Tag: fantasy

Bob · Story Series

The Monster in My Building: Part 6

Natasha RuhwaldLeave a comment

Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five

It was a half-day at work. I’m on my way home, and looking forward to binge-watching the back-catalogue of a youtuber I discovered late last night. On top of all that, I’m giddy from the fancy decaf coffee that was definitely not decaf I downed on the bus.

In fact, I’m almost okay with the possibility of running across Bob on my way up to my apartment. After all, he was nowhere to be found this morning, maybe he’ll leave me alone now too.

However, as I approach the building I can see Bob standing just inside the door to the east stairwell. At least I don’t have to wonder where he is. On most days I would just sigh and walk over to the west stairwell. But today is a weird day, and at least up until now it has been pretty good.

I approach the building cautiously, though to my knowledge Bob has never attempted an assault on any of the doors. It’s not often I get a chance to get a really good look at this thing, this blight on my existence.

We like to say Bob is nine feet tall, but since the ceilings are under seven, it’s really more of an estimate. Right now his neck is bent in an exaggerated J-shape, putting his head a bit below his shoulders so he can stare at me at eye-level. Which isn’t creepy at all. From what I can see of the length of his neck, he could easily make nine feet if he stood up straight.

His over-sized beak is at least three feet long, black, and flaking at the edges. The bare wrinkly skin on his head and neck is black too, with a purplish tint to it. His claws come out underneath the longest flight feathers on his wings and protrude beyond the black plume of his tail. When his wings are folded, they almost look like they could be oddly thick, stiff feathers. Bob croaks, tilts his head to the side and spreads his wings (as much as they can be spread in the narrow stairwell), and I can see exactly how long and sharp the claws are.

I glance over my shoulder. A woman is out walking her dog on the other side of the street. Part of me wants to bring her over here to see what she makes of Bob, assuming she makes anything at all.

The building residents are fond of saying we can’t all be crazy, but I don’t see why. After all, either Bob (and the occasional physical evidence of his existence) are a shared delusion, or we are all more or less willing to keep sharing a building with this thing. Neither option speaks well of our mental-health.

I have a stupid idea. I don’t know why it entered my head and I don’t know why I don’t dismiss it immediately. I blame the caffeine.

But I reach for my keys. One way or another, Bob isn’t going to be my problem anymore.

I unlock the door and open it, moving aside as I do so. Part of my body is hidden behind the door, but mostly I want to make sure Bob has plenty of room to get out.

Bob growls and fluffs up his feathers, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He waves his beak around where the door was. Bob takes a step forward-

My head is within striking distance of his beak.

I jump behind the door and slam the door in Bob’s face. Bob hisses in annoyance, and I run to the west stairwell, up the stairs, and down my hallway. My hands are shaking so badly I drop my keys and let out a squeak of terror, before snatching them up and successfully opening my door.

I slam my door shut, run down my hallway, and dive into my bedroom closet. Grasping about in the darkness, I retrieve the box of Near Death-Experience Oreos I keep stashed there and start listing all the ways what I just did was idiotic, one for each new cookie. Thankfully I cut this exercise short after the first row, otherwise I easily could have consumed the whole box. But I do not leave the closet. My zebra finches chirp in worried tones outside.

The Monster in My Building : Part 5
Bob · Story Series

The Monster in My Building : Part 5

Natasha Ruhwald1 Comment

Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four

“Alright, alright,” Terry waved his hands, drawing everyone’s attention back to the matter at hand and away from me and my long-awaited muffin. “This is getting out of hand. I suggest we table these suggestions until another-“

Don interrupted him “–well we could vote on it at least.”

Terry scowled at him. “Another day. When we’ve all had a chance to think on it. Alright?”

Don frowned and crossed his arms.

“Right then,” said Terry. “I just have one more announcement. Next week we have a new tenant moving into room 312. We’ll be keeping Bob occupied in the east stairwell during the move, so use the west stairwell or the elevator if you see a moving truck out front on the 25th.”

I nearly spat out a chunk of muffin. “A new tenant? Do they know?”

“Of course she knows,” Terry frowned. “It’s in the lease. She signed it.”

There’s a clause in all of our leases that say we won’t sue anyone for damages associated with Bob. I seriously doubt it would hold up in court, but to challenge it you’d also have to prove that Bob exists. Given his inconvenient disappearing acts whenever the police or animal control show up, I’m not holding my breath.

“But does she know?” I say.

“What do you mean, does she know?” says Terry.

“What living with Bob means. That it’s real. How to stay safe.”

“Well, she soon will. And I trust those living here already will give whatever help they can.”

“This is totally irresponsible.”

Terry huffed. “We have to find renters, Ashley. We’re sitting at 60% occupancy as it is. What do you want me to do?”

“Show her,” I say. “You said Bob is going to be in the east stairwell. Show her. Make sure she knows what she’s getting into.”

“Well, that would be irresponsible. Knowingly putting someone in close proximity to such a creature.”

“Oh, but it’s just fine if you set her up to unknowingly wander into close proximity with Bob dozens of times a year?”

I’m about to give Terry another piece of my mind when a quavering screech from somewhere nearby derails my train of thought. It does nothing to quell my frustration however. Even as I’ve been saying these things, I don’t know what’s come over me. I practically never say anything at these meetings.

Maybe I’m still mad that I had to risk my life to attend, Terry couldn’t even be bothered to get decent snacks, and then started the meeting before I had a chance to get my hands on one crummy muffin.

“Shut up, Bob,” I say.

“I don’t think that was Bob,” says Old Roger.

An uneasy hush falls over the group for about the third time this evening. No one needs to ask the question we’ve all been forced to consider.

“Shut up Roger,” says Terry.

The Monster in My Building : Part Four
Bob · Story Series

The Monster in My Building : Part Four

Natasha Ruhwald2 Comments

Part One | Part Two | Part Three

I stagger out of the elevator, my heart still bouncing around my chest like a demented pogo stick from the miniature heart attack Bob so kindly bestowed on me moments earlier. All this could have been avoided if we just did the strata meeting over Zoom, but as you might suspect, the same factors preventing people from moving out of an apartment building with a giant man-eating bird in it also tend to prevent them from owning computers and an internet connection. Not everyone, of course, but enough.

The only space in the building large enough to accommodate all of us is the lobby, so naturally we all cram ourselves behind the solid door of the optimistically-named “games room.” These meetings are humans-only, you see. Of course it’s not fair to Bob, after all he lives here too. But he refuses to respect the difference between the renters and the snacks, so we are forced to exclude him.

Speaking of snacks…

I enter the stuffy games room, making sure to close the door behind me, and make a beeline for the snack table. It’s really the pool table with a plastic sheet over top, but it may as well always be a snack table since there’s only one pool cue and half the balls are missing. I suspect they’ve been absconded with as Bob-repellent devices. There are a couple plastic trays of muffins on the table, and they are just as uninspiring as I expected. But there is also a knot of people clustered in front of the table, and suddenly I find myself irritated that they would deny me something I didn’t want much in the first place. I risked my life to attend this meeting, is a mediocre store-bought muffin really too much to ask?

Terry, the superintendent, barks at everyone to sit down so the meeting can get underway. As the knot of people disperse, I scoot towards the table. Terry catches my eye and scowls at me. I sit down.

“Alright, let’s get this started. We’ve got quite a few items to get through.” Terry frowns at the rumpled piece of paper in his hands. “Don has a proposal he’d like to make about the fire doors.”

“Yes,” Don stands and addresses the room. “The fire doors exist for a reasons. They are for our safety.”

Carly crosses her arms and sighs audibly.

“Please hold all comments until after I’m done,” says Don.

This topic isn’t new to me. Don, and a few others, think we should leave the fire doors completely closed to make sure they function correctly. Others point out that this will leave Bob stuck on one side of the building, which isn’t fair to the people who live on that side of building. I tune out Don’s speech on fire safety and glance over my shoulder at the snack table.

The chairs are arranged in a tight horseshoe. The opening of the horseshoe is four chairs down from me, and I know there is no way I can get up and walk that distance without incurring the wrath of both Terry and Don. However, I could slip between my chair and the next one and stealthily duck over to the snack table without being too obvious. It’s not like no one would see me, but it might work depending on how heated the fire door debate gets.

“So, in conclusion, we have no choice but to–“

Carly cut Don off. “Are you volunteering to have Bob on your side of the building then?”

Numerous grumbles of dissent arose from others who also lived on the west side. Incidentally, I also live on the west side of the building, but I believe too strongly in the power of controversy to stifle decision-making to get worked up about this.

I examine the space between my chair and its neighbors. Could I fit through? Yes. Without drawing the ire of those sitting next to me? Assuredly not. But, if I scooched my chair to the left, the gap on the right could become large enough to reasonably slip through. Fortunately, Carly is to the left of me, and she won’t mind me sitting a bit closer for the remainder of the meeting, especially if I bring her a muffin too.

“Now just wait a minute.” Don raises his hands to quell the rising arguments. “We can still share the burden of Bob equally, as we have always done. Periodically, we can transfer Bob from one side of the building to the other.”

“And who’s going to do that?” said Carly.

“Well now, as it’s a matter of building safety I think the superintendent–“

Terry let out gruff snort of laughter, which served more to dampen Don’s suggestion than any verbal refusal could have.

“Well how about Don just closes the fire door on his floor?” says the skinny guy who lives on the first floor.

“Oh sure,” says Don. “It won’t matter if I’m baked from a fire from below because nobody else wants to put in the effort.”

I shuffle my chair an inch to the left. Carly glances at me, but I pretend nothing has happened.

“I don’t think we should be closing doors at all,” says Molly, anxiously clacking her knitting needles. “Bob is used to having them open. Suppose he finds one closed, and bangs on it until he breaks it down. We can’t have Bob trying to break down doors.”

The room is quiet for a minute. We all rely on the sanctity of our closed apartment doors for our survival; the thought that these barriers could be breached seems profane.

“We don’t know that Bob is strong enough to do that,” says Don.

“Well, if he is, we sure as heck don’t want him knowing that,” says Carly.

“Or…” says Todd.

“Oh good grief,” says Don.

“Now, hold on, Todd. We’ll get to your suggestion in a minute,” says Terry.

“It’s pertinent to Don’s agenda item,” Todd says.

“Like heck it is,” says Don.

“It is, because if we do it we won’t have to worry about Bob anymore,” says Terry. “We feed Bob.”

A cacophony of protest arises from the room. Amid the hubbub, I scooch my chair another inch to the left, and slip out of my seat and over to the snack table.

“Now, now. Come on. This would solve everything. If we feed Bob, he won’t be hungry. Then we won’t have to worry about him eating us,” says Tod’.

I quickly scan the offerings on the table. One muffin coquettishly suggests it is a chocolate chip muffin, even though I know perfectly well it must be raisin bran.

Despite Todd’s assurances, objections to his idea flood the room. Old Roger, who’s lived here longer than anyone else, shakes his head. I think I hear him say, “that would only bring more.” I shove that thought out of my head and pick up the raisin bran muffin.

“No, you can’t feed him, Todd, because someone else already does that,” Molly somehow manages to make herself heard above the commotion.

The room falls silent again, and everyone notices me standing at the muffin table. Obviously, I have not been feeding muffins to Bob, and I stare haughtily back at them. I snatch up a lemon-cranberry poppy seed muffin, return to my seat, and hand the raisin bran muffin to Carly.

“Thank you, honey,” she says.

She likes raisin bran, mind you. I can’t fathom why, but she does.

Roots · Story Series

Roots: Part Thirteen

Natasha RuhwaldLeave a comment

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part Ten | Part Eleven | Part Twelve

I squirmed on the floral lazboy as my great-aunt Marie handed me a cup of tea. I still didn’t understand why I was growing a tail at all, never mind how to sit down with one comfortably. The first part, at least, I hoped Marie could help me with.

Marie settled down on the equally soft and floral chair across from me. Hers creaked when she sat down on it. “Well, where shall I start?”

I had so many questions. They flew around my head and blended into one another like the blobs in a hyperactive lava lamp. Why was this town so strange? What was with the rabbits? What was in that stuff Marie gave me, and my rabbit, if it was the same stuff? And perhaps most importantly, what had it done to me?

Finally I decided, we might as well begin at the beginning, or something close to it.

“What are we?” I said.

“Human,” said Marie. “Well, almost entirely human.”

“I see. And the other part?”

Marie picked up a picture frame from the side table. After gazing at it fondly for a few moments, she handed it to me.

The photo was a black-and-white of two solemn-faced women in old-timey plain dresses, with a young girl standing between them.

“As you may know our ancestors came over from Germany during the 1880s. Two of them are what we used to call wolpertingers, but now we usually just call them the ancestors or the elder folk. They are sisters and one of them — Marie-Annika — I was named after her, and she also brought her daughter Hannelore, who was half human.”

Marie reached out and tapped the young girl in the photo, indicating Hannelore.

They did look human. But their eyes were large and too round. Their noses were too small, and their ears were prominent and pointed. All of these fell within the range of normal human features, but taken together they produced something of an uncanny valley effect. Something was different about them.

Or was I just seeing it because I’d been told they weren’t human?

“Wolpertingers?” I said. “I’ve seen those on video games. They looked like squirrels with fangs and wings.”

Marie shrugged. “They are a diverse people. They usually take the form of various forest folk. But they can also take human form if they wish to.”

“Which is how a human and a wolpertinger could…get married.”

“It’s not very common of course. Marie-Annika and her sister are quite unusual in that regard.”

My brow furrowed. “Are unusual? Don’t you mean were?”

“Oh no, they’ve both remarried to humans.”

“They’re still here?”

“Yes. Well, not here. They live much longer than we do, of course. But they live in the Black Forest now, “Marie sighed. “They went back to the Fatherland to help rebuild after the Berlin wall came down.”

“As one does.”

“Things were going so well before this year, some of the townsfolk were wondering if they might come back. They’re revered in this town, as you might expect. But with the way things are going now…well, who knows.”

“So, the festival. What is it, exactly? What happened? You can tell me now, surely.”

“Echart does go a bit overboard with the mystery of it, but he likes. Normally people ask questions, and we explain it all at the pond.” She sighed. “When you didn’t, I thought someone had told you.”

“Well?”

Marie clasped her hands and brought them to her mouth a moment before continuing. “It is a celebration of our past, to put it simply. For one month we bring back the old ways our ancestors knew with the root from the Old Country. It changes us and our companions, so that for a little while we know something of their home.”

“Wiat, so this is temporary?”

“Oh yes.”

“Thank goodness.”

“I suppose I should have mentioned that sooner. But what you have experienced is a great gift. I hope you realize that, even if your introduction to it was…unexpected.”

“Sure, it just..took me off guard. A carrot from Germany did all this?”

“No, leibchen. Not the Fatherland, the Old Country.”

“Do I want to know what that is?”

“Perhaps not. At least, not yet.”

Roots · Story Series

Roots: Part Eleven

Natasha Ruhwald3 Comments

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part Ten

“You can let the rabbit out of the hutch now,” my great-aunt Marie said.

Her eyes were glowing and a long cougar-like tail descended from her skirt and curled around her ankles. I realized I must be dreaming.

“Right,” I said.

The fact that I was dreaming didn’t bother me. I’ve had a few lucid dreams before, but I’m not good at it. Somehow, even though I know I’m dreaming, I can never really make the dream do what I want it to. So I figured I would just go along with whatever bizarre scenario my brain had concocted.

I bent down, lowering the hutch to the ground, and let the rabbit out. The peachy colored bunny hopped out, sniffing the ground with the ritual caution of a domestic prey animal that has never encountered a predator.

Marie leaned down and offered the rabbit a deep purple carrot, the heirloom kind you can get at the supermarket, so I presumed. As the rabbit munched enthusiastically, rustling noises stirred in the bushes near the pond.

I shined my flashlight towards the pond and saw nearly two-dozen rabbits emerging from the bushes. Or at least they were more like rabbits than anything else. They came in many different colors. Some the natural brown to beige tones of wild rabbits, and some the white, black, grey or brown patterns of domestic rabbits. They did look like rabbits, only larger than they should be, and with slightly more human proportions.

Proportions that allowed them to, for instance, stand up on their hind legs and start dancing in a circle around the pond.

My rabbit watched them with interest, and soon hopped over to join them. It was clumsy at first, but soon got the hang of things at its proportions slowly changed to match the others. Since it was a dream, I saw nothing particularly alarming in this.

I was however a bit taken aback when I looked back to Marie and saw that she was holding a piece of carrot cake with dark purple icing.

“Now it’s your turn, dear,” she said. “Do you understand what this means?”

I didn’t. What could a piece of cake mean, in a dream or otherwise? However, I’ve had a number of dreams with cake in them, and I always deeply regret the instances when I don’t get around to eating the cake.

So I nodded and held out my hand.

“Are you sure?” she said.

Was I sure I wanted to eat cake? It wasn’t a particularly fraught question, particularly not in a dream when I didn’t even need to worry about what the excessive sugar would do to my body.

My brow furrowed. “Yes.”

Marie smiled broadly, as if I’d just announced that yes, I was sure I was going to follow in her footsteps into some deeply cherished career path.

The cake tasted unique. Quite floral for a carrot cake, but it was moist, perfectly spiced and the icing had just the right level of sweetness.

After that the dream sort of mixed with the memories I had about the festival earlier that evening. I remember dancing around the pond with the rabbits, and Ann and the others were there too.

Still, even though it had to be a dream, the next morning I still had to deal with the rabbit. She was still too big, and with distinctly bipedal proportions.

“Well,” I said. “I guess I just didn’t notice before, because it was dark.”

The rabbit tilted its head to one side and furrowed its brow.

Roots: Part Ten
Roots · Story Series

Roots: Part Ten

Natasha Ruhwald3 Comments

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9

I woke up at sunrise the next day in a disoriented muddle. Not only because I’d awoken in a tiny tent in the middle of the woods, but because I didn’t remember setting up the tent. Well, I guess in a sense I did, but only in the strange dream I’d had.

My rabbit sat on its haunches at the mouth of my tent, watching me. It had gotten out of its hutch. Which was really just as well, since it was now twice its original size, so the hutch would be a bit cramped now. I knew that should have seemed odd to me, but it didn’t. Not only was the rabbit larger, but it was leaner now, less bunny-shaped. It’s limbs were longer too, its front paws proportionally larger, and there was something different about its wrists. They seemed more mobile, like those on an animal that used its front paws to manipulate objects rather than only for locomotion.

I sat up, scooched forward, and gathered my rabbit into my lap. Her fur was warm and soft under my fingers.

Why didn’t this seem strange? I did remember why my rabbit looked like this, really, in the same way I remembered set up the tent after Marie left: in a dream. But that didn’t seem reasonable. Did I care what was reasonable? No, not really.

I tried to sort out the events in my head. Marie, my great-aunt, had left me in a small clearing with my tent, my pack and the rabbit. It was dark by then. Not too dark to pitch the tent, but dark enough that I felt highly motivated to be inside the tent before it got much darker. Thanks to my pack, I was equipped with both flashlight and lantern, so that helped, but only so much.

I immediately began to set up the tent, only to quickly realize I had drunk far too much lemonade, and urgently needed to use the facilities. However, my survival instincts were telling me that striking out along the path to the outhouse, flashlight notwithstanding, was a terrible idea and would almost certainly get me eaten by monsters or murdered by strange townspeople. Clearly, the best course of action was to pitch the tent, and then quickly fall asleep so I wouldn’t realize how badly I had to pee before sunrise.

It was sunrise now. Did I still have to pee? I did not. Not as much as last night anyway.

Ultimately, I wasted a ridiculous amount of time alternating between trying to pitch the tent, and standing still thinking about how much more pleasant things would be if I quickly popped out to the outhouse and scurried back again. By the time I finally made up my mind, it was almost totally dark and the tent was barely half-finished. But in the end, I had to go.

I left the lantern, lit, at my campsite so I could find it again, and set off down the path with the flashlight. And the rabbit. I didn’t want to leave it behind in case a bobcat or wolf visited the campsite for a bedtime snack in my absence.

The outhouse was an uncomfortably long way from my campsite, but I found it eventually, and soon emerged, much relieved. Several paths led away into the dark woods, each equally unfamiliar. After circling the outhouse a few times, and possibly getting more mixed up than ever, I spotted the light from my campsite and headed towards it.

Or anyway, that’s what I thought it was. Because when I pushed through the trees towards the light, I found Marie standing in front of a pond. The light was her lantern, not mine. Then I realized I must be dreaming, because Marie’s eyes were glowing and a long cougar-like tail descended from her skirt and curled around her ankles.

“You can let the rabbit out of the hutch now,” she said.

Roots · Story Series

Roots: Part Eight

Natasha Ruhwald5 Comments

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3| Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7

The trip into town to get the ribbons was…interesting, to say the least. We got a lot of stares and people whispered to each other, and otherwise acted weird. But it wasn’t the sort of attention you’d expect to get wheeling an ungodly amount of black, yellow, and red ribbons in a handcart down mainstreet.

People seemed excited to see the preparations, for what I didn’t know yet. A few even came up to us and asked to touch the ribbons. We said yes; I couldn’t what harm that would do. Some even tried to inconspicuously follow us for a while, pretending they happened to be on their own errands in the same direction we were headed. Thankfully, they gave up on that once we turned onto a residential road.

“So, what do you think are the options of where this could be going?” said Anna. “Say this was a movie, what would you expect would happen?”

“Oh boy, nowhere good.” I said. “There’s definitely a monster in the forest.”

“For sure. And this event tonight doesn’t bode well.”

“No, not at all. I usually don’t watch movies with culty things in them.”

“You’re thinking about Midsommar, aren’t you?”

“Trying not to,” I said. “But regardless of the ribbons, we know this really isn’t a cult. Even though if it was a movie it totally would be anyway. And we know that the participants don’t die. They don’t even warn other people against going. At least not the ones I’ve talked to.”

“They could be imposters.”

“Yeah, but in a movie though. I don’t think that’s what really happened.”

“That would be a little far-fetched.”

“Another thing, though. When I asked about the rabbits, Echart said that what happens to them happens to all of us. But I don’t think that means death, because we know the participants in this don’t die.”

“Unless he meant all of us, eventually.”

“Maybe, but it doesn’t seem like that’s what they’re for. I don’t think the adults would encourage the kids to be playing with them and getting attached to them if that was the case.”

“Then what does it mean?”

“I have no idea.”

We trundled along in silence for a while, and I stared at the ribbons. This conversation had not made me feel any better about what was going on.

“Well, what if it wasn’t a horror movie?”

I shrugged. “Then it’s a weird artsy flick and we’re going to get married to the thing in the forest. Or the rabbits.”

Roots · Story Series

Roots: Part Seven

Natasha Ruhwald7 Comments

Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six

When I woke up I could already smell breakfast cooking and hear the clamor of my hosts, the four other house guests, and what turned out to be another half-dozen people who’d just dropped by for breakfast.

I got lost in the shuffle, and nobody mentioned the cherry cobbler incident, or anything that came with it. I wasn’t sure whether to be annoyed about this or not. Part of me would have liked to discuss it, but I wasn’t really sure it would help. What was there to discuss, really?

I was halfway through a strawberry waffle when Anna mostly-politely shoved aside one of my second cousins and plopped down on the bench beside me.

“Hey,” she said. “Apparently something’s going on this evening that requires a metric butt-ton of ribbons. Want to go into town with me to get them?”

“Ribbons?”

“Yeah, ribbons.”

“Sure,” I said.

Despite the warning about the quantity of ribbons required, I was nevertheless surprised when Anna showed up with a wheelbarrow. Or something like it. It was less awkward than a wheelbarrow, perhaps one could call it a handcart.

“Really?” I said. “We couldn’t just carry them in bags or something?”

“Oh, we’ll do that too. We need all the ribbons,” Anna said. “I mean literally, all of them. The general store made a special bulk order just for us.”

“Wow,” I said.

We trundled the handcart down the street in companionable silence for a while. I noticed Anna’s multitude of charm bracelets, which reminded me of the ones popular girls usually wore at my high school. Somehow this got me off on a mental tangent about the differences between younger and older millennials and wondering whether or not Anna saw me as one of her own generation or essentially a younger version of her parents.

I mean, it wasn’t like because I was older and had kids I was suddenly a member of a different species. And then, I suppose I didn’t really know whether or not Anna did have children, but she was undeniably younger and certainly had that irresponsible, unencumbered “single” air about her.

“Did you notice anything…weird…last night?” said Anna.

“What? Oh,” I said. “Did you?”

I hadn’t actually answered her question, but then I wasn’t sure what the answer should be. Strictly speaking, the answer was yes, but I wasn’t sure what I’d seen was actually significant. But if we started discussing it, I knew it could start to seem significant whether it really was or not.

“Yes,” she said. “I think so. My great-aunt’s house doesn’t have indoor plumbing, lucky me-“

“You’d think there would be building code violations along with that.”

“Right? Personally, I think she pays protection against inspectors to the family of hedgehogs that live under the porch. Those things are ornery,” she said. “Anyway, I had to go outside last night and I saw something. I mean, it could have been a deer or a coyote, but I swear it was walking on two legs.”

“What did it look like?”

“Well I saw a kind of upright silhouette, and the glowing eyes with reflective light like pets have in camera flash.”

I inwardly cringed. “And a long tail?”

“Maybe. That or it waved at me, and I don’t know which concerns me more.”

I nodded and looked down at the handcart.

“So, did you see something?” Anna said.

“Possibly. I got up to get a snack last night. I thought I saw shining eyes and a long waving tail when I glanced into the dining room, but it could have just been something shiny and a tree branch waving outside.”

“Wait, what you saw was inside the dining room?”

“Or outside on the porch, maybe. If I saw anything at all. I mean, it’s so easy to get carried away with these things. Just think about all the people who’ve seen bigfoot.”

“Oh totally. Especially since this place actually is weird. But who knows.”

“I guess we’ll have to keep our eyes open.”

Roots · Story Series

Roots: Part Five

Natasha Ruhwald9 Comments

Click for Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, or Part 4 if you missed them

“What happens to the rabbits?” I asked.

“The same thing that happens to us all,” said my great uncle Echart.

“Right,” I said.

For the rest of the buggy ride, I avoided looking at the rabbits in their little cages. The inhabitants of Innswale put them out by their mailboxes, apparently for Echart to collect, because they still followed the “old ways.” What old ways? And why did they all ban cars for a whole month?

Not a proper month, really. The last two weeks of June and the first of July, because that’s when I said I could come visit. A chill came over me.

No it couldn’t be. Surely, they did this every June. It had nothing to do with me.

Instead of the rabbits, I focused on the rear end of the horse pulling the buggy. It was round and speckled white, and as pleasant as could be expected. It was also puzzling. Nobody said anything about this before I came here. I mean, we all knew Echart’s side of the family was weird. They don’t like technology. They spend too much time in the woods. Blah blah blah.

Too me, all this seemed beyond the pale, and probably something I should have been told about before coming here. For this, and I still didn’t know what “this” was, I’d given up my full yearly allotment of vacation time. I decided I was far too much of a people pleaser, and really needed to learn to say no.

The front yard of Echart’s home was as large as most lots in my neighborhood, and a plethora of my distant relations milled about under the great umbrellas of trees. Packs of children ran around the shrubberies.

As we meandered up the drive towards the house, they were drawn to us as if by magnetic attraction. Older children fetched the rabbits from the back seat of the buggy, cooing an exclaiming over them. Others grabbed my bags. Me carrying them myself was out of the question.

A crowd of cousins of various kinds escorted me to the front door, our procession led by an eager older lady puffing under the weight of my bags. Voices gabbled around me as I was introduced to more names and faces than I could possibly remember.

The house was sprawling and old. The hardwood floors protested with the weight of feet upon it, but thankfully people had started to drift away from the procession, and back to whatever they were doing as the novelty of my arrival lost its luster.

Once we arrived at my room everyone cleared out and left me alone for a bit so I could freshen up and what not. I didn’t stay up there long. Everything was poufy and flower-print, and I felt if I stayed there too long the vines on the wallpaper would come to life and strangle me.

I went downstairs, and then out into the backyard where everyone seemed to be hanging out. Echart’s wife, Maria, found me a chair in the shade and plied me with sugar cookies and lemonade.

Large rabbit hutches were stacked up against the house, which at least solved the mystery of where the rabbits had gone for the time being. The hutches were decorated with ribbons and the children fed the rabbits flowers through the wire mesh.

A petite woman with a shoulder-length bob sat down in the wicker chair next to me. “Hi, I’m Anna,” she said. “I’m one of the other…visitors.”

“Oh. So this is a thing, then,” I said.

“I’m pretty sure everything is a thing.” Anna giggled.

“But you know what I mean. An event. It’s not just me visiting, for reasons.”

“Yeah. I think there’s about five of us.”

“So are you on Echart’s side of the family, or…”

“I’m not. Actually I think maybe one of my uncle’s married Echart’s cousin. But no, I’m from one of the other Innswale ‘old families’.”

“Oh, okay. I guess this is more of a thing than I thought.”

“I know, right? The secrecy is crazy. I tell you though, if we’re being inducted into a cult or something, I’m out of here.”

“Yup, I’ll be right behind you.” I took a sip of my lemonade. “Hey, do you know what’s with the rabbits?”

“No. There’s something with the rabbits?”

“People just left them by their mailboxes for us to pick up.”

“Oh, weird.”

Anna had opted for the pink lemonade, spiked with raspberry cordial.

“The car thing is a pain, though,” she said.

“Oh yeah. Do they do that every June?”

“Different times. Depending on when it works for people to come.”

“It’s for us? It can’t be for us. That’s crazy.”

“It is, but it’s true.”

“Why?”

Anna shrugged and nibbled on a sugar cookie. “I guess we’ll find out.”

Roots · Story Series

Roots: Part Four

Natasha Ruhwald13 Comments

Click for Part 1, Part 2, or Part 3 if you missed them.

The coffee was a mistake. They didn’t have half-caf, but I felt like I should at least get some credit for having asked. Nevertheless, I was fully wired and in no way able to cope with what I found when I finally arrived in Innswale. At first I thought I had gone the wrong way, that it was some kind of mistake.

A metal gate stretched across the road, bearing the sign “no motorized vehicles beyond this point.” Clearly, I had wandered onto the access road for a park, or private property. But no, another sign stood to the side of the road, next to the metal gate. A squat obelisk built of stones proudly bore a large copper sign that said “Welcome to Innswale.”

I stared from one sign to the other. They couldn’t both be correct, could they? It didn’t seem possible, and yet they had both clearly been there for a long time, and couldn’t have been placed by accident.

A dirt road broke off to the right, and I wondered if maybe there was some way around this odd edict. But no, as my car crawled closer, I saw an array of parked cars through the thick tree canopy and underbrush. Some, judging by the quantity of dirt and forest debris collected on them, had evidently been there for a long time.

I was stuck. On the one hand, I had driven many miles to be here, and there were people expecting me. On the other, parking my car and continuing on foot was too bizarre to be the correct response. The sound of a horse-drawn buggy clip-clopping down the road interrupted my musing, though the quandary wasn’t resolved until I saw Echart lean out of the buggy’s cab and waved at me.

I waved back, and went to park my car, trying to normalize the situation in my mind. Innswale is not an Amish or Mennonite town, or anything like that. But I had heard that quite a few people there preferred a low-tech lifestyle. Had this segment of the population managed to make bylaws enforcing their preferences?

Echart hadn’t mentioned anything, but then I didn’t hear from him that often. Though one would think he’d have mentioned it after I said I would come visit.

After I parked, I lugged my suitcases towards the metal gate separating Innswale from the rest of the world. Echart greeted me warmly and threw my bags in the back of the buggy. He was a tall beanpole of a man with a wizened face, and a strength that belied his years. The sparse mop of grey on his head was always slightly disheveled, and the white stubble on his chin made it look like he’d dipped the lower half of his face in sugar.

“Is this a new bylaw? This no cars thing,” I said.

“Oh no,” he said. “We do this every year. Sort of a tradition.”

“How long does it last?”

“It’ll last the month.”

“Is there something special about this month?”

“Yes.” A conspiratorial grin crossed his face. “Oh yes. But we’ll get to that later.”

We exchanged small talked as the buggy rattled into town. He asked how the drive had been. Long, but not bad. I asked what the horse’s name was. Bitterberry. Which I thought was odd, but didn’t say so. Aren’t bitter berries usually poisonous?

We drew to a stop at maybe the second drive way we’d come to. I wondered if we’d arrived already.

“Hold on,” Echart said. “I won’t be a minute.”

As he walked up the drive I noticed a rabbit in a small cage, just beside the mailbox. Echart retreived the cage, and put it in the back of the buggy on top of my bags.

“What’s that about?” I asked.

“Some of the townspeople like to keep up the old ways,” he said.

I waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t.

We picked up three more rabbits before the end.

“So, what happens to the rabbits?” I asked.

“The same thing that happens to all of us,” he said cheerfully.

“Right.”

Now unsettled on many levels, I held my hands in my lap and fiddled with my wedding ring. The coffee was most definitely a mistake. I had to pee so bad. I hoped indoor plumbing wasn’t verboten this month as well as cars.