COLBURN STAYED UNDER. Slashing at the undergrowth and the vines that smothered them. Going further down, moving through gullies and stepping over fallen trees. Calling Celia as he sweated in search and panic. Talking to himself in between. Trying to find reasons for her shoes to be there and for her to be somewhere else. She doesn’t like to wear them anyway. She walked out of the valley on some other side and hitched a ride back to town and now she’s sitting at the bar. Legs crossed like she always does. Flipping the Zippo like she always does. She’s tired of talking to you and she’s hiding from you. That’s all.
The light began to fade.
He chopped and sliced and when his foot got caught in a twist of vines he swung down as if there were hands reaching up from the grave and he sliced his boot. A moment later he felt the warmth of the blood. He dropped the machete and pulled his boot off. There was blood and there would be more. The vines were just above his head and he reached up and pulled them apart. The sun was dipping closer to the horizon and he gripped the machete. Pulled his boot back on and raised his shirt and wiped his face and neck. Panting and sweating and all around him this smothered land. The throbbing of his foot and the blood in his sock and the blood on his hands and his chest heaving while the question burned through his skull. Where is she?
He looked back up the hillside at the stretch of pathway he had cleared, the crooked and butchered trail. He called her name again. The daylight fading and the shadows coming and as he stepped over and around rotted limbs and animal carcasses and snake skins he felt the consciousness of this otherworld as if what was hidden below was not dead but very alive. The air stagnant but seeming to pulse in a hot and heavy breath and not the dull silence that he expected but instead something of a hum. A low and singular note sung by the earth itself. He hacked and crept and crawled and then he would stop when he could stand again. Look around. His sense of direction slipping away and shadows moving in a shadowless world and the deep and hypnotic hum. He came to a space between a gathering of pines and he dropped the machete. A burning blister now inside his thumb and bristles in his hair and on his clothes and he leaned against a tree.
Then he dropped down to his knees. Clawed at the earth as if digging for some answer that may have been buried in that exact spot. Not knowing why but digging until his hands were covered in clumps of bloodied dirt. And then he collapsed. Rolled onto his back. Through the vines he saw the lavender sky.
She’s at the bar. Get up and get out of here.
He came up from the valley and through the woods like some murderous caricature. Wielding a machete. Blood on his shirt and jeans. Blood in his boot. A grimy face and neck. Emerging out of a nightmare and into reality. He hobbled past the shed and across the yard. He sat down in an aluminum chair and he dropped the machete on the ground. The hillsides lathered in the dying light. Something howled. He stared out into the coming night and tried to imagine her laughing.