In this episode, we talk about fighting Resistance, coming back to the work, and sharing what we’ve written. Then, we’ll read our stories based on the prompt: an abandoned couch in the woods.
Rebecca’s Story:
Everyone wondered about the couch in the woods. How it got there. How long it had been there and how long before it would decompose. Who had taken a lover there for a private moment, even though it was in the middle of a forest that most people had hiked to at some point in their lives. The town was only so big after all.
But it didn’t rot. And no one could articulate exactly when it had arrived.
Tommy said his grandmother had told his mother about playing on it as a child. Yet it still looked as if it had been dropped off—expertly delivered by two sets of careful hands—just days ago.
It was as if a shield protected the intricately decorated purple fabric such that everything and nothing could touch her all at once. No mysterious stains. No animal poo. Not even the fallen leaves were ever found in her cushions.
Some said she was saving herself for the perfect moment. As if she expected to serve a specific purpose before she’d leave, either by letting the elements take her or by moving on.
More than once someone wanted to bring her home. To give her a place to live and a family who loved her. But, before they got the chance, they would mysteriously forget about the couch, never to visit the woods again and to think everyone who mentioned her only spoke in odd metaphors.
Everyone in town knew—at least those who hadn’t tried to claim her as their own—that the couch was there. That she provided refuge. Safety. Some treated her as a wishing well. But few ever really took her up on the offer.
Shirley had gone to the couch at five to ask for a pony—it never came. Philip always visited when he needed to figure out what to say to the particular boy he liked—it sometimes worked. But it was Mabel who visited more out of need than anyone else. And she never asked for ponies, never asked for anything really. Just went to spill her secrets, without realizing just how valuable they were.
Not that she liked spending her nights in the middle of a forest, exactly. There was no telling what it would do to her appearance the next day and high schoolers were unforgiving. But, it was either that, or stay in the house with her mother’s unpredictable boyfriend, Chris.
She’d take her chances.
And, after the fifth time staying overnight on a couch in the middle of the woods a half mile from her home, she learned what to pack. Even had a system. Almost looked forward to it.
“Hello couch. I hear it’s going to be a cold night.” Though it was fall, winter had its way of creeping up on you. She wouldn’t be able to stay on the couch much longer.
Not that it would do her anything to worry now. Instead, she pulled a blanket from her bag as if she were offering it up, but wrapped herself in it and grabbed a book and a tiny flashlight.
The package of her protein bar crinkled like the falling leaves, but the noise blended in with all the other sounds. She carefully collected the garbage to throw away when she got home the next day.
It took her all of thirty minutes to fall asleep, the forest acting as a white noise machine. But, the crunch of leaves and snapping of twigs that couldn’t have come from animals, woke her up an hour later.
“I know you’re out here.” And Mabel instantly knew it was Chris.
How had he known she wasn’t at her friends? She’d been so careful with the note. Had made Krissy promise to lie for her. Promises that big weren’t easily broken.
Mabel’s heartbeat filled her ears and she tasted iron before realizing she’d chewed her cheek raw. A flashlight blinded her before she had the chance to decide what to do. The forest grew scary to her in the pitch black, something she never thought she’d feel. Time slowed.
Chris stumbled, but got right back up. He was so close Mabel could smell the booze mixed with sweat. She thought about calling out even knowing it would be hopeless.
She thought back to her biology classes. The idea of fight of flight clung to her, offered her an explanation for the complete lack of control she now had over her limbs. At least she could use it as an excuse later, she told herself.
Chris screamed. He was coming straight toward her, arms outstretched, but when he touched the couch, something in him changed. His expression moved from anger to confusion.
Still uncontrollably stuck wrapped up in the blanket, Mabel could only watch as he turned, dropped the flashlight, and started walking away from her.
It took another three hours for her to calm down enough to fall back asleep.
When she woke up, something told her to go home, to make sure her mother was alright. So she did.
As teenagers do, she let the door slam when she walked into the kitchen. Her mother was cleaning, of all things, something Mabel couldn’t remember her doing in years.
“Mom? Where’s Chris?” She didn’t want to ask, expecting him to be right behind her, ears ringing from being talked about.
Her mother went on wiping the counter, but paused at the question. “Who?”
“Chris.”
“Who’s Chris? Oh, Mabel, were you making up stories in your head again?” Her mother looked at her half impressed and half pitying, like she was trying to understand how her daughter’s mind worked.
And, not for the first time, Mabel wondered if she had made it all up. The way Chris made her feel. Whether or not he even existed. Spending the night on the couch in the woods. “Never mind. I’ll be back.”
Her mother said nothing as Mabel ran out the door and back to the woods. And, like she’d known in her gut, had felt the moment her mother asked the question, the couch was gone. Not a pile of rotted wood, but disappeared. Somehow moved on without a single trace. Leaving behind only vague memories in everyone but Mabel.
Katelyn’s Story:
Atraxi couldn’t stand the sight of human blood. Not on her hands. Not mixed into the dirt. Not pouring out of their fragile skin. Everything about it made her stomach lurch.
She preferred the simplistic familiarity of the midnight ink that ran through her own veins. Humans bled with such drama. Such desperate bravado as it dripped from the crystalline arrowheads of the goblin tribes. It made a spectacle of death, one that stained the earth red with a petty refusal to be forgotten.
It painted her dreams, made a canvas of the inside of her eyelids. A spiteful masterwork of resentment.
All around her, the forest breathed as that damned blood dried into the fabric of her uniform. It was still slick on her knuckles and palms, no time spared to clean them with her arrow held at the ready.
Find them. Kill them. Orders were simple.
Creeping across the forest floor, stealth was Atraxi’s native tongue. She moved through the thick maze of trees, her footsteps nothing but small gasps upon every loose leaf and broken branch. Around her, the night bent to her will as she listened, watched, smelled.
No survivors. No mercy. Simple.
There was still a phantom hint of smoke lingering in the night air. The human refugee camp would be nothing but ash and discarded bones by morning, though the dying screams would live inside the wind for years.
It was never enough to just let it burn. Goblin warfare was only satisfied with slaughter.
Those who had survived the initial attack fled through the cornfields and into the mountains, hunted down by Atraxi’s brother and his troop of killers. It was unlikely any of the humans were foolish enough to seek refuge in the forest, but she’d been sent into the trees make sure.
There was someone out there; she could smell the tangy iron between the branches. A heartbeat raced across the still night.
The trees parted for Atraxi at her will, stretching the dormant power that prickled just beneath her skin. The forest was an old wench, offering no clear path through any of the overgrown entanglement of skeletal wood. It made the footprints so easy to follow it was barely a hunt at all. Merely an unfortunate game of hide and seek.
She found the girl in a small clearing, bent over upon an old couch, so out of place amidst the mess of the forest. Her long black hair fell in strings over her face as she held her hands over her mouth. There were shallow cuts across her cheeks from running through the rogue branches. A swollen, severely pregnant belly protruded from the ashen cloth of an ill-fitted dress.
Atraxi raised her arrow just as the girl raised her eyes to the huntress before her.
Atraxi pictured her own face—leathery, scaled, and the color of dried leaves—in the foggy mirror of her small chamber back in the goblin caves. Her reflection was made of human nightmares—everything countering any idea of beauty. Even soaked in sweat and dripping that hideous red, Atraxi knew this girl was lovely.
She had not known of her own ugliness until she had seen a human for the first time, and though her pointed ears gave her the hearing of a bat and her hooked nose could pick up scents for miles, she’d allowed herself to envy the soft freckles and bright eyes of the first girl she’d killed.
Keep your hand steady, her father told her, aim for the heart, just like I showed you.
It was part of her training, just as it was for every other goblin child born in time to wield a bow for the revolution. Their tribes had clawed their way out from a life of darkness beneath the earth, and humans were the only thing standing in their way when they finally emerged into the light.
Atraxi would never forget the look on the girl’s face when she aimed her arrow. She’d been older, eye level with Atraxi when brought to her knees. Terror warred with disbelief and gave way to denial.
Atraxi had always been small, delicate compared to the boys she fought with. Surely she did not have it in her to slay something so fair.
That girl’s blood fell from her in a single river down her chest, the color so shocking it called up the contents of Atraxi’s stomach as she heaved into the dirt. The girl had never truly believed Atraxi would kill her, not until the very moment the arrow finally flew.
The girl before her now was different. The world was different.
Slowly, she let her hands fall from her lips and rested them upon her stomach. Atraxi could see the strain in her trembling muscles as a contraction tore through her body. Fate and timing were an unkind pairing; a mask of agony lived in shades of red across her skin. It was one thing goblins and human women had in common. Birth was pain. Her own mother had died in the effort to expel Atraxi’s warrior brother, a boy so thirsty for violence it was only fitting that his life began at the same time as his kill count.
The girl stared at Atraxi, all that misery ripping through her while her gaze traveled to the perfect aim of the arrowhead. There was fear there—yes, of course there was. Atraxi watched emotions scatter across her beautiful face, and there was so much more than the simplicity of dread.
She was defiant. She was angry.
Most of all, more than anything, she was ready. Ready to fight, to die. The pain was so visible in every forced breath that Atraxi felt it in her own womb, but the girl held it all in. She made no sounds, did not allow even one cry to break the silence of the forest.
Atraxi took a step forward, arrow steady.
The couch on which the girl’s body clenched and wilted was decrepit, a piece of a different time. Vines had grown up around and through the cushions, entombing it as part of the forest itself. Atraxi could just barely make out the faded pattern—an atrocious blend of pink roses on a sky blue backdrop. Had someone just forgotten it out there? Was there once a roof, a home, that sheltered whoever possessed it in its prime? Many humans retreated when the goblin tribes arose from the earth ten years ago, leaving the forests to grow far too dense in their absence.
Why do we kill them? she’d asked her father when he gave her her first bow. It had been a foolish question, as it was foolish to ask questions at all. He’d looked down at her, his harsh eyes scarred with an inexplicable hatred.
Because we can.
Finally, the girl could not contain her pain any longer. She gasped at the start of another contraction, her breathing ragged like a dying animal. It would only get worse, and soon every goblin warrior would hear her screams.
Atraxi could feel the girl digging in her own throat for words, though it didn’t matter when they failed her. The goblin tribes had never bothered to learn the human tongue.
Perhaps she meant to curse her, call her a coward or a monster. Not to beg though. Of that, Atraxi was certain. Blood was blooming through the fabric of the girl’s dress; the baby was coming. Moonlight sparkled in the thick redness that swam down her legs into the dirt. But this was not a show; this was a battle all her own.
Lowering her arrow, Atraxi reached for the knife in her belt.
Next to the girl was a bag, the provisions she’d packed strewn out upon the forest floor. Two canteens of water. Food wrapped in yellowed cloth. A bag clearly meant to sustain two people.
They’ll hate us, her father had said. We’re nothing but monsters to them, so that’s what we’ll be.
The forest tugged at her bones. Never rebellious. Never disobedient. She’d never as much as hesitated to simply do as she was told. Today had been no different.
It was not the girl’s piercing glare, nor was it the innocence of the child breaking its way out of her. It was that damn silence. Even the most ruthless goblin women screamed like demons at the crest of labor. She’d seen the men in her tribe screech at much less.
It just seemed wasteful.
The blood on her knuckles cracked as her fingers released the knife to drop at the girl’s feet.
All around them, the earth started to shift. Atraxi clenched her fists and called up every root the dirt could spare, eyes never leaving the bewildered expression that overtook the girl when the ground spat out this untold goblin magic.
They’d said it was a useless power—one cannot forge an army of tree bark and saplings. The goblin tribes had no use for the roots that grew from the vibrations in their fingertips when the earth from which they arose belonged to the humans. They adopted violence as their enchantment, vowing all loyalty to arrowheads and the blood they spilled.
Twisting her fingers through the air, Atraxi built a fortress out of the forest. She gathered the willing roots and molded them around the girl. The vines slithered out of the couch and wrapped around what had now formed a brand new tree. They picked up the knife and placed it on the girl’s lap. All she could do was watch as Atraxi concealed her inside, her eyes like small renderings of the moon. She fell out of sight as the tree reached towards the indifferent starts.
She could scream now. All she wanted. All she needed.
And then, when she was ready, she’d cut herself out. No human weapon was a sharp as goblin crystal, and no part of any weathered forest was strong enough to resist.
Atraxi had a feeling she could manage it.
She’d tell her brother she’d found nothing. No trace. No tracks. They’d move on to find the next battle, and the world would likely fold in on itself before the girl’s child grew to be properly afraid of it.
As she left, the forest parted for her once again. The magic in her black blood settled back into place, as did the silence.