Don't Let the Forest In

by C.G. Drews

Being left aching and hollow was a familiar feeling. A comfortable pain. Andrew had always been an empty boy.

This was what Andrew did—told stories. Ones with dark, bitter corners and magic curled into thorns. Ones about monsters with elegant, razor-like teeth. He wrote fairy tales, but cruel. Thomas loved them.

But Dove was a statue of glittering ice, beautiful and dangerous and impossible to reshape, while Andrew was more like a collection of skeleton leaves, fragile and crumbling. Dove was the one everyone saw, and Andrew was the one they forgot.

“Just don’t go into the forest,” his father said. “Andrew? Promise me that at least.” “Okay,” Andrew said, but he couldn’t mean it since the forest was Thomas’s favorite place.

Once upon a time, Andrew had cut out his heart and given it to this boy, and he was very sure Thomas had no idea that Andrew would do anything for him. Protect him. Lie for him. Kill for him.