, my deliverance. But now I am shackled here. And the flame keeps calling me back. I killed my family. And I will do it again and again for eternity. This is my purgatory. In my desperate attempt to escape I trapped myself here, with the people I’d murdered and my murderer. For forever I will live in the Hell of my own design. I am a phoenix.

There is a girl wandering in the woods after dark. She sees a candle burning in the window of a cabin that has been abandoned for years. Who lit a candle in the old abandoned cabin?