Shorts

Unedited Chapter 1 & 2

Chapter 1

“Thank you for being here. Your cooperation has been noted. Whenever you’re ready, please look into the camera and begin.” The agent pushed the record button on the back of the camera and her partner switched on an old tape deck. The woman took a deep, shaking breath and started to speak. 

“From the beginning?” She looked to the agents on either side of her who nodded. 

“Okay…well, I’d heard of Jackson. I’d seen the pictures. It was a beautiful place. People vacationed there, you know?”

“I guess it began, for me, the first time I stepped into the great hall. This electric buzz swept over me. It was as if I had been wandering aimlessly through a dense fog,” her eyes seemed to glaze over. 

“It was like a beacon of light had pierced through, guiding me. The people there, my soon-to-be brothers and sisters, greeted me with warmth and acceptance I’d never felt before. And their eyes gleamed. They had purpose and I so hungered for the same.”

“At the front was our leader, we called him Padre, was this grand figure of charisma and magnetism. Every one of his words felt like a soothing balm to my soul. I remember his voice, soft but commanding. He spoke to us about the world’s chaos and how we, his chosen, were to rise above it.”

“I remember he said, ‘you’ve always felt different’ and then paused. For the longest time, we all sat in silence. ‘You always felt different because you are. You are all meant for something more’ and I believed him. Every cell in my body believed him. You cannot imagine what that felt like, the calm that came over me.

And then the daily rituals, the community, the sense of shared goals, it all felt right. Every morning we would gather and, in those moments, the weight of loneliness and despair and hurt, that weight lifted. I had found my place in the world. Padre had given me purpose, a reason to wake up every morning. My past felt like a nightmare that I’d woken up from. It was as though a void in my heart was filled and I felt truly, truly alive.”

And the room was still. For a second, then a minute. Both agents looked at each other and turned off their recordings. The female agent sighed and then turned to the woman. Pity or rage in her eyes, it was unclear to the woman still caught in the glow of her own memory. 

The agent said, “You do understand you are being charged with kidnapping, false imprisonment, torture–” 

“Of the outsider?” She was angry in a flash and couldn’t stop herself. 

The agent nodded and the woman fought to keep her silence. Padre had spoken of this many times. She sat back into her seat, smirking with the knowledge that all of this was planned. 

When it became clear she wouldn’t offer anything more, the agent continued: “And what of your daughter? She’s in state custody, now. You’ll never see her again.”

And the woman’s smile grew even wider. He had said that the government would rejoice in the destruction of their family. The woman smiled at horrified federal agents and spoke with the conviction of foresight, “Everything I had, everything, was for him. To use as he pleased while on this plane of existence.”

Chapter 2

He began his mornings the same as any other resident. A distant rooster crowed, welcoming the dawn. The golden light painted his farm in warmth. Sheriff Andrew “Drew” Lawson was the guardian of Jackson. And as he stepped out onto his porch, coffee steaming in the cool morning, he looked to the serene White Mountains. An imposing comfort that kept watch over the town. The view from his porch settled him, he began each day with purpose and ritual. 

Every morning, Drew made the journey from his home to the station. The path familiar, comforting. Each curve and turn a memory. It began as a dirt track winding away from his farm. The scent of fresh hay and the soft lowing of cattle filled the air. He would pass Thompson Falls, where roaring rapids and the white water’s spray revitalized him after a troubled sleep. The pines along the road whispered in the wind, shading his drive. 

As his old pickup made its way into downtown, he would wave to Mr. Jacobson, the grocer putting out his freshest wares into wicker baskets. Sometimes he saw Mrs. Delany with her cockerspaniel. Everyone in town was familiar, not just by name but by the stories of their lives. They shared with each other. Moments of joy, grief, and every emotion in between woven into the fabric of their tight-knit community. Drew took pride in being Sheriff of this place. 

The old woodframed station, painted white with uniform-blue trim, was right in the heart of the town center. It was modest, but it was theirs. His deputy, Lila, was always in early. She would have a pot of fresh coffee and the town’s updates. Crime was exceedingly rare in Jackson, but the occasional hiker or dispute between neighbors required their attention. Most days, Lila played his slightly older sister and spoke of his “niece and nephew”. 

On the quiet mornings, when the day laid out before him, Drew would sit in his gratitude. He felt a deep responsibility for Jackson. To uphold the law and maintain order, of course. But also to preserve their traditions, safeguard their values and the beauty that was Jackson. He’d been raised here, his mother a lost teen in the 70s. He’d played in these streets and the forest lands. His first kiss had been around Christmastime near the bridge. It was more than an office, more than a badge. He’d taken a sacred vow, to stand tall as a pillar of strength for his neighbors. In Jackson, surrounded by the overwhelming beauty of nature and the deep bonds of its residents, Drew had his purpose. 

But perhaps it was true of all ambitions, all grand purposes, that the path was oftentimes through darkness. That every one found the weaknesses in a person’s soul. The Sheriff had floated through these last months on momentum. Guilt occupied every moment of his subconscious. Hidden away from the residents of Jackson, in the depths of the old station, was a dimly lit cell. And behind a heavy, iron-laden door was a woman. 

Dread filled him like poison every day he walked into the station. A kind of fog that seeped under the cell’s door and shaded all of his attention to the inmate. He’d taken to standing over the cell on the main floor. As though he could pay some kind of penance to the universe, he’d stand in the far corner of his office and stare at a blank wall. Hoping for a prayer’s answer, any idea with what to do with her. He’d intended to check on her regularly when she was first imprisoned. But days turned into weeks, weeks into months, and the shame and fear of what he’d done kept him upstairs. The woman had been a threat, but now he was unable to face the reality of her confinement. It had been eleven days since he’d last gone down those old concrete steps. 

Lila debrief him on his “nephew”, it was the boy’s first day of kindergarten and she’d taken the day. And in her absence the quiet of the station, what had once struck him as peaceful, seemed to buzz with malice. With a deep breath and the stilling of shaking hands, he mustered the courage to unlock the basement door and make the trip below. He pulled a single, heavy iron key from his chest pocket and twisted open the lock with a chunk. As the door creaked open, he returned the key to he pocket, the cold metal clattering against his heart. She was malnourished and dirty, her clothes barely more than tattered rags. Even her once fiery eyes were dull. Her spirit was beginning to break; the fear of being abandoned here, the growing certainty that she would die in that cell. He saw the bitter hope in her eyes when he opened the door. 

“Why?” she rasped, a touch of her old defiance. He didn’t answer, instead stacking gallon jugs of water from a shelf along the cell’s exterior wall onto the floor just inside her cell. Keeping one eye on her, he pulled downed canned food: fruits, vegetables, soups, all pull tabs. He couldn’t trust her with a can opener. 

“Hey! Look at me…” she tried to shout but her dry mouth sent her into a racking cough. He rolled her a bottle of water. She tore at it like an animal, spilling most of it down her throat, but a good amount carried rivulets of grime down her chin and throat. She gasped and panted for breath, two. And the rage flared anew, “Why are you doing this to me?”

She started to stand and he unclipped his service weapon. She eyed him and then sat back against the cinderblock wall. Drew struggled to find his voice, “I–listen, I can’t just let you go.”

Despite the state of her, she smiled at him, “This is protecting your precious town, is it?”

The guilt bit into his core, “It’s complicated. You’ve done things, you’ll do things that put us all in danger.”

She staggered up, laying a heavy hand on the wall. The weakness of her condition caused her to sway, but her will did not waver. “I’m rotting in here, Sheriff. Is that justice?”

The woman stared at him, anger and panic evident in her gaze. He turned away, unable to look at her any longer. He vowed to provide a better level of care, to try and alleviate the guilt he carried. 

“Do you feel trapped, Andrew?” she whispered to him. 

And the weight of his responsibilities fell heavy across his shouldersl. This woman wasn’t just a threat to Jackson; she posed a danger to a balnce far greater than any single town. He wasn’t holding her captive out of malice or some conjured vendetta. She represented chaos, an entropy that could unravel the fabric of reality he and others had sworn to protect. He kept her down her to maintain a delicate equilibrium. 

And then she was on him. A hellcat tearing at his face and eyes with black claws and a demon’s shout.