What is wilder than the woods at night?
The husband is off having a sleep study, so I am watching instant movies on Netflix.More accurately, an instant movie on Netflix, "Shrooms," about American teens doing 'shrooms in rural Ireland. It's better than I thought; "The Ring" meets "Blair Witch" meets "Jacob's Ladder" meets "Session 9", I think. But these kids, they're out in rural nowhere, doing mushrooms. Telling scary stories. And I wonder why you'd do any drugs, why not just leave whiskey and strawberries for the Fair Folk, the ones I call the Far Cousins; I don't understand why you'd need more than is already there, I think, What is wilder than the woods at night?
The bucks snorting in the spring rut, the raccoons screaming sex under the deck, the barred owl shrieking in the trees. You see all of this, hear it, smell the dirt and the growing things come to life again, and if you aren't just a little bit scared by just how relentless life is, I don't know what to think. Except that you've never been out there, naked in the night, going just a little further than was wise, no flashlight, no cellphone, no lighter, no maps. The girls in these films gasp and heave, and even though I can't hold my breath across our swimming pool, I know to still my breath, to make no sound. I don't know who taught me this. All I know is that it is correct, that if you are pursued and must stop, you stop breathing, you make no sound, you are as still as the stones.
I am eating the salmon my husband left for me, and hoping for the kind of dreams that remind me what terror tastes like. That is revelation. That, and not screaming in the dark because then, it will know where you are. And it may not just tell you its name.
The bucks snorting in the spring rut, the raccoons screaming sex under the deck, the barred owl shrieking in the trees. You see all of this, hear it, smell the dirt and the growing things come to life again, and if you aren't just a little bit scared by just how relentless life is, I don't know what to think. Except that you've never been out there, naked in the night, going just a little further than was wise, no flashlight, no cellphone, no lighter, no maps. The girls in these films gasp and heave, and even though I can't hold my breath across our swimming pool, I know to still my breath, to make no sound. I don't know who taught me this. All I know is that it is correct, that if you are pursued and must stop, you stop breathing, you make no sound, you are as still as the stones.
I am eating the salmon my husband left for me, and hoping for the kind of dreams that remind me what terror tastes like. That is revelation. That, and not screaming in the dark because then, it will know where you are. And it may not just tell you its name.