By B.B. Garin
The children were lost in the woods. Not a cellphone signal to be had. Their father had left them. Or they had left him. It was difficult to say. Difficult to remember which direction they were meant to be going and where moss was supposed to grow on trees. They were not Scouts. They’d sneered at friends with neat rows of merit badges. A lighter and a dab of gasoline did just fine for starting fires. Why fiddle around with sticks? Who pitched a tent when they had a house with bedrooms and beds and a brand-new TV?
So, the children slapped and kicked their way through the trees. They were hungry. They’d eaten both bags of chips and a Milky Way bar. It had only turned their stomachs into empty caves and they could feel the blackness pooling up their throats demanding to be fed.
“There’s nothing here,” said one.
“There’s trees,” said the other. “Lots of fucking trees. And dirt. And bugs. And—”
“Shut up! Shut up!”
The first one’s chest rose hard and fast. The second one let out a long, loose sigh. Sun leaked down through the leaves, making them sweat and itch. Their clothes were not right for the woods, soft and clinging, prone to snagging; flabby sneakers that rubbed their feet raw.
Occasionally, one would gouge the ground with a fallen branch, stirring the leaves to see what bugs might scurry away. The other broke a fresh limb for the satisfying crack that momentarily stilled the air. They dragged the branches for a while, an unintelligible Morse Code trailing behind—dashes and dots for only the birds to see.
“Should we stop?”
“What for?”
“There’s nowhere to go.”
“This is nowhere.”
There was nothing to do but walk. The thought of sitting in the woods was so stone-cold boring it made them laugh.
“Commune with nature he said!”
“I can’t believe he actually said that.”
“Fucking crazy.”
“Like the trees are going to start singing Kumbaya.”
The children wandered on, leaving scuffs in the undergrowth, a few potato chip crumbs, and a Poland Springs bottle behind.
“Do you think we’ll be on TV?”
“Nah. He’ll be on TV. Crying. Saying he doesn’t know what happened.”
“Yeah. You’re probably right. Praying for us to come home safe and all that.”
“Exactly.”
They nodded at each other, heads bobbing with confidence. But their eyes didn’t quite meet and their smiles weren’t so firm.
The sun moved. Just like that. One minute it was up there, burning down their necks, the next it was gone, leaving a thin pink band that barely filtered through the trees. It wasn’t fair, the children thought, to just disappear like that without any warning. To change the rules, make it hard to see and turn the air prickly cool.
“Mom wouldn’t have put up with this shit.”
“Yeah. She wouldn’t be caught dead communing with nature.”
The first one started to nod, stopped, grimaced.
“That’s not funny.”
And on they went. The urge to snap twigs or kick at pinecones sapped away. They curled their arms against their empty stomachs and hunched their shoulders into boney mountain peaks. When they stopped to catch their lagging breath, they flinched; wondering if the crinkling noise in the distance was footsteps or squirrels or just the sound of vanishing light.
“Turn on your phone’s flashlight.”
“Turn on yours.”
“We ought to save one.”
For what? But neither said the words, and soon a small circle of light picked out the dirty tips of their shoes. It bobbed ahead, doing little to stop the stumbles and grumbles of the children as the woods opened for another night’s business and the blood in their veins grew heavy and tired.
Sleep, whispered their aching legs.
Sleep, whispered the spreading shadows.
Sleep, whispered memories that were almost dreams.
The children were lost in the woods. There was no path to be found. No satellite in the sky to guide their way. And the things they had lost lay far behind, to be found or buried. It was too soon to say.
“He’ll be looking for us, though. Won’t he?”
“Of course, he’s looking. What else would he be doing?”
A few more steps, each glancing behind, hoping the other wouldn’t see.
“Mom would’ve found us by now.”
“She always knew everything.”
“But he’s coming?”
“Of course, he’s coming.”
“Right. What else would he do?”
B. B. Garin is a writer living in Buffalo, NY. Her work has appeared in Hawai’i Pacific Review, Westchester Review, Luna Station Quarterly, and more. She is currently a guest editor for The Masters Review and CRAFT Literary. She earned a B.F.A. in Writing, Literature, and Publishing from Emerson College, and continues to improve her craft at GrubStreet Writing Center, where she has developed several short fiction pieces, as well as two novels. Connect with her @b.b.garin or bbgarin.wordpress.com.
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