The Nest

by Gregory A. Douglas

The woman turned, but could not leave. The image was a magnet she could not resist. She scolded herself for a wanton, but her hands moved of their own accord to part the bushes again and let her look in with burning eyes. Quick glances at the road assured her she was alone. The man did not know she was watching. Oh, what an abysmal act! How outrageous for him to be doing this thing! In her woods! She wanted to scream at the pervert to stop, to get out, but her voice was imprisoned by her own undeniable if unbidden excitement. She wanted to run back to her car, but her feet were rooted by an inner wish she did not suspect she owned, beyond her conscious control.

I got a chuckle from this description of a sexually repressed character and her reaction to seeing someone in a compromised position.

Pieces and flakes of skeletons were floating on the sea now. The shore was a viscid spread of inert refuse, a roach-turbulent repository of misery beyond agony. There was no way for a mind to encompass the atrocity. It was the excrescence of Nature gone evil. Evil beyond barbarism, beyond cruelty. It was deed beyond excoriation, curse or damnation. It was Damnation itself. It was an apocalypse of Nature’s mindless enormity, and Reed Brockshaw’s own Gethsemane. Fish would feed on strange fruit this day.

Who would have thought that cockroaches could inspire such an epic / biblical description. "Fish will feed on strange fruit this day." .... Indeed.