I’ve always loved being alone. From the very first moment I can remember I’ve preferred to sit and stay away from forming groups for a myriad of reasons. One, their chatter ran like nails on a chalkboard to my ears. I hated listening to the gossip, and the way their mouths moved to spout out nonsense I could care less about made me want to hurl. Two, I didn’t like being touched. My eyes twitch in annoyance just at the thought of having another person stand next to me.
And of course, my lack of friends during my earlier years worried my parents greatly. They thought I was being shunned or even bullied, and the teachers’ comments of how I would spend my time always quiet and isolated in the corner, didn’t help to ease their troubles.
It was only until I was a teenager that I’d been able to explain the situation. I just wanted to be left alone and that I had preferred to stay that way. After a moment of silence between them, they reluctantly decided to shrug it off, chalking it up to a phase they hoped I’d outgrow.
Unfortunately for them, my love for solitude outweighed their patronising concerns and by the time I graduated highschool, I moved in with my maternal grandmother who owned a lone cabin in the woods.
I loved my grandmother the most out of all the people in our family. She was like me, in a way: quiet, straight to business, and only spoke when necessary. Maybe that’s why she let me stay. She understood. That, or she just needed someone to wear all the sweaters and gloves she had been knitting throughout the summer.
But I’m not here to talk about my grandmother. That being said, she passed away two years ago and had given me free reign of her wooden home as a parting gift.
And although I sometimes miss her, I was finally alone and happy. There were no gossiping freaks, no cars, no pats on the back; just the songs of the birds, the dance of the trees, and the sweet air of freedom.
I had been living my life in absolute bliss, even more so when I heard the news of a new virus that had come to plague citizens in the cities, resulting in a global crisis filled with hand sanitizers and face masks. I was happy to have been away from all that. Still, I could not erase the uneasiness in my stomach telling me that it was only a matter of time until some people had the same idea as me.
I had to leave my cabin for a few days, not wanting to encounter and begrudgingly let in a lone stranger seeking shelter. So I packed a tent and supplies that would last me two weeks in the wilderness as I ebbed away from my beloved cabin and deeper into the woods.
Five days later is when I am writing this. I just woke up this morning to find that the zipper of my tent was ajar and laying on the leafy ground just behind the opening, was a pale woman whose scarred face was mere inches away from mine. I could smell her foul stench as she grinned ear to ear, showing rows of teeth that were matted with the darkest of dirt and bugs had crawled out of her mouth before she greeted me with an eerie sounding ‘good morning’.
Her voice was so unnatural, as if someone else had spoken with her in perfect precision, only theirs was louder. Her eyes were wide, a similar black to that of her matted hair that was equally as ruined as her skin, and the hiking gear I could just make out behind one of the flaps of the tent was tattered and soiled like she had just crawled out of a grave. The same grave I had buried her in last night.
I couldn’t believe it. At first I thought I was hallucinating, having the guilt finally weigh on me for what I had done. But she was really there. Even as I write this she stares, still smiling at me in the same position, a gap open between her crooked teeth for more bugs to crawl out.
When I had jumped away in terror, the side of her face was still glued to the ground but the obsidian of her eyes slowly shifted to look up at my trembling form, burning me in a way I never thought possible. They weren’t kind anymore. They didn’t hold the same sparkle as when I’d first met her two days ago.
I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t have done this to her but I just snapped. Our encounter was one of surprise and at first it shocked me that I had actually enjoyed talking to her. Only hours passed when I started feeling like going back in my shell again and I thought telling her I was going the other way would make her bid farewell. But she insisted on coming with me.
She wouldn’t leave me alone, she wouldn’t stop talking, and before I knew it, I had snapped. I wanted to shut her up but every time I told her to be quiet, she would only comply for a few minutes!
When I rudely told her to go away, she laughed. She laughed and told me, “Nah, you like my company. Besides, I’ve got more jokes!”
I gritted my teeth so hard I swear I heard a crack, and then I blacked out. I don’t know for how long, but when I came to, I was staring at the lifeless body of the dark haired woman crumpled to a heap in the hole I’d dug, her metallic blood making my shirt cling to the skin of my torso.
That was ten hours ago. I am still in my tent, hungry and needing to take a piss all while being monitored by the still form of the hiker I killed, and I don’t know how to make her go away now. I’ve tried apologising, offering to right my actions by taking myself in, but no promises seemed to work.
I don’t know what she wants because she won’t even talk to me.
Please, someone tell me what’s going on because she just started to move. She had crawled her arm in the opening of the tent and it now lays there.
I just wanted to be left alone.