Don't Let the Forest In

by C.G. Drews

It hadn’t hurt, the day he had cut out his own heart. Andrew had written about it later in spidery lines from a sharp pen—a story about a boy who took a knife to his chest and carved himself open, showing ribs like mossy tree roots, his heart a bruised and wretched thing beneath. No one would want a heart like his. But he’d still cut it out and given it away.

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.

Thomas was viciously talented. Andrew wrote cruelly beautiful fairy tales, and Thomas could illustrate them with a few slashes from a pen with such macabre beauty even his teachers overlooked his endless attitude problems.

Andrew hated the way his brain did this. Destroyed beautiful things. It was like he couldn’t just hold a flower; he had to crush the petals in his fist until his hand was stained with murdered color.

“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.

Thomas let out a laugh that withered into a sob. “They’re not always that big. The smaller ones have bones of clay and glass, and they’re easier to break. I have to kill them, every time, because if I don’t, they climb the fence and get into school. They could attack anyone, go anywhere. I h-h-h-have to stop them.”

“I like how you are. There’s an entire world of ink and magic stuffed inside your head, and I think it’s beautiful. I just wish everything didn’t hurt you so much.”

“Someday I’m running away to a dessert island,” Thomas said. “I will never speak to another person again.” Andrew sighed as he followed. “It’s desert island.” “I said what I said, Perrault.”

It hit Andrew then, how Thomas would sacrifice the world for him without even thinking.

The remains of a battlefield lay in his wake, broken swords and hollyhock crowns left to decay among piles of bones. But the sword plunged through his stomach was his fault. All Thomas had done was ask to love a boy lost in fairy tales, and the boy had ordered him punished.