His Rose

Rose got settled into her new home very quickly. She was unpacked and set up before she went to sleep the first night. The next few days, she spent most of her time reading on the porch or the dock and cooking with the food supplies she had brought with her. Her uncle had set up a biweekly delivery with the grocery store in town, but they weren’t scheduled to come for several days.

That was why she was so surprised when she heard a truck door slam outside her cabin as she was making breakfast one morning. She flipped the bacon in the pan, listening to the voices outside her door. As soon as it was done cooking, she set the bacon on a paper towel and went outside.

There were two men outside, one blonde, the other dark-haired, and both with the slightly heavy but muscular build that came with eating plenty and working hard. Rose paused on the porch, looking them over. The blonde one looked somewhat familiar, but the dark-haired one wasn’t anyone she had met.

“Hello,” she said pleasantly, smiling at them as they turned to face her. “Can I help you?”

The blonde man stepped forward and held out a hand to shake. “Hi there, I’m Kevin. I’m from the grocery store in town.”

“Oh, right. Hello,” she said, her eyes following the dark-haired man’s movements. He was poking around in the back of the pick-up they had arrived in, seemingly separating things that she couldn’t see. When he turned around, she smiled at him and turned her attention back to the blonde one. “I wasn’t expecting you for a few days.”

The man shrugged his face twisting into a strange smile. “We had a some extra time today, thought we might come up and deliver a welcome package to ya.”

“Oh?” she replied, her gaze falling back on the dark-haired man as he fished something out of the back of the truck. She craned her neck, trying to see it, but he stayed turned away from her and hid it with his body. Here eyes flicked back to the blonde man, suspicious and worried now.

“Yeah,” he said, still smiling.

Rose didn’t remember seeing the punch he threw, only feeling the impact as his fist hit the side of her head and knocked her to the ground. She landed hard on her side, staring up at him for a few milliseconds in complete incomprehension. He stood over her, the smile on his face twisting into a sick leer. The dark-haired man came up behind him, and she saw what he had grabbed out of the back of the truck - a coil of rope.

Even though her mind was a little slow on the uptake, Rose’s body was already moving. She pushed her self across the porch on her behind, the two men following her slowly.

“Come ‘ere,” the blonde man said, reaching out for her.

Rose slapped his hand away, then launched herself to her feet. As she came up, she swung out wildly with her hand, catching the blonde man a hard slap across the face. Without further ado, she turned and ran for the woods. She only made it a few steps before the blonde man’s weight crashed into her ankles, dragging her to the ground.

“Let go!” she screamed, kicking out hard and catching the thin man in the chin. He grunted and loosened his grip just enough for her to pull her legs free. Without a second though she was up and running.

The dead leaves that coated the forest floor crunched loudly as she barreled through the underbrush. Somewhere behind her, she could hear the two men crashing along in pursuit. It was impossible to tell how far back they were. She glanced behind her and knew she had no hope of losing them, not with the wide trail of broken ferns and branches she was leaving behind. Instead, she ran as fast as she could, not paying attention to where she was going except to get away.

Suddenly there was a blank space between the trees ahead of her. She stumbled into the opening. It was clearly an old footpath, obviously no longer used based on the overgrown ferns and small saplings sprouting in the middle. Breathing hard, she glanced quickly to either side of her, and started running along the path to her right. Only a few moments later, she heard one of the men crash onto the path as well.

“Lyle! She’s over here!”

Rose put every last ounce of energy into her legs, trying to get an extra burst of speed. Despite her best efforts, she could hear the man’s steps getting closer to her. She sobbed in panic, tried to go faster...

All of a sudden, she was flying. She had a brief sense of being weightless before crashing stomach-first into the dirt of the path. She scrabbled at the dirt, trying to move forward even as she tried to stand. She barely made it an inch when a weight suddenly landed on her legs.

“Gotcha!” the blonde man yelled, even as he turned her on her back.

Rose screamed and tried to kick her legs free, but the blonde man’s weight kept her pinned to the forest floor. She clawed at his face, her nails opening gashes on his cheeks and forehead, but still he didn’t let go. He wriggled his way up her body, grabbing her hands to stop her desperate attacks and sliding a knee between her legs to pin her lower body in place.

“Just relax, little lady,” he said soothingly, brushing her matted hair out her eyes as she sobbed. “If ya don’t fight, I won’t have ta hurt ya.”

Rose voiced a cry that was half scream, half wail. The hand holding her wrists tightened, and she thrashed. He raised his body up a little, running his hand down her side and lifting up her shirt. He grinned, and she screamed again, closing her eyes against his impending touch.

But the touch never came. After a second, she opened her eyes, and stared at the man perched on top of her.

There was an arrow sprouting out of his eye.

She screamed in terror, yanking out of his loosened grip. Shoving the body off of her, she scrambled backwards, stopping only when she hit a tree. The man toppled backwards, the point of the arrow that protruded from the back of his head burying itself in the dirt.

There was a crashing, crunching noise a few yards down the path, and the black-haired man barreled into view. He stopped in the middle of the open space, staring at the scene in front of him.

“What the hell?” he exclaimed, frozen in place.

She hear the whistling sound of something flying through the air only a split second before a machete slammed blade-first into the side of the man’s skull. Rose stared in open-mouthed, silent horror as the man’s mouth fell open, blood dripping from between his lips as his body tipped sideways and hit the ground with a sick thud.

There were a few long seconds of silence, in which Rose’s brain tried desperately to cope with what she had just seen.

Then, she heard the crunch of heavy boots stalking through the undergrowth. Totally frozen by panic, she stared as the branches of a pine sapling at the edge of the path were pushed out of the way, revealing a behemoth of a man wearing an old, stained hockey mask.

She watched as he took two long strides toward the second dead man. He placed one large boot in the middle of the man’s back for leverage, and yanked the machete out of his skull. Rose’s mouth formed a silent “O” of terror as the monster man carefully wiped the blood off the machete onto the dead man’s clothes.

She shifted slightly, unconsciously trying to hide herself, and the dead leaves under her rustled loudly in the silence. The man whirled around, lifting the blade as if to strike. All of Rose’s muscles tensed in fear. When he saw her, however, he paused.

For Rose, time seemed almost to stop. Through the blanket of panic in her mind, three thoughts floated very slowly to the surface. The first thought to break through was the fact that the stains on the giant man’s hockey mask were almost certainly old blood. The second thought was the realization that her uncle had been right about crazy people living in the woods. The third thought was only a single word:

Run.