Tales of Horror

BEAST

BEAST

It was not a pretty wood.

Sunlight did not filter greenly through the leaves.

Birds did not sing from the branches.

Instead, a crawling vine prickled along the forest floor, a grabbing thorn spiked out between every brown leaf and gnarled tree trunk. Wild and dangerous things resided in those woods, and they did not want to be disturbed. They wanted the darkness and disease to spread and spread.

But they could not encroach on the small clearing surrounding the small house with the small family. The father worked tirelessly, day in and day out, to keep the thorns and vines and evil things at bay, away from the only two flowers in the forest, his children, Rose and Lilly.

The girls were exquisite, beautiful, smart. They were the breath of life, a bit of radiance brought into the woods, with red lips and pale skin and shining blonde hair.

And they wanted to see the ugliness of the forest, for all they touched became beautiful. But the father forbade it; the danger was too great.

And then one day the father was found, strung up by vines and run through with thorns on the edge of the wood, and there was no one to tell Rose and Lilly what happened, and no one to tell them not to enter the forest.

So they ventured into the ugliness, and they loathed the vines and the spines and the webs. And the forest saw them, and hated them, for their beauty was a stain on the forest floor. The girls, watched but unaware, danced and skipped through the forest, and thought they could fix it, and thought it would heal.

But the forest was older and darker than the girls ever knew. The beautiful children touched the dead leaves and sang to the dead trees and did not see the leaves closing behind them, or the vines creeping along the ground towards them. They did not see the thorns that bristled along the tree's, and they did not see how the forest was swallowing them. Rose did not see her sister disappear into the treetops, a flower plucked like a weed. Lilly did not see her sister sucked into the leaf litter and swallowed by thorns. No one would see the girls again.

The sunlight did not filter greenly through the leaves, and the birds did not sing from the branches.

It was not a pretty wood.