Don't Let the Forest In

by C.G. Drews

Their story had begun in the forest, a collision both violent and beautiful.

Dove could be tossed into anything and she’d bounce. Andrew was a glass figurine. Drop him and he shattered.

Andrew swallowed, his skin suddenly hot. “I’m scared of everything except the dark.” Thomas huffed the tiniest laugh. “I knew that. You write the darkest things, and it never keeps you up.” “Tell me yours.” “I think someday you’ll hate me.” Thomas’s voice stretched with a loneliness Andrew had never heard before. “You’ll cut me open and find a garden of rot where my heart should be.” Andrew let the silence sharpen between them, waited until Thomas’s breath caught in quiet anguish from being made to wait. “When I cut you open,” Andrew finally said, “all I’ll find is that we match.”

It was strange, Andrew thought, how when something moved in the dark, everyone’s first instinct was to go inside and hide under the covers. As if monsters couldn’t open doors and crawl into bed with you.

Since Dove lived to study, and Thomas breathed art, and Andrew craved stories, they all had pledged their hearts to this library.

To write something nice, he’d need something nice to say. But his ribs were a cage for monsters and they cut their teeth on his bones.

What were twins, if not one to shout and one to whisper?