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By Julia C. Lewis
The odor of burning wood evokes a feeling of dread in me even after all these years. To see a smoldering fire, no matter how cozy it may seem, lights my chest afire with anxiety and sorrow. Sometimes, even an innocent piece of charcoal can send me reeling for hours. I never knew what a true guilty conscience could feel like, not until I caused the death of my best friend and tried to burn the evidence like the coward I am.
♪♪♪
When you’re twenty years old, the world still seems full of wonders and mysteries ready to be unveiled during your lifetime. There’s no worry about old age and the ailments it brings with it. At that time, marriage and children seemed like a distant dream to me, and I had little to agonize over in terms of income and bills. My parents had permitted me to stay in my grandparents’ old cabin along with my best friend, Lance, and it was in that place that I saw myself thriving for the first time in my life. Sure, it wasn’t a luxury condo or a fun house in the suburbs, but even without central heating and next-door neighbors, we had made the best out of it.
High school hadn’t been kind to me, and I had struggled to make friends besides Lance. The other kids loved to pick on me for my bad eyesight and inability to grow facial hair, which were things that wouldn’t have bothered me if it weren’t for their cruel remarks. As soon as I finished school, I forewent any college plans and started a job at a small comic book store in town. I had known the owner for years, and he had happily provided me with employment. With the help of my parents, I earned enough to pay the cable bill and put food in the fridge, no matter the time of the month. You’ve probably guessed at this point that I am an only child.
As fall turned into winter that year, our town was overcome by a cold front, and with it came enough snow to make the bike ride to and from work almost impossible. Buying a car seemed a ridiculous notion at that time, as it only took me fifteen minutes to cycle to work each day. Afraid of slipping on the frozen pavement with my bike, I took to walking and quickly found myself enjoying my daily walks to and from the comic book store. It felt invigorating to breathe in the ice-cold air and feel the unforgiving snowflakes on my face. With my whole future still ahead of me, I truly felt alive during that time.
I had met Lance during our third year in elementary school and we had been best friends ever since. I know a lot of people in town whispered about our relationship, but for us, it had always been platonic. If anything, we felt more like brothers than friends at any given time. We shared all we had, and that included our woes and dreams. I had long known Lance intended to become a published writer one day, and I would have done anything to help him achieve his dreams. Each week I checked the magazines in the comic book store for new story submission calls and copied the information down for him. Deep in my heart, I knew that one day, Lance would be remembered by the whole town, but I could have never fathomed then what for.
“We need to chop some more wood if we want to make it through this winter,” Lance told me over breakfast one Sunday. “The Wylders have a whole stockpile in their backyard, and we got nothing.” The Wylders were our closest neighbors, and their property was over a mile away; we were truly alone out here in the woods at the edge of town.
I scoffed at his remark and took another sip of coffee. “The Wylders are preparing for the apocalypse, didn’t ya know?”
It was no secret that I held a great disdain for Mr. and Mrs. Wylder down the road. Their aloof ways simply rubbed me the wrong way, and more than once, Mr. Wylder ignored me waving at him on the way into town. I had a feeling they didn’t approve of two young men living together, friends or not.
“It’s freezing out, Rich. So, I’m afraid to tell you that today will not be a Sunday spent on the sofa, but rather outside chopping wood.”
My gripes were no doubt heard by all the forest animals.
♪♪♪
It comes as no surprise that I wasn’t a very active person and neither was Lance. Both of us spent most of our time in books, which made chopping wood quite a chore. It didn’t help that the only tool we had was a rusty ax left by the previous tenants, a tool that was quite hard to use for the studious type. With each missed swing, I felt my frustration grow and the fading daylight did little to help.
“This is impossible, Lance!” I growled.
My friend sighed and stacked our misshapen logs in a neat pile. “Only a few more to go and we should be set for a few days or even weeks. Honestly, I haven’t the slightest idea how much wood we need.” He groaned in pain as he held his lower back. “Man, getting old sucks.”
We both laughed and wiped the sweat off our brows.
My frozen fingers gripped the ax hard as I swung and wedged the blade deep into a piece of wood. No matter how hard I tried to pull it out it refused to budge. I wiggled and jiggled the blade, but it was stuck firm. Irritated, I took off my gloves and grabbed the log with one hand, and the blade with the other and pulled.
“Damnit all!” I shouted into the night. “I cut myself!” Above me, an owl hooted in reply.
I looked at the discarded ax on the ground, now free from the log, and picked it back up. As my blood dripped from my free hand, I gripped the ax handle tightly and threw it away from me in frustration. I was done.
At this point, I had forgotten all about Lance, but a dull thud made me realize I had no idea where he was. Soon, his cries alerted me to his position.
“Lance!” I cried out in panic. No sooner was I kneeling on the ground next to him did I notice the ax wedged deeply in his chest. “No, no, no!”
I had no first-aid training, and the sight of my best friend’s blood made me realize how squeamish I truly was. His breathing became more erratic as I vomited into the snow next to him. Adrenaline was pumping through my veins, keeping me from thinking straight. I watched in horror as my friend stared at me in shock and confusion, and little bubbles of blood leaked from his lips.
“Don’t you die on me!” I sobbed between dry heaves. “They’ll send me to prison!”
In my stupor, I did the only thing I could think of to help him and pulled the ax from his chest with all my might. Blood squirted out of the wound in big bounds and painted the snow around us red. Even in the dim light of early evening, it seemed to make the snow glitter like rubies. As more and more blood fountained out of my best friend’s chest, I gripped Lance’s hand and cried and cried. I never thought to call an ambulance, knowing damn well it would be too late.
Once his breathing had stopped and the blood had ceased, I closed his eyes with my frostbitten hands. I no longer had much feeling in any of my fingers, and I knew that I would likely lose one of them due to this dreadful event. The only bright side to this horrible day was that the Wylders’ had left town for the holidays, leaving no one to witness my cries except the empty land surrounding us.
♪♪♪
Even though he had been a petite man throughout his life, Lance’s weight in death almost proved too much for me. I dragged him by his feet over the back porch and into the house, only pausing to quiet the agonizing pain in my back. I hadn’t been prepared for this much physical labor, and I almost laughed at the idea that I had thought chopping wood had been hard work. After I had laid his body in front of the fireplace, I began to undress him and place his bloodied clothing into the fireplace. Lighting it had been no big task, thanks to the abundance of newly chopped wood. It didn’t elude me that I was burning my best friend’s clothes with the same firewood he had stacked not too long ago. I fought tears of anger and self-loathing as I began to chop the person I treasured most in this world into fireplace-sized pieces.
The fireplace didn’t burn his body as I thought it would. Even hours later, I was left with charred human remains, resembling horrors I had only seen in movies. The cabin was filled with the smell of human flesh, which I realized smelled a lot like pork. I grew nauseous at my own body’s response when my stomach started growling from hunger.
My overtired mind did little to help me with my predicament, and in the end, I placed the pieces into an old duffel bag and weighed them down with coal. I snuck out in the depths of night, snow falling angrily around me, and sunk the bag in a nearby river. To this day, it remains undiscovered, or at least I have never heard of anything since.
♪♪♪
All this may have happened a long time ago, but I still regularly dream of rusty axes and charred bodies. Sometimes, my best friend calls out to me at night, asking me why I had hidden him away like a bad secret. I know he is angry for never being truly laid to rest. I’m sure he’s haunting me, especially now that I’m getting older. More than once I found a piece of coal tucked away in my shoes or jacket pocket. He’s never done anything to hurt me, but then again, I don’t think he would; we were best friends after all.
I have a lot of regrets in life, but robbing my friend of eternal peace is my biggest one. I shouldn’t have been such a coward and simply reported the accident. Because that’s all it had been. An unfortunate accident full of smoldering regrets.
So, I don’t know which one of you found out about my past, but fuck you for reminding me! Don’t you think it’s torture enough living with this on my conscience for the past twenty years?
