Short story - “Days of Innocence“

One of the possible covers

To be fair, this is not my favorite short story that I wrote, however, it was patiently waiting to be written for 7 years, so here it goes. If you really want to immerse yourself in the story, check out its playlist below:

“This time it was the head of a Red-winged Blackbird. Its lifeless eyes looked like two bugs for Emily. She did not say anything about the bird heads to Daddy. Not even to her classmates. She knew that Halloween was two more weeks away, but she also knew that this was something that she should not have been receiving. Receiving bird heads (at least, two of them) did not make her uncomfortable, she did not know how to handle this strange situation. She squatted next to the head and tried to examine it closely: it was not bleeding at all, and the head was a very light object in her hand as if it was a toy - quite an unusual one. She stood up with her head in her hands and took a look around: the neighborhood was the same as it is on cold October mornings. The streets were empty, the gray morning left its gloom around, and the red and brown leaves were scattered around, lying there calmly. The houses looked the same, everybody was in their homes either waking up or getting dressed for school or work. At least this is what Emily sees on weekdays. Her Dad has been following the same routine since her Mommy went away: every morning, he makes his coffee, he gives her breakfast, and they get dressed with some morning cartoon in the background. After breakfast, Daddy hugs her and tells her he loves her very much and they leave the house. On their way, Emily watches the houses go by in front of her eyes from their car.

When Emily gets out of the car, Daddy waves goodbye to her, usually smiling, and she smiles and waves back. She knows Daddy is not happy: he misses Mom a lot. She always tells Daddy that one day Mommy will come back. Emily liked her class, her classmates, and her teacher Ms. Redgrove. She was feeling happy most of the time, but she also missed her Mommy. It's been a long time since she was gone, and Emily did not really have a lot of vivid memories about her. She used to have long black hair - that Emily remembered - and she smiled a lot, exposing her white teeth, much like she would imagine her Malibu Stacy in "Long Black Hair" edition. Emily liked her Malibu Stacy a lot - she would brush her hair, even tell her what she had seen or heard recently, and never got sad that Stacy would not reply. Sometimes, Emily wished she would reply, because she really did not mean to bother Stacy with her stories and it would be nice to talk about things she did not dare to talk about with her Daddy. For instance, what is a "pussy"? She heard the older girls talking about it one day at school, and she wanted to ask them, but she was really afraid they would laugh her off, or push her away. She was thinking if Malibu Stacy knew what a "pussy" is? Emily was sure she could have asked her Mommy about it.

As she was standing there, wondering about all this: she had a happy thought: it was Saturday, which meant no school! And then she also realized that Daddy was out to buy some new tools, so he would be back later. Emily just recently started to appreciate the concept of "me-time" - she could be lost in her thoughts more, no distractions of any kind. Also, she was old enough to be able to stay at home on her own. During her 9 years, she had learned a lot about appliances, she knew all about the "stranger danger", and she was to be trusted.

The temperature was also getting chilly: she turned back while noticing her favorite yellow swing in their garden. It was swaying gently in the October air, with a couple of tiny leaves turning black on its top alongside the morning dew. Emily could not see those details, however, it was enough for her to see the bright color in the gloomy garden. She closed the door, and slowly started heading up to her room, but stopped for a second by the living room. It was still, the armchairs, the sofa, the cabinet on which Daddy's turntable was, and the phone next to a television set, they were all motionless on that morning. Emily finding everything in order nodded and went up to her room with the bird head in her hand. The lights were off in the house, it was not dark, and this half-lit interior made Emily somewhat content. It was the morning after all, her eyes would not bear anything too bright, so natural light (at least, what was available on that gray and gloomy morning) was substantial for her. Her room was a bit darker as it was an attic room, but she enjoyed being there, it was the land of her imagination, the scene for fun tea parties and the beauty sessions with Stacy. She went up to her desk - in front of which, there was a window, where she would peek out on the streets ahead - pulled out a drawer and took out a small bag. In it, there was another head of a bird, a Northern cardinal's. Emily slid the other head into the bag and closed it carefully.

Emily did not know why she was keeping the heads of the birds, sometimes she encountered feathers on her swing, or once a complete wing of a bird, but she never took those.

After the bag was in its original place in the darkness of the drawer, she thought she could go down again to the garden to sit on the swing for a bit.

As she opened the front door, she could hear some animals running in the bushes, just behind the swing. Emily saw the movement, but whatever it was, was very quick. It was definitely bigger than a dog or a cat ("Mom?" - she suddenly thought). Emily wanted to swing but now she was having second thoughts. She calmly went back and closed the door. She went back upstairs to her room because she started to feel uneasy. Her room was in the condition she left it. If there were rays of sunshine through the window, not only would she be able to see but also she could hear the dust particles that would float around. She went to the window and took a look around their yard. To her confusion, her favorite yellow swing was not there anymore.

They say that innocence dies when you lose someone important. This was the burden Jack had to carry. And it was a double burden for him: Emily, her daughter, became a recluse for obvious reasons: her mother, Jack's wife died tragically years ago, and, needless to say, there was not a single day he would not worry about how he could make Emily's life brighter. He was considered a good Dad, all he ever wanted to be. After his wife's death, he was not too active in the dating scene, though. He never saw himself a very masculine man: he always thought of himself as a thin man, never too muscular. His hair was ginger and brown, with enough freckles on his face to feel the embarrassment when talking to girls. This is what Jade, his late wife liked about him for the first time. The timid Jack is sensitive and intelligent. The timid Jack, who is sensitive and intelligent does not exist anymore.

He was standing in the parking lot of Lehman's, the hardware store he visited to buy a jigsaw, some pliers, and, most importantly a sander for his woodworking hobby. It was getting really cold so he sped up to his pick-up, which he had bought from his Dad many years ago at a low price. It still worked, and maybe for sentimental reasons, Jack did not want to sell it. He suddenly remembered how they etched "J+J" somewhere inside the car with Jade on a drunken night, where he was not supposed to drive, so Jade took over the wheels. It was one of her last drives. As Jack was trying to escape the thoughts after these memories, he saw a slip of paper stuck behind one of the windshield wipers.

"What can it be this time?" - Jack was wondering as he approached his car. He grabbed it and read the words: "What lurks outside, gets inside". What the hell could this mean? He was thinking maybe, this was a prank, but apart from Saturday fathers making the most out of the pre-Halloween sales here, Jack could not see any teenagers running away from his car. "What lurks outside, gets inside". He could not put his finger on precisely why this strange sentence started to worry him more and more, but he agreed with himself, that he should get going. He did not like leaving Emily alone, however, she was to be trusted, as for her age, she was very mature in thinking and a responsible kid. Furthermore, the whole trip only took an hour or so, so maybe Emily was still fast asleep. "What lurks outside, gets inside". It sounded like a chant, a rhythmic phrase of terror in his mind, a leech sucking safety out of his system. He ignited his car and started driving out of the parking lot. The weather started to get windier, and colder and patches of fog were already forming, which Jack found unpleasant. He hated driving when the visibility conditions were not optimal for him. Everything else was to his liking: the petrichor, the familiar road, and Nature had always been his favorite since they had moved here.

Jack managed to alleviate the sinister feeling that the mysterious note had evoked in him, and his thought went on to that one particular literature class in high school when they were analyzing a short story, where the external world reflected the main hero's current mental or emotional state. This is something he was feeling: it seemed his sadness and worry overwrote the weather, or at least, it affected the Sun enough not to give enough warmth this morning. The trees and fields began to expand on the horizon and Jack was being comforted by the thought of arriving home soon. His thoughts were with Emily already: what could she be doing? Had she eaten already? He ushered these thoughts into the mental space where he was also excited to open his newly bought gifts, the tools he had just bought for himself. His eyes followed a farmhouse on his right, which made him think about the lonely life its owners could lead. Then suddenly, as quick as the needle of the turntable skips, a loud bang was heard. It was not the sound of a flat tire, nor was it a gunshot. It was as if an animal tried to headbutt the left side of the car. The immense force made Jack steer to the left and step on the break immediately. The car stopped within seconds. There was silence in the car and on the road. In his head, the bang was being heard all over and over again. He could swear he had also heard a crackling sound of a breaking skull. He stepped out of his car and looked around. Nothing extraordinary could be seen, the sky was grey, the smell after the rain was ever so strong, it basically replaced oxygen and the wind was slowly transporting the patches of fog from one place to another. His heartbeat was way above normal when he saw the dent on the door of the car. He did not want to believe it: he went closer trying to make out of what he thought he was looking at. In the dent, black hairs and a splat of blood could be seen. It seemed it was from a human being, which would, crazily, explain the cracking sound of a skull. Jack stood up and at that moment he was aghast to see something that started running in the woods. All he could see was white, maybe a bigger dog, or a white deer. For some strange and inexplicable reason, he thought of Jade.

In her room, Emily took a second look: the yellow swing was still not where it should have been. She started to run down the stairs ("Be careful, no running around" - echoed her Mommy's cautionary words) and opened the door. To much of her dismay, upon opening the front door, she saw no yellow swing. The leaves of the surrounding bushes seemed to be dancing more and more frantically, almost inviting her out to the garden, but now she was in no mood to do so. She did not understand what had happened to the swing, as she had just seen it some minutes ago. "Who took my swing?" - she thought looking at the tree where it was supposed to hang from. After a couple of seconds, she closed the door and went to the kitchen to finish her tea, which had turned cold since morning. She could not tell why but she shuddered. Taking a look at her arms, she could see those teeny-tiny goosebumps that were positioned symmetrically on her skin. As she was pondering upon why she was getting those goosebumps, a click would be heard, and Emily knew almost immediately that this familiar sound was Daddy's turntable from the living room. She never heard it being turned on automatically, but Emily waited for some music to start - as it would normally do. And she was right: one of Daddy's old music started to play, filling the once tranquil room with rhythm and melody. She put the tea back on the counter and decided to check on the turntable. The fast-beat old music of Dad sounded unfitting for the room, it was reminiscent of the big band era, not of a small room in a small town in Ohio. As Emily examined it closely, the turntable was working fine: the needle was reading the holes properly, transforming them into the sound of heavy beats of the drums, clarinet, bass, and whatnot. Its job was mesmerizing, the never-ending tracks on the vinyl seemed to occupy Emily's mind as she was trying to understand the apparent infinite loops of the record. Then it happened: a small jump, a second of disruption, a source-less bang happening altogether. Emily heard it all, she got scared as well: she saw the needle jump, and the music continued. However, it was another orchestra that terrified Emily: the orchestra of the jump of the needle which was accompanied by a loud bang from God knows where. She was baffled, her heartbeat surged, and she took some steps back from the turntable. Then, she went to the window to check on Daddy, if she could see his car turning up to the driveway, but there was no motion on the driveway, moreover, there was no motion on the street. It was a Saturday morning, alright, but sometimes cars would pass from time to time. At first, she thought it was the fog, it was October for crying out loud, but upon closer inspection, she saw what she did not, or rather, would not want to believe. In two weeks' time, she was supposed to start trick-or-treating at Mrs. Foster's house, the house next to theirs, but no matter how hard she tried, she was unable to see her house that was supposed to be within some yards. Just like her yellow swing: it seemed to have disappeared.

"What lurks outside, gets inside". With these words in mind, Jack got back to the car, breathing heavily as what he was imagining to have happened was beyond rationality and sanity. He turned the ignition key and the car started. In no time he was on his way home. He had watched enough Hollywood horror movies and, more importantly, his life had been afflicted with enough tragedies to trust his gut instincts that something had terribly wrong. The car was going a bit above the speed limit, and the fog was thickening on the road, making driving more and more difficult by every mile. Jack was nearing the town border and was thinking to play it cool and calm in order not to upset Emily. These feelings come with the process of mourning: ever since Jade passed away, Jack's concern about his daughter went to great lengths, he sometimes had to stop himself either the way he behaved with her, or in his intrusive thoughts that created emergency scenarios like this one. In these scenarios, Jack started to breathe heavily, sweat profusely, and could not escape the thought that he had to save Emily from some imminent danger. But this time it might be real. He reached town, which meant five minutes from home. After he parked the car, he ran up to the driveway and opened the front door. It was open already, a sign, which just made Jack's worry strengthen: he told Emily thousands of times to close it even if she went down to play in the garden. She was not there, so why would she leave the door open? He rushed upstairs shouting her daughter's name, not taking a look around. Emily was sitting in what seemed to be a sort of a den: branches and leaves all around, filled with feathers, the whole image terrified Jack. Shocked, he stood still not knowing what to say or do. Only after a few breaths, he whispered: "Emily" - again, and Emily took a sharp look at him. Her deeply-seated brown eyes silently watched as Jack's vision started to blur from the tears. His brown boots felt heavy, rooted in the ground, as he wanted to take a step closer to his daughter, Emily started squeaking loudly. At this very moment, there was a noise, a cracking one from the front door. Something was crawling up to Emily's room, while she was squeaking. Jack would not hear this creature's advancement, looking at her daughter in this state, listening to her deafening sound made him shut off his senses almost completely. He could not hear how this something was coming closer with her pale white and rotting skin, every crackling move she made could have been because her bones were broken, restructured and they would never heal, condemned to be crackling till the end of time. Long black hair covered her face which was once so beautiful that Jack could not escape falling in love with her. The face whose bone structure was beginning to look like that of a bird's: her mouth looked like a bizarre mash-up of a beak, her lips hardened, bony, and soon able to make a cackling sound. Her face was partly covered, with her long black hair, with a red, bloody patch on top of it. Her skull was fractured, yet, she was focused on her prey. Because now she was a predator, coming up the stairs, reclaiming what once was hers. This is a new millennium, though: she could not remember how when she was Emily's age, her old grandma showed her collection of animal parts on a seance, she was having with other old ladies: she asked Jade to choose one part that would guide her in her life and beyond that. She took the long beak of a snipe. She was mesmerized by the elegance the beak had, and seemingly it was a good choice. Her grandma smiled and gave her the beak, which she was protecting all her life, until her untimely death. She would not remember how, but later on, she thought back to that afternoon: the humid, rainy afternoon during that monsoon season. The chants that the old ladies made, one with a cataract, but she did not seem to have remembered much apart from these details. And now, her memory was erased, ready to take in new ones: the invocation had been completed. She crawled into the room and stood up, the squeaking stopped and transformed into a merry chirping, some neighbors heard a shout, as they were thinking about the coming Halloween, and in the garden, the yellow swing was swaying gently in the otherwise silent neighborhood.”