A Writing Challenge !

 A Writing Challenge ! (Slight NSFW)

A daily walk through the forest, whistling back at the cardinals who sat watching over me in the trees. The energy was off. Normally, they would not choose to be so still. Normally, when they whistled back, their beaks actually moved. 

These birds were stone, frozen in time, frozen in fear. Shrugging it off, I found my way to the tree I love, smack in the middle of the forest, Dorothy. 

Dorothy, coming into view as I do my best to follow the barely visible path in snow and ice, was a tall pale oak tree in a meadow in the middle of this forest. She sits along, the moon illuminating her branches and leaves as clear as day as I approached. I wave hello as her branches catch a gust of wind and she waves back. I love Dorothy and the peace I feel under her strong branches.

Crossing this empty field of frozen flower stems, ice, and packed snow, I noticed there are not animals on or near Dorothy. I am truly stunned and alarmed to see this tree usually covered in critters, even in winter, is now completely devoid of all nature. She looks eerie, lonely... menacing.

Nonetheless, I approach. I love Dorothy through thick and thin, just as she has me. She has not turned her back on me when I approached with bloodied hands or a knot on my head. She accepted me in silence. 

As I stand right in front of her, dropping my backpack in the snow with a wet splosh, Dorothy's branches, usually praising the stars, curl down with the wind, forming what looks to be a portal. I think nothing of it and take another picture of it with my Polaroid. 

"Another one for the books? Sick!" I place this photo with all the rest, pictures of Dorothy showcasing her amazing personality.

I take my seat on the ground right beneath her, looking up at her beautiful leaves. "So, how have you been?" No response comes, obviously because she is a tree. I decide to answer for her.

I imagine she replies in a soft, angelic voice, saying "It has been rather quiet here, my love. How, pray-tell, are you?" Her leaves rustle as I speak the words she cannot.

"Ah. I have been better. My wife decided to tell me how I am supposed to feel about things again. Just like she did earlier this month. How dare she, ya kno? I am my own person and I deserve to make my own decisions." I scoffed opening my backpack. 

Dorothy can only respond with the sound of leaves rustling, so again I speak for her. "I understand how that feels. Did your talk with her go well?" 

I laughed loudly. "So you remembered that I was going to speak with her about her fucking behavior? I love you for that, Dorothy. You remember all the things that she won't." 

Birds approached slowly, not hopping but placing one foot in front of the other. I can't make out their species from this distant, as they are just on the edge of the forest, where the meadow and forest collide.

"That bitch just doesn't listen. I tell her to cook me and my boys a meal, she tells me that she can't because the kids need to go to tennis. Who gives a fuck about those kids? Just turn the fucking TV on for them, and make me a damn meal. She says I can just cook for myself. I say will bitch why did I marry you if you aren't going to do what you are supposed to?" I pull a knife out my backpack. The birds are closer. The wind blows harder.

Dorothy rustles in this racing wind. I imagine she said "The blind cannot lead themselves. You must lead them, as you can see. Remember the teachings of your God and your Bible, Nathaniel." I pull out another knife and my large King James copy of the Bible.

"Hell yeah, Dorothy!" Slapping my knee happily, I try to ignore the feeling of dread from the birds approaching, beaks facing me, eyes bloodshot, unblinking. "God says I must protect the weak from themselves. My wife is hurting herself by not obeying me. If she didn't have me, she would be on the fucking street, ass out, like that whore I enjoyed at the damn strip club. That whore was a good one though, knew how to kept her mouth closed unless I opened it for her, heh." 

Staring at the birds, I can make out a few of them. Cardinals. Not the bright red male ones, but the gray-ish red ones. Female Cardinals. Their eyes are locked onto me. 

I shudder, but I fear no evil. My God will protect me from these dang birds, right? To hell with caring about anything outside of Dorothy. 

Dorothy's leaves brush my cheek, like a soft human hand, motherly and warm. "Nathaniel. Your God has your back. Focus on your strengths and let God handle your fears." I speak for her again.

I pray a prayer, invoking my God to strike these birds down and clear them away from me. Silence after the prayer. No thunder, but I know my God would never forsake me.

"I hit my wife last night, Dorothy. That cunt deserved it. I wanted some, but she was still complaining about the pain down there from just having a kid. Ungrateful bitch. I gave her those damn kids to give her life purpose! She can't thank me with some ass? I hit that hoe across the head."

A cardinal is one inch from my foot, head cocked to the side. Staring at me. Deep into what I feel is my soul. I want to protect myself, defend myself. I kick at it. "Scram you little shit! I am talking to my mother!"

The bird does not flinch at my foot coming, doesn't fly away as birds should. It is sent across the meadow from the force of my foot. I usually love the cardinals, but only the male ones. The male ones understand me. They whistle back. The female ones judge me. I can see it in the way they stare silently that they hate me. "Stupid fucking pussy bird." I whisper to myself as I watch the birds soar in the air in an arc, only to crash land some few feet away, beak first in the snow. "Should leave your fucking place, bitch."

Dorothy speaks for herself this time, a wispy voice in my right ear that I can barely hear over the sound of this howling wind. "Does a woman deserve your anger? Are you truly just angry at me?"

I flick the voice away, angry. "Who asked you TO FUCKING SPE-"

Dorothy speaks again, this time in my left. "Admit it Nathaniel and your life will be spared." Three cardinals approach from my right again, blood dripping from their beaks. "You are only angry at your mother. You are only angry because life told you to hate your mother." One beak is inches away from my hand holding the knives still. 

I flick the voice away again angrily, and try to turn around to swing my knife at whoever is speaking, but vines have grown around my arms and legs, holding my firm to my spot at my mother's feet. "I- RELEASE ME YOU FAT COW!" I fight desperately at the vines, at the constraints, at the birds. 

A woman comes into view in front of me. "I have listened to you speak for years, son, about your hate for women. About how you hit abuse and torture them. You, then respond for me, pretending I would condone all the things you are doing. Did you forget why this tree is even here? Did you truly forget who I am? Who you are? The spirits of this forest know all that you have done. Admit now. Admit before these spirits that you are wrong."

I try to speak, but vines grow into my mouth. Constricting and constraining me. The more I struggle, the tighter the vines become. Crows approach, landing beside this ghost of my mother. They watch silently as the cardinals draw in closer to parts of my body that are exposed, blood pouring from their beaks. 

"I reside in a tree now because your father killed me. He murdered me over lunch, son. Murdered me because I would not make him one sandwich." The ghost approaches closer, standing directly in front of my feet. The first bird pecks me. I want to scream at how much this hurts, at how much pain I feel. The vines silence me. The birds peck at me. The world around me only watches silently. 

"This is how it felt Nathaniel. To be a woman, married to an abusive man. I was stuck, just like you are now, just like your wife is. Tied to another being, as daily life begins to chip away at who I am. The people around me do not comment on my black eyes or on the bruise on my leg. They only comment on what good a wife I was to my husband and what a good mother I was to you."

I begin to pray, saying the Lord's prayer in my mind over and over, to drown out this pain. *The Lord is my Shepard, I shall not want..*

"I did as you are now, turning to powers greater than me to save me in church. God only watched as I watched you now, with a deep sadness, knowing how my story will play out. He intervened as He could, blessing me with my rainbow baby, you, so your father would stop hitting me every time I lost a child. He blessed me with a group of other strong women to hold me together as I endured this abuse. He also opened my eyes to the problems I faced."

Chunks of flesh on my stomach are missing, as the birds peck their way into my organs. One drags out my lower intestines and flies off with it, leaving it trailing out of me. The pain is excruciating. I can only roll back my eyes and silently gag.

The pain was given way to acceptance. Acceptance of the circumstances I am in. Acceptance to the pain I am in. I cry out to God again, tears dripping onto the vines that encase me. *God, please. Save me.* 

My father always told me after Dorothy died, that it was her own fault. That because she choose to rebel against him as the head of the house, she needed to pay for it at his hands. That God commanded him to do so because of how my mother acted.

I was always angry at my mother for disappearing on me, leaving me with a negligent abusive man who could not cook or clean. With the many smelly, strange women he brought into the house.

Was there no salvation for me? Is there no God? What God would allow a man such as myself suffer at the hands of a weak woman. I could beat this woman right now, tear her limb from limb. But, I can't move... Am I the weak one?

A bird has crawled inside me as the world goes black. I can no longer hear my mother speak.

Am I the weak one for leaning on these crutches of delusional salvation. Am I the weak one for allowing my life to be taken in the moment? Is my mother truly the strong one, able to kill a man such as me? A man who goes to church every Sunday and prays often. A man who follows up church by drinking and at strip clubs. A man who beats his wife. 

As sensation turns to nothing and the world is black, I give in. What power does an angry violent man have to fight Mother Nature Herself? Can God even save men like me, who fight their own salvation? What is salvation anyways.. 

Maybe this is salvation.