M.A. Padilla

Back again. Bet you thought I got what I had coming to me trying to provoke an eldritch horror out of the woods. Might be what I deserved, but fortunately for me, it’s not what happened.

I took a couple days to whip something up. I tried to think back to what he’d taken, and what exactly I’d written. What diction and tone had I used? Did he understand tone? Either way, I wanted what I offered to be worth reading. If he could be intrigued, I wanted him to be. I’ll admit—I got carried away trying to impress the forest monster. It’s rare I spend all day staring down a poem. Mostly it’s a cut and dry process for me. Poetry is fancy, written, introspection. Simple enough of a process taking the mess in my head and stringing it onto a page. It’s not my job to understand it. But I’ll be damned if after an entire day, the poem still wasn’t right. I shut my journal and sat out on the porch. Could it even actually read? I mean what was I doing really? I assumed it could read. I assumed it enjoyed what it had read and wanted more. The moon was high and full, lighting the trail leading away from my house. Chirping from the woods coaxed me to look. Darkness within the thick trees, untouched by the moon. No red eyes. I wasn’t relieved at their absence. 

I stared out my window the same night. In trying to sleep I chased it in circles, and it wasn’t worth the tossing and turning. I sat up and swiped my journal off the nightstand. It was time to start over. A short story about an adventurous rabbit named Cornelius. I even drew little pictures of him in case the creature was a visual reader. I wrote until I couldn’t keep my eyes open. The rabbit made it home after a day of danger and exploring. Cornelius tucked into bed, and so did I. The next day, I gathered all the sheets of paper together and tore them from my journal. Snatched a clementine off the counter and looked over the pages one last time as I got to the forest edge. I weighed them down on the leaf litter with the fruit so they wouldn’t fly away and went back inside. Like waiting for a package the second it’s out for delivery, I watched the tree line for movement all day. Into the night I didn’t spot anything. When the sun rose again, I took my coffee to the forest edge where I’d left the story. Untouched. Somehow no other animal had gotten his clementine, so I left it. The following morning, I returned. Still there. 

The creature consumed my every waking thought. It frustrated me that I might never see him again. I took some work calls and sat in virtual meetings for a few days. I stopped checking on the story. Something something, don’t watch a pot of water waiting for it to boil. After a week, I checked again. With my sack of groceries from the village in my arms, I crept over to the woods. It was dusk, the sun had just slipped behind the valley. The fall had swept over in full; a cool breeze blew my hair in my face, but I saw it. I saw the vacant spot where my story had been. Every page was gone, the fruit, gone. I set my bag down and wiped my hair from my face. Kicking the leaves around I checked to make sure the story hadn’t just been buried, but the pages had truly vanished. Holy shit. When had he claimed it? I sat back on my heels. If he couldn’t read, he sure liked pretending he could. I put another clementine in place of the one he had taken and got to work on the next installment of the Rhinelander rabbit, Cornelius.

Another fulfilling conclusion graced me by midnight. I’d never written so fast. From start to finish, 6 hours? Unheard of, even if each story was only a few pages long. I marked the ending as I ate my late dinner. In the mirror brushing my teeth, I wondered if he’d just taken the pages because they came with food. Didn’t matter. The next day I would place the next installment where I’d put the last one and wait. 

But it didn’t get to that.

A repetitive—tink—on glass pulled me out of my sleep. I sat up and my stomach did a fucking backflip. On my blanket shone light from the moon, shadowing a figure outside the window behind me. I froze. Humanoid, but winged, fuzzy. It was him. Was I relieved it wasn’t an ax murderer? Of course. Did I feel much better that it was a mysterious cryptid that lived in the woods? The jury was out. 

I scampered to the foot of my bed and turned to face the window. As I’d thought, burning red eyes. In the week before he found my story, I’d wanted so badly to spot him. Faced with him, I never wanted to see him again. But there he was, tapping on the window with long black claws, my missing story in hand. His antennae twitched and he tilted his head. To the other side, he tilted and waited before tapping again. With his free hand, he lifted the clementine I left out when I got home into view, then patted the pages of the story against the glass. Was I crazy? Plain stupid to the bone? Depends on who you ask, I guess.

Keeping my eyes on him, I grabbed my journal off the nightstand and flipped through the pages until I reached the next part of Cornelius’ story. The pages parted from the spine with a rip and my hand jittered considering what I was going to do next. I crawled to the window. He stopped tapping. His antennae were fluttering, eyes large. With held breath, I released the locking latch on the window and pushed it open. The breeze wafted in and blew his fur around. He put his hands on the windowsill and inspected my room, peeking his head in and looking around. I just stared at him, like dreaming wide awake. His gaze dropped down to the papers in my hand. Chirping, he raised the first installment and gestured to it. I nodded and my shaking hand cursed me for reaching forward to hand the small stack over. 

I braced myself for the stabbing claws to sink into my skin even if by accident. For him to turn on a dime and lunge at me. Nothing of the sort. Gentle, the papers left my hand with care. His wings batted with heavy flutters outside, but he didn’t use them to fly away. He sorted the stories in their order and tapped them on the sill to straighten the pages. His large shoulders budged from the window frame, and he slinked away on foot.

I suppose he’d been waiting a while for more to read. Maybe the fruit without pages was a troubling sight for him. Just what kind of monster are you? Some—moth man? Owl man? Fuzzy-winged man man…who likes to read about rabbits?