Knife and Tooth

Knife and Tooth

Breaker's Woods was a desolate place. Buck knew that; he had lived there for his whole life with Ma and all his siblings. He was out behind their house, chopping firewood to cook dinner with, when he heard it first; a rustle in the brush around him. He looked up and squinted into the dark, but he couldn't make anything out between the trees.

No more movement, no more crunching of leaves; he walked back inside. The fire was crackling and the stew above it was bubbling in the pot. His Ma wasn't in the living room, but he heard her yelling from somewhere in the house; most likely at his little sister Beth Ann, who earlier had run around in one of Ma's Sunday dresses through the woods. She was trying to catch squirrels, and thought they would like her better if she was more 'purty' as she had said.

Beth Ann yelled back at Ma. She was really in for it now; Ma drug her to the living room by her arm, kicking and screaming. "Gonna take this little lady out to learn a lesson," Ma told Buck, panting. "Watch the soup, please, and keep your brothers in. Cut that out!" she growled at Beth Ann, who was trying to bite Ma's tight-gripped hand. It was no use; Ma was a hunter, and once she had you in her hands, it was done for.

She drug Beth Ann out the front door and slammed it shut. The lock clicked aggressively afterward. A second after, a loud baby's cry rang out through the house; Lil' Sal must've woken up from his nap. Buck sighed and walked into his brothers' room, where Lil' Sal and his other brother, Dusty, slept. Dusty was still peacefully asleep (he always slept real good), but Lil' Sal was screaming in his rocking crib.

"Shhhh, little buddy," Buck whispered, picking up his kid brother in his arms and holding him close. Lil' Sal grabbed his flannel with a tiny pink hand, still crying but not as loud. After a few minutes of rocking in Buck's arms, and getting his soft head rubbed, Lil' Sal was calm and smiling.

"There we go," Buck said with a big smile. "All better?" Lil' Sal giggled, reaching up for Buck's face. He leaned down and let his kid brother explore his face with those tiny hands. Lil' Sal giggled again when Buck tapped his button nose.

"Back to bed with you, Sally man," he whispered softly as he laid Lil' Sal in the soft blankets Gran had knitted before she passed. As soon as Buck tucked him in, Lil' Sal's eyes fluttered shut. Before he could leave, though, those tiny hands grabbed Buck's scarred one and snuggled up to it. He smiled.

He stopped smiling, however, when a long BANG echoed through the house. He froze, checking on his still sleeping brothers, before he ran through the hall into the living room. Nothing was out of place when he got there; the couch wasn't tipped over, the window was still intact, the mantle had everything still on it. The soup, however, was boiling. Buck stepped over, still on edge, and took the pot off the fire. He set it up on the mantle to cool off.

BANG. Buck jumped again, whipping his head around in the direction the noises came from. The front door was open. That's weird, Buck thought. Ma had locked the door when she took Beth Ann. He could have sworn she did. He made his breath soft and shallow, treading very quietly on the carpet on his floor. The kitchen caught his eye for a second: the gleaming of a butcher knife. Buck picked it up quietly, swinging it slowly to get the feel of using it.

He peeked out into the darkness around him. Thank God Ma had taught him to hunt, so he knew how to keep quiet. His night vision was real good, too, so he could see into the darkness they kept trimmed around their house. But he still couldn't see past that damned tree line.

He stepped out into the cold of the grass, which was seemingly parting for his feet to create a silent step. Buck turned his head so much his neck started to hurt, scouring the small amount of plant life that surrounded his house until it hit the brush.

Another skill Ma had helped him develop was his listening. He was attentive and very good at picking out sounds. He tuned into the sounds around him, but all he heard was the wind and the occasional owl hoot. He felt like something was missing, but he couldn't tell what.

As he turned around to go back inside, he heard a loud, high pitch scream. It sounded like a little girl... Beth Ann! He whipped around and frantically sprinted to the back of his house, and what he saw horrified him beyond words.

To start, Ma's corpse was lying in the grass next to the stump where Buck chopped wood. He knew it was a corpse in one painful glance; her stomach had a massive hole in it, and her organs were on the lawn. Her face was twisted in a final look of agony, and her house dress was shredded and coated in her blood. But that wasn't the scary part.

Beth Ann was writhing in the air, being held by a long, bony arm, wielded by a long, bony person-looking figure, maybe eight or nine feet tall. It was unhuman, had to be, because no person he had ever interacted with had all their bones stretched out like that. The skin was taught, and the appendages were stiff, but it moved very fast and very sure. But the face was... odd. The top half of the face looked human, but from the upper jaw down, the skin was stretched to the point of ripping, and the joints were disconnected, like a snake unhinged its jaw.

The nose was different though, it was crooked, like someone had punched it hard one way and snapped it back into place in the other. Whatever the nose looked like didn't matter, however, when it raised a screaming Beth Ann higher above its open mouth.

"Bethy!" Buck cried desperately, making the monster thing look down at him. He lunged at it with his knife, ripping into its skinny leg. It shrieked, but didn't drop Beth Ann, who was hysterically sobbing, crying for her big brother's help. Buck hacked away at it until it pushed him feet away with a sweep of its foot. He landed hard on the compact dirt, making him grunt. His ears were ringing, and he felt a snap in his chest, a rib, maybe? He shut his eyes.

When he finally looked up, the thing was gone, and all he could see of Beth Ann was a bloodied shoe.

The trees were all swaying in a soft breeze. The sunny, summer sky was hidden by fluffy-looking grey clouds. It was a Tuesday evening, and while the air was still warm, the sun was nowhere to be seen. Just gloom. But that gloominess didn't get to Lily; she was smiling and laughing on a blanket with her adorable boyfriend, Owen. They were having a picnic date in Breaker's Woods, which was a short distance from the city they lived in, but still far enough away to not be bothered.

As Lily ate her salt and vinegar chips, one of them got stuck in the spot where a recently lost tooth used to be.

"Do you know the muffin man, the muffin man, the muffin man! Do you know the muffin man, the muffin man I know! Do-" Owen sang and sang and sang.

Lily threw a roll at him as she tried to pick the chip out of her gums. "Shut up! You've been singing that song all day!"

"AH! ABUSE!"

"I'll show you abuse!" Lily got up. Owen play screamed and ran.

Lily chased after him. She was laughing at his goofy faces, and he was making fun of her. Everything was as normal and blissfully sweet as any other day. Until it wasn't.

Owen tripped over something sticking out from under a bush. Lily laughed at him until she looked closer. The thing Owen tripped over was a shiny black shoe. Not an old one either, no, this Jordan looked relatively new. But what was it doing here? Owen looked closer at the bush, squinting at it like he was looking at something. Then he screamed and twisted away. He was terrified. He tried to crawl past Lily, but she caught him in her arms and held his shaky frame close.

"What's wrong?" Lily asked, stroking his hair worriedly.

All he did was point at the bush with a shaking hand. So, Lily got up and walked over to it. She noticed that with every step, swarms of flies and the smell of rotten flesh was getting heavier. She moved the branches aside and looked down at what was underneath. She shrieked, jumping away.

She saw a boy with dark skin under the thick branches. His stomach was torn up and hollowed, he was obviously missing the bones in his rib cage and his spine. There was bloody, sticky mud in his chest. His eyes were frozen in terror, widened in a blank stare of shock. But his lips.

They might have been beautiful once, but Lily couldn't tell. The top one was pulled up in a smile, the flesh skinned and raw, chunks of the meat missing. And on the bottom jaw, which was barely hanging onto the rest of his face, there was what looked like a sharp tooth jammed into it.

Lily gagged. The smell of blood.... It was just too much for her. The ground was spinning, the trees were reaching toward her with sharp claws. Lily pulled out her phone with a trembling hand and dialed 911.

"911, what's your emergency?" a female voice asked almost mechanically.

"There's... body...send help...." Lily gasped.

"Okay, honey, I need you to calm down. Can you identify where you are?"

"I don't know... Breaker's Woods? I don't know, I don't know, I don't know...." Lily's breathing was ragged, her heart pounding, as she caught another glimpse of the boy. And all that blood.

"Breathe, honey. I'm tracking your phone. You need to stay calm. I'm sending an ambulance your way. Can you sit tight for a few minutes out there?"

No, Lily thought, I can't handle all of this blood. But she said yes anyways, wanting to be calm for Owen, who was still shaking on the ground. She sat down next to him, letting her emotion seep out into the orange of his shirt.

The two sat alone in a pile of limbs. The strong, sure beat of Owen's heart always seemed to put Lily at ease. But that ease didn't last long, because it wasn't strong or sure. It was fast and erratic. Especially when the brush ahead of them started moving, as if someone was coming.

A short, muscular man with a butcher's knife came out. Owen and Lily screamed. The man put up his hands to show that he wasn't going to hurt them.

"What are you kids doing out at night?" He waved his knife at them accusingly and smiled. His voice had a thick southern accent, and he sounded kind. But when he locked eyes with Lily, his grin was replaced with a focused look. "Your nose..." his face lost all color in a flash. "You. It's you."

Owen stepped in front of Lily, apparently regaining his courage, though he was still unbalanced, if only a little. He picked up a large-ish rock. "Back up, dude."

The man glared at Lily with a cold hatred, more frigid than ice and darker than black. He didn't even glance at Owen. "You're with her?" His voice shook.

"Yes, I am. Now get. Back."

"Filthy black bloods!" The man's eyes widened with anger but then turned stony. He took a deep breath, and just when Lily thought he would let them go, he threw his knife at Lily. Hard. But he missed, so it cut deep into Owen, right in the shoulder. He let out a sharp cry of pain, blood spattering the ground, and his arm spasmed. His blood stained his orange shirt red as he fell to the ground.

At the smell of Owen's blood, Lily's pupils dilated, her teeth sharpened. She was so hungry; she just couldn't hold it in anymore. Her spine lengthened with wet cracking; her vertebrae detached from each other one by one, pop by sickening pop. When her bones stopped disconnecting, she loomed over the man. He looked up at her in terror, but his eyes still held defiance.

"You."

"Me."

Lily ripped her jaw down so that it was unhinged, hanging down a foot below the top of her jaw. The man just stood there frozen in fear, so Lily moved first. She lunged, tackling him to the ground, and took a bite out of his chest, making him scream with a bloodcurdling voice.

With a wet slurp, Lily sucked out his ribs and spine, some of his intestines getting caught on the ribs. She ground all of it in her teeth, and the butcher man fell almost unconscious. As she swallowed the sludge of his chewed-up bones and organs, she forced his lolling head to face her. The butcher man's eyes rolled around until they landed on her.

"No..." he moaned in a small voice. Lily grinned, inching his face towards his. "No... please..." he whispered, trembling. He tried to resist, but he wasn't strong enough. He never was.

Lily pounced and took a bite of his still warm lips. And after she watched the light leave his eyes and the breath leave his lungs, she stepped away from him as she rehinged her jaw. With a sharp pain, she realized that some of the man's bone lingered in that space where her tooth came out. She glanced at the other body with annoyance. "Awesome," she muttered with disdain.

She looked at Owen with a longing look. The smell of his blood was too much. She wasn't sure how much longer she could wait to kill him. But she had to. She had to let him stew in her affection. Betrayal was the most delectable human emotion, and there was no finer betrayal than a loved one who turns on you for nothing.

. . .

An hour later, in the police station, Lily waited to be interviewed by the police about what had happened. She plastered a look of unfocused sadness when she really wanted to bounce around in a fit of laughter and contentedness. She hadn't had such a fresh kill in months. She honestly wasn't sure how the boy hadn't started decomposing under that bush, as she had killed him about two weeks ago, but she didn't eat at once. She had to leave him there; the butcher man had tried to kill her after he saw what happened, so she hid the body. And even then, she slowly nibbled at him, piece by piece, rib by rib, to make sure she didn't get caught mid-meal by the butcher man.

The butcher man. Lily picked his skin out of her teeth with her nail. The lingering taste of a fresh kill coated her mouth; his flesh was as salty with fear and hate as the last. It was okay. But, Lily thought with a glance at her unconscious Owen, this level of betrayal requires patience to achieve. So Lily had to be patient. But, in the back of her mind, all she could hear was the beat, scent, and imagined taste, of Owen's heart. She salivated, allowing herself to smile for an instant.

"Lily Chamberlin?" A male voice called. "Detective Hanes would like to ask you a few questions."

Lily got up, wiped the grin off her face, and forced a look of absentmindedness as she walked to the dark room with a woman in it. The woman smelled like a low-quality wine, much unlike Owen's sweet, aged perfection.

This will have to do for now, Lily thought, as she locked the door and busted the camera to the interrogation room. She unhinged her jaw. The woman screamed.