The new house was a mess. The wooden floors were full of scratches like an ice skater had tried out their new skates in every room in the house. The back door, unable to lock sometimes, swung open with the wind, producing a banging alarm. It acted as a town crier, signaling that the house was no longer secure.
Although, to be fair, it wasn’t new, not to her. The olive-green siding and gabled roof were familiar friends to Donna. The chip in the red brick porch served as a memory of her childhood when she had gotten too excited with a baseball and now provided a pointed reminder to her bare feet. The rooms so monstrous and gaping in her childhood now seemed cozy and quaint. The eggshell white of the walls was a welcome feature rather than a blank canvas to fill with her crayon creations.
Everything had remained almost the same, even if her perspective had changed. However, one thing was conspicuously missing. It did not feel like home anymore. Knowing every nook and cranny and kink of the house did not stop her from feeling like a stranger in an unfamiliar land. Last week, she had gone on a walk through the woods which backed up to her house. The woods welcomed her like a warm hug, the air weighed down upon her like the comforting hand of a friend and the chirping of birds like a Greek chorus. Finding a multitude of tracks, big and small, she resolved herself to go hunting, maybe in the fall.
She lost herself in the noisy quietness of nature. The trees seemed to suck out the din of cars and human activity, lending a microphone to the rustling of the forest critters. Even the slightest crack of a twig becoming a cannon against the whispered noises of the woods. Hours trickled by as she explored, doubling back, going in circles, learning the network of paths.
The forest began to darken, the heat giving way to a slight but persistent chill. She had navigated her way back through the trees, stopping every once in a while to identify familiar plants or to marvel at ones she had never seen before. The woods began to thin, becoming sparser, until up ahead she saw a small house—her house—in a shade of green that almost camouflaged it with the surrounding trees, accented with red brick.
Here in the woods, it did not feel like her house, even if she knew it was. A thrill ran up her spine as she rocked back on her heels, feeling like a Peeping Tom observing an unknowing victim. It wasn’t a particularly fancy home, but it looked lived in. She had stopped there, at the edge of the forest, watching the house for some time until the banging of the back door drew her attention.
The back door had blown open on its own and now stood pliant to the desires of the wind, swinging here and there and creating a drum beat in rhythm with the weather. It was this door that drew Donna from her haze. No longer a voyeur, but a homeowner, she straightened up her spine and walked with quick, determined steps to the stale warmth of her home.
She reasoned that it was the bugs that kept her from connecting with her childhood home. How could you call a place home when you are constantly attacked by creepy crawlies at every turn? The bugs were truly a problem. When she had moved back here, she’d been afraid of being mauled by some of the predators that roamed the area, but apparently, infestation was the more pressing and devious enemy.
Throughout the house, she found evidence of rodents and bugs. Their droppings acted as a bread crumb trail to an increasingly visible problem. Perhaps the more obvious trail came from the dirt brown mouse that refused to be driven from her room or the nest of cockroaches that pilfered her food. They popped up in the most inconvenient times like in a coffee mug as she stumbled half asleep into the kitchen or when she was on the phone with her mother.
She had been at the house for quite some time now, but her mother still referred to it as the new place. Her mother would ask about the infrastructure as if her she had not lived in the home for twenty years.
“It’s fine,” she said, twirling the phone cord in her fingers. The house was always fine. The town was always fine. The neighbors that she had lied about meeting were fine too.
Her mother, unsatisfied by the vague answers, was always pressing for details. How was the furnace? Still spotty? What about the master bedroom door? Was the lock still broken? Yes. It was all fine.
“Gonna have to call an exterminator. No- it’s not bad, just a few bugs here and there.”
Did she need money for a hotel? Was she sealing her food? Was she sure she didn’t want to stay with her mother for a few days? Plane tickets were cheap.
“Mom, really. I barely notice it. It’s mostly just a precaution. No one’s lived here for a while.”
Across the room, a cockroach was making its way along the kitchen wall. A splash of rust red across the white walls. Her eyes tracked its movements as it made its way from the wall and onto her counter. Don’t you dare, you little shit. The cockroach, seemingly hearing her thoughts, sauntered over to the plate of spaghetti that she had placed there before answering her mother’s call. It struggled onto the plate but was quickly rewarded when it plopped into the red sauce. Its own red coat made it look like a sentient tomato. It seemed to delight in its prize, navigating between noodles, into the sauce and back out again. Dionysus reveling in Bacchic delight.
“Honey, is it—are you being safe?” Her mother asked, as Donna knew she would. Her whole family had been beating around the bush anyways. She could count on her mother to take that bat and hit the bush directly on the roots.
“Nothing to be worried about around here. It’s just me and the bugs”. “Your father and I were talking to Uncle Jim and—”. “You’re always talking”. “Honey… after last time, and now you’ve left school saying you need ‘space’ and move back to that damn house. How can you expect us not to worry?” “Mom.” “We just want you to be careful.”
It wasn’t really a big deal, they were just dramatic. Around the age of eleven, she had been obsessed with the woods. She would often spend all day there, only coming in for dinner, trailing bugs and pocketing exciting rocks and other objects she had collected. She was a brave explorer, conquering a new land, bringing back spoils for her people.
One day she had gone into the woods early in the morning. Her parents wouldn’t be awake for another hour. About four yards in, she came across a stag. It towered above her, eyes proud, its antlers spread out and bright in the morning sun. They stared at each other for a moment, its eyes seemed to beckon her over, before it walked off. There was a cord connecting her to the animal, and she could not help but follow his path.
He led her to a small clearing, dew still glistening on the green blades of grass. Bees fluttered from flower to flower, briefly coming to investigate the newcomers before getting back to business. In the trees surrounding the clearing, squirrels danced from branch to branch, chasing one another in a constant game of tag.
Her eyes widened as she took in her surroundings. From the white and brown speckled mushrooms growing along the western edge of the clearing to the babbling brook that wound itself deeper into the woods from some unseen force, she imagined it was all for her. She imagined that the animals had led her here, crowning her queen of the forest.
She spent a wonderful morning there: gathering mushrooms, weaving a flower crown to mark her new title, watching as animals appeared at the edge of the clearing, sometimes coming up close to her. Other times, standing at the edge of the forest, watching her for long periods of time.
She imagined that the clover and wildflowers kissed her feet as she ran through the field. The bees and butterflies arcing gracefully over, around, in unison with her, delighting her in their immature and playful dance were loyal subjects paying homage. The wind rustling through the lush green trees, shaking branches, became a song to dance to, hurtling down to her in light caresses.
When she decided to take a nap, she imagined the crickets came to lull her to sleep, eager to be of service to their noble queen. Like a mother’s lullaby, reassuring her of their presence, even in the impending blackness of her dreams.
Deer ran alongside her in the perfect golden twilight, at once welcoming her with their closeness and teasing her in the chase. Birds flitted to her, drawn by their love for her and echoing that love in their songs. All this, she thought, was done for her so that she might know what it meant to be one of nature’s beloved.
Finally, she decided it was time to go home. Her mother was baking apple pie tonight, and she liked to be there to supervise and take care of any tasting duties. Her eyes traced the borders of the clearing, hoping to catch her friendly stag waiting for her. There was no deer to lead her back to her house. Without her guide, the way out was much longer than she remembered. Her heart pounding, eyes wide but not seeing anything, she was certain she would never make it out.
Coming upon the house happened all at once. She went from submerged in weeds and branches, desperately trying to find familiar landmarks, to standing in the small yard leading to her house. The lights were off in the house, but it was clear that people were in there. She ran up to the back door, slipping inside and making her way to the kitchen.
Inside, her mother sat, head in hands, completely silent. The only sign that she was not asleep was the quick, steady tapping of her feet. There was no sign of an apple pie, no cinnamon, no crust.
“What happened to the apple pie?”
Her mother’s eyes shot up, shocking her in their intensity. Her mother shot forward, the quickest she’d ever seen her move, pulling her into a hug so tight she wasn’t sure she’d be able to draw a full breath again.
“Donna, ohmygod, where were you?” Her mother said in a rush, her eyes betraying her words; she did not know if she wanted to know. There was a whole fuss at the house over her sudden reappearance. What had been a pleasantafternoon spent in the woods had been two days without a sign of their child. Her father had spent hours combing the woods looking for her. Her mother stayed in the house in case Donna returned on her own. Everyone was convinced that something bad had happened.
Words like repressed memories and psychoanalysis were thrown around. Family members forcing her to look in their eyes, reassuring her that they would listen if she ever needed to talk. They moved away six months later. Anytime she did anything by herself, the family began clucking like hens.
“I need to go. My dinner is getting cold. I’ll call you soon.” Donna rushed to place the phone back on the receiver. Perhaps when her mother called again, she would pretend to be out—perhaps ‘meeting’ the neighbors—but first, to handle her unruly roommates.
She crept towards the plate on the counter, a lion stalking a leaf. Her heart pounded, and eyes narrowed. The thief would die. Hand raised, like a god smiting unruly subjects, she stood over the plate. Its wriggling was equal parts pathetic and mocking. The exterminator was coming soon, Donna reasoned. She would spare one life.
She snatched up the plate, holding it between two fingers and making her way outside. There, she used her fingers to pull the wriggling pasta-drunk thief from its loot before depositing him on the ground near her feet.
“How do you like that?” she asked, slurping up the noodles with flourish, leaving splashes of red across her lips. The noodles threatened to make a reappearance as she thought about its spindly legs weaving themselves in and out of her dinner.
The cockroach scrambled away from her feet, forging towards the safety of the grass, looking harried but determined.
“Y’know, I would’ve shared, if you’d just minded your business. I was on the phone.” No response came from the defeated form as it disappeared into the grass. “Whatever,” she said, flicking a particularly chunky bit of sauce in its general direction. “I’ll be in the house if you decide to come back. I wouldn’t though, big changes comin’, buddy."
The exterminator came a few days later, informing her that there was nothing in the house for her to be concerned about.
“I’m not crazy,” Donna said, teeth clenching together, arms crossed, trying to take up as much space as her 5’4" height would allow. “It’s probably the back door, bugs crawling in through the gaps,” he said, looking down at his clipboard before glancing at his watch. “You don’t understand. They’re everywhere. I go to my bed, there’s bugs. I go to eat, there’s a mouse. I go to take a shit; a spider plays voyeur,” she said, hoping the crudeness might convince him of her experiences. “Honestly, it must be difficult to live on your own - a single girl up in this big forest. But seriously, if there was anything wrong, I would have noticed,” he said, pausing before adding as an afterthought, “Maybe you can invest in some bug spray if it really bothers you so much”. “Check again. I—please, you’re missing something”. “Ma’am, I noticed that back door…you ought to get that fixed first. If you’re noticing any critters inside, that’s how they’re getting in. Fix that, then give me a call,” he said, looking at his clipboard, tapping his pen rapidly against the metal clip. “I’ll get on that."
Watching his van pull away, Donna felt the last vestiges of her hope fade away with the sound of his tires. She was angry. The type of red-hot burning anger that simmers under the skin and made her certain she’d never been this angry at any point before. The anger that erased any other emotion, pushed them out until all that was left was rage.
From the corner of her eye, she perceived movement. A single red cockroach crawling down the length of her wall, like a singular drop of blood flowing across the bright white canvas, taunting her in its meandering pace.
Donna considered trapping it. Perhaps she would show it to that exterminator as proof of her predicament. She quickly walked to her kitchen to grab a glass, imagining the sheepish look on the man’s face when she shoved the squirming, red proof into his face. He would believe her then.
She sped back into the hall, eyes searching for that familiar red. It was nowhere to be found. In an instant, Donna felt anger come crashing down on her again in a dark, black tidal wave of fury. Her body felt tense, as if it were drowning in that sea of anger, and her heart pounded a war drum, adding to the chaos.
Clenching the glass in her fist, almost surprised she did not break it with the force of her grip, Donna slowly made her way back to the kitchen. Her eyes still casting a net around her surroundings, hoping to catch a glimpse of her unwelcome houseguests.
Later that night, she downed a bottle of wine, grasping the stem tightly, surprised that it did not break. The more she drank, the heavier a blanket settled over her mind. Laying across the couch, she cursed the exterminator, cursed herself, cursed her family, cursed these goddamn pests that wouldn’t leave her alone. She cursed everything and anyone until that blanket wrapped tight around her mind, and she fell asleep. She was in the forest, not the one she was familiar with. Instead of the lush green forests she saw on her walks, she was surrounded by white. A pearlescent snow covered the landscape, obscuring the setting and giving the trees a sort of bulbous look, as if someone had seen a tree for the first time and tried to recreate its essence from memory.
Directly in front of her, maybe ten feet away, stood a figure. A man--it wasn’t really in the shape of a man—she couldn’t see it but rather sense that it had shape. Its presence formed a body where there was air. Like the trees, the snow obscured its form, the form of a man created by someone who had never been one. A loosening in her limbs, a lifting of her shoulders, nerves which had become invisible in their misery song, now danced joyful tunes up her back and neck, like taking off uncomfortable high heels after a long day.
Words, containing some meaning still a mystery to her, pressed themselves up her throat, coming to a tumbling stop at her lips. To greet, to cry out, to laugh, to cry, she did not know. Only that in the presence of such a thing, she could not stay silent. Her tongue formed a battering ram against her closed mouth in an attempt to break the silence. At last overcome, she opened her mouth.
What she had thought words came tumbling out cockroaches. The first lingered a little on her tongue as though unsure if it wanted to leave the comfort of its warm home for the unknown white before it. Slowly, it tipped its leg down her chin, and then another and another until it had gone down the length of her neck, travelling down her body, in a single line. Seeing no danger, the other cockroaches soon followed, all marching towards the space which the figure of a not-quite man occupied.
The cockroaches continued to pour out, one after the other, in a frenzy to make their way to the figure. Their razor legs slowly tore at the skin of her mouth and neck until the white space was broken with a small red line of pulsing wet lifeblood, tracing itself back to the presence. With each bug, her skin ripped more and more, leaving a pulsing red path towards their master. She tried to close her mouth, to stop the flow, yet each cockroach, like a dumbbell, kept her jaw from obeying. Donna fell to her knees, eyes following the red thread to the figure before her. Come to me.
She awoke, at once alert but unable to shake the warm fuzz that hung over her lower half. Piss. She had wet the bed, her nightgown clinging to her legs, sheets mussed and soiled.
“FUUUUCK,” she said, drawing out the word so it filled the empty room and gave her something else to focus on besides the fact that she, a twenty-six-year-old woman, had wet the bed like a scared child.
However, she was an adult and was responsible for cleaning up her own messes. Stripping the sheets from the bed, gathering them gingerly in her arms like a new mother about to drop off her child at an orphanage—holding it but limiting contact—until she had safely dropped her burden into the washing machine for a deep clean.
Moving to do the same for herself, trying to gently take off her gown without letting the cold wet touch more of her skin, a glitter of light caught her eye. Underneath her dresser, two little black gems glistened. That fucking mouse.
“Har-har, the giant, evil lady pissed herself. Stop looking at me,” she said. Her chest was tight, the weight of those small eyes making each breath feel like a struggle.
A bang at the back of the house broke their connection. The back door was open again. Running to the door, she went to close it, to forget about this night, to go back to sleep, wet bed be damned.
In the moonlight, something at the edge of the forest caught her eye. A stag, watching her, coat glistening and eyes proud. Like in her childhood, it seemed to beckon to her, calling her to it. With its steady gaze, she felt like the long lost heir welcomed back to her childhood kingdom. The cord in her chest pulled tight and she perceived herself walking towards it, following it, deeper into the black forest.
“Good job, Donna. This is a great idea,” she muttered to herself, half-expecting the stag to dart off as she approached it, something in her lighting up when it stayed, a constant companion.
Marching towards the forest, the fog lifted from her eye. A hot sigh of wind ruffled her hair, dragging droplets across her still drying legs. She must keep going.
The gravel path gave way to flowers and clover, shut up for the night, waiting for the hot kiss of their distant lover to burst into effervescent streaks across the verdant landscape. Every so often, she would look down, the dirt path seeming to fade away until there was no clearing, no sense to the network of roots, leaves, and debris under her feet. Once again, she was a child playing an intrepid explorer, blazing a new path, discovering distant and mysterious lands. Sleepiness, a devious hunter, assailed her. She would lie down here. The stag kept going, leaving her behind, cutting the cord between them. She was fine.
The grass tickled her thighs, grasping her ankles, beckoning her down. The night air was a cool side of the pillow to offset the pulsing, humid earth. The ground was pounding, throbbing, beating in time with her own heart. A cacophonous symphony quieting down before the final act. Her fingers spread the damp lumps of dirt, broken up by the obsidian backs of beetles and silky legs of spiders. She felt the backs of tiny lives, lived separate from herself, yet all together in this single moment. Taking from her what she gave to them. Pressing her cheek to the damp earth, glancing at her right hand. There, a cockroach climbing unsteadily up her fingers to rest alongside her arm, coming to a rest at the beat-beat of her heart. From there, tracing a single line down to her navel, rising and sinking, a ship captain on the turbulent sea of her stomach. Yes. They could stay like this for a while.
The once quiet woods opened into an explosion of sound. The final act upon her. No longer a symphony, but a triumphant ode to times past and lovers lost. Lives crashing together and fading away to nothingness. The tickling fingers of grass becoming fists holding her in place. The wind pressing her down into the earth which seemed to dampen as if preparing to swallow her whole. To entomb her as its deepest treasure. Where her eyelids once were now hung weights, which made each successive blink harder to recover from. Her stomach, where that cockroach lay, needed more and more strength to take in air.
A cloying sweetness permeated the air. The woods around her swayed and moaned, reflecting nature’s labor pains as a new day began. Turning her head, she looked out into the black forest, the first rays of dawn giving the air a blue-black tint.
The feeble light pierced through the leaves, lighting up her prone body. She closed her eyes and awaited the sunrise.