Tag: writing

Creature in the Forest (Part 5)

Alina H. Hansen Writer & Poet

-8 Months Later-

I’m drinking from the belly of a doe I just tore up. I like chewing on the fleshy parts just underneath the fur, it is elastic and keeps me preoccupied. The aroma of blood, the dissipating essence of death has already left her.

In the distance, I hear a growl. Not from an animal but something else. Something I had forgotten. There is a grinding and a roar, it’s getting closer.

I rip some meat off the doe’s thigh and run toward my shelter about a mile away.

It’s trucks.

A whopping sound above belonging to a bulbous metal thing, the blades spin in a circle, keeping it afloat. Helicopter, that’s right. They had those in the city.

The men used them to hunt for other men.

They must be looking for the body I left in the boulders. I had forgotten all about it.

Creature in the Forest (Part 4)

Alina H. Hansen Writer & Poet

I picked up his body and hauled him deeper into the woods. I can smell his blood still, it’s left a trail I’m sure the cougar and maybe a wandering bear will pick it up soon.

I threw him in between the crevices along the jagged boulders that line the river heading north where there is snow year-round, where there aren’t any men, no humans up there. It will take a while before he is picked clean by the things that live in the rocks but it is a good place for him.

If anyone comes looking for him, it will be difficult to get him out, whatever is left. Giving me time to flee if needed even though I don’t want to leave my home. The forest has been my home for so many seasons, I’ve forgotten how many.

When did I first wander up here?

Creature in the Forest (Part 3)

Alina H. Hansen Writer & Poet

A shot rang out in the forest. The hunter tripped and fell onto my path, the one that the animals dare not tread. His head snapped up, eyes met mine, and he screamed. The horrible sound. I had to snuff it out.

Like a flame, I grabbed his neck, squeezed, and snapped his brittle bones. Head lolling to the side, I had forgotten that there are men out there in the world that they parade around the streets talking into mechanical devices demanding things from one another. They are filled with poison, I can tell by the way he smells like gasoline, like the chemicals they create that made me sick to my stomach and made me trek out here to live and hunt alone. I can’t stand these things.

Creature in the Forest (Part 2)

Alina H. Hansen Writer & Poet

When I grow strong, I linger in the morning light and bathe freely in the deep waters of the lake. Sometimes there is a cougar with padded paws who creeps up to the water and laps it up. She will glance at me now and then surely wondering what I must be doing, a thing like me. The cougar sniffs the air and wanders back into the tree line. I’m not prey or a threat, I just am, like a ripple, a slick stone covered in moss, like discarded bird bones mixing in the sand.

Creature in the Forest

Alina H. Hansen Writer & Poet

Below the mist, I lay on wet soil among the rubble and ruin of past selves. Crisp outlines of shadows
dance with the fall leaves and cascade into the still lake beside me. A scuttle of creatures, the movement of stones, as they scurry to the water’s edge to drink or clean bloody claws.

I am waiting for the moon to rise, to peak out between the mountain scape so I can join the owls and other night animals in their hunt for fresh flesh. Once, I lived in a city, now I’m just another thing gnawing on bones. What am I?