Don't Let the Forest In

by C.G. Drews

There was something intoxicating about meaning that much to one person. Addictive.

“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.

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.

“I think,” Andrew whispered, “it sucks to be ace.” “I think,” Lana said, “the world sucks for making you feel that way.”

Sometimes there was no stopping pain. There was just seeing how much you could swallow before it spilled out your throat.