Hatchet
I should have known it wasn’t going to end well when you brought along that hatchet. We were having one of those adorable, early-relationship picnics in the woods. You said these woods were mystical and your favorite place. I was so doped up on the high of being with you I barely registered that we had somehow wandered into what seemed to be the set for the forest scene in the Wizard of Oz. Gnarled branches stretched into our path, snatching bits of clothes and skin from us. You never once turned or winced.
The leaves were mostly fallen and obscured the deertrack that we were running along. The ground could have swallowed me up and I wouldn’t have noticed. You wreathed my world in fairy lights and ran, beckoning me further into your world. I would have followed you to the ends of the earth.
Then you tripped.
The spell was broken for a moment as your well-kept appearance slipped. As you met the ground, your hair was loosened from where you had tied it back. I rushed to your side and helped you up, while searching the ground. There, in the middle of the dirt, was a piece of wood. It wasn’t just a stick or a limb but someone had put their soul into carving, sanding, and smoothing that wood. It stuck out of the ground at a foot-catching angle and seemed to be stuck in the soil. I tugged at it and you helped me.
Together we wrested the tool from the grip of the earth and it was revealed. A hatchet. You laughed that laugh that always made me feel like I had finally found something after searching for hours. You said that it must have belonged to some lumberjack who got lost on his way to Canada. I said it could have been a toothpick for Paul Bunyan. I thought you’d return it to its resting place of dust, but you lugged it along on our little trip to paradise.
The days started to fall into each other like so many sighs. I was lost in the haze of it all. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. Then it finally did.
Our pink-tinged, Hozier permeated, wild run together was over. And it ended in a dead stop. You didn’t answer my texts, calls. I was worried. A day became a week, a week became two. Then I went back to the woods, distraught and desperate. Maybe you have returned to our sanctuary. You had.
It was no longer our sanctuary.
I watched the two of you through the trees, lounging on our sacred ground. Your lover leaned over you and I could see how you fit. Perfectly. Your lover completed you in a way I couldn’t. Chests rising and falling in sync.
I wanted to be confused and outraged, but I couldn’t. The chasm of numbness had opened beneath my feet and I was lost.
The cold crept in. You had leached every speck of light out of my life and disappeared like a robin into the thicket.
I don’t think you understand how much you took away. So many things I enjoyed and shared, now shards on the floor. Sure I spent a good share of that month melancholy and reminiscent.
Then the resentment rolls in. Who does that? Who just leaves, no notice, and never looks back? You knew how much you meant to me. You knew just how carefully I had armored my heart and how much time it took for me to trust.
It had been a couple of weeks before my phone rang. It was 2 am and I was laying in my bed staring at the ceiling. I rolled over to see your name across the screen. The confusion increased. Why now? Why me and not your new victim? I ignored the call. I ignored the fifteen calls that followed before silencing my phone.
You want nothing to do with me. I want nothing to do with you. A simple equation.
Now I lay, spread across my bedroom floor, “The Love You Want” in my ears and my head in a fog. A voice cuts through. Maybe not a voice but a vibration in the boards beneath me.
Bury me.
It’s not loud or overpowering but the intonation rings through my skull.
Bury me.
I sit up, wrenching my neck, left to right, trying to locate the source of this message. I am alone. The general chaos of my room is welcoming and undisturbed.
Bury me.
The intonation does not fluctuate or indicate any emotion whatsoever. It simply is there, a fact as immovable as Everest. Where could it be coming from?
Bury me.
That’s when a glint catches my eye. In the middle of a rather large swath of clothes near the dresser in the corner, a blade reflects the sun into my eyes. I reach the pile and draw out the object.
Bury me.
The hatchet gleams in my hands. What am I supposed to do here exactly? It seems as though the hatchet is speaking to me.
Bury me.
I would ask questions but quite frankly I’ve seen enough horror movies to know the right way to handle this. So I set the hatchet down and ignore it.
I ignore it while I get dressed.
Bury me.
I ignore it while I do my little cardio session.
Bury me.
I just turn up my music and stick in my earbuds. Now this didn’t drown it out and it made a game I played with myself to see if the bury me message would line up with any of my songs, which it did every so often.
Eventually I make myself some food. I will have to go to work soon. Ten straight hours of opening pallets, unloading them, and repeating the process.
Bury me.
I wonder if the hatchet would still affect me as I left my place. Was it just my proximity or perhaps it was an auditory hallucination. Maybe I am being haunted. I’m very interested to see if it wants to follow me to my soul sucking job.
Bury me.
So I head out and hop on my bike, earbuds still in. A little bit into driving, it goes away entirely. I just shrug. I’d really rather not have to see a head doctor. The wind and light drizzle whipped past my visor. The gray matches my numbness. I am starting to get slightly concerned though at my lack of a reaction. My life was all fairly normal up until my hatchet started trying to contact me. All I’m thinking was: maybe it just wants to go back to the woods. I mean you uprooted it pretty ruthlessly. I make a mental note to take it back as soon as I got home.
As I’m at my job, just stacking boxes under the unforgiving fluorescents, my coworker Marie comes up and starts talking to me. This is a regular occurrence as Marie chit chats away and my hair hides the earbuds that block me from the majority of what she says. Not that she’s not interesting, she just talks. . . a lot.
“So Kevin is being such a jerk right now. I mean he just sent me to help Jackson with his section and I did like ninety percent of it! Of course I have an above average work ethic so I got it done but Jackson wasn’t even the slightest bit grateful that he got to go home early. Oh well, he’s been in a funk anyway about his girlfriend packing up their van and going to Oskaloosa to her sister’s ex. But you know I always thought Lacey was the type to keep it in the family. . .”
I let Marie’s words go directly over my head. The monologue never stopped, not even for breathing which was fairly impressive. At any rate, it is comforting to have that constant background noise that assures me that I’m not totally alone.
“. . . Anyway you know what I think?” Marie pauses.
This never happens. I don’t believe I’ve ever had to say a word to Marie to keep her talking.
“What?”
“I think you should bury it.”
My vision and hearing are tunneling. “What- what did you just say?”
She looks at me with empty eyes but a smile from ear to ear.
“I think you need to bury that hatchet.” She tilts her head to the side a little, trying to coerce me. She has gotten closer to me than I thought; her face only a few inches from mine. “I mean it’s not that big of a deal. Just bury it, you’ll feel so much better. Trust me.”
“How do you know about that?” I stumble back a few steps, breathless. I am only concerned with keeping the box in my hands between me and my creepy coworker.
“Know about what?” Marie is back where she was when she started the monologue, a confused expression on her face. She honestly looks a little shocked that I’m talking to her. “Are you okay?”
“Never mind.” I wheel my pallet out of there as fast as possible.
Am I actually going crazy? Hallucinations are a thing and I haven’t been drinking water lately…It’s completely possible right? I’m sure if you could see me now, it would be obvious I am stretching and reaching for any possible explanation.
So I stack boxes absentmindedly, mostly trying to block out the urge to run to my bike and ride as fast and far from here.
Home’s not safe because it’s there, probably waiting for me. Or at least there’s plenty of things to fuel whatever madness my brain convinced itself it’s seeing and hearing. I slow my breath, making it deeper, making myself think in reasonable terms. Okay, something is clearly wrong and leaving my place did not make it any better. A quick Google search tells me that I could have anything from Schizophrenia to just spontaneous brain activity.
Either way, I probably shouldn’t be trying to work through it. Maybe if I go home, I can just sleep this off. That’s a good idea. Though I need to figure out what I should say to my boss so I can leave. I’m having hallucinations about burying a hatchet with my ex doesn’t sound like a good excuse, so I’ll probably say I’m going to throw up or something like that. This is all fine. I can’t freak out on top of everything else that’s happening.
After several deep breaths and stowing the rest of the pallet, I walked to my manager’s office with the tremor in my hands mostly gone. This is all fine.
The door is open to the teensy little closet that barely contains a desk and a chair. I remember wondering in my job interview if they hired short managers simply to save on leg room. My manager, Kevin, is in. Kevin is a nice guy, and generally pretty good with people. He’s the customers’ and most of my coworkers’ favorite. He can kind of be a pushover from time to time which is annoying when dealing with irritable and outrageous customers, but should suit my purposes quite well today.
“Hey, Kevin. I’m not feeling so hot.”
He looks a tad bit startled when his eyes leap from his lenovo screen to me. I can see a bead of sweat roll down his bald head. While it’s usually pretty cool out there, this little cage can get pretty stuffy.
“Oh hey. What’s up, how’s it going?”
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“Um yeah. So I am not feeling great. I think I’m coming down with something. I finished up my rounds. Is there any way I could go home?” I hate asking for things.
Kevin mops his forehead with a little white rag he has sitting on his desk and stands. “Well I don’t see why not-”
He cuts off abruptly and shuts all the blinds of the windows to the office and steps around me to close the door. My stomach starts to seep down into my toes. Something isn’t right. This is all fine.
When the outside world cannot see us, Kevin moves with lightning speed and lifts me by the front of my polo collar. I never expected to see him move so quickly.
“What the he-”
“You’ll bury it. Just bury it.”
I am held in place by my shock at the sudden raising of stakes. This is a direct threat. Everything else was just benign but now a manager who I know for a fact doesn’t have it in him to kill a spider, is dangerously close to choking me out. I might be going crazy but my manager is threatening me so who’s crazy now?
“It’ll all be better if you just bury it.” Kevin lowers me and the second my feet are holding me up once again, Kevin is back at his desk.
“I don’t see any problem with that. I already made Marie help Jackson so we should be caught up…”
My breathing comes heavy and fast. I don’t know how he got back there so fast or if he even stood up in the first place. I really must be losing it. At least if I go home no one will attack me.
“Alright, Kevin. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
My voice shook as well as my hands. I nearly ran to the door but slowed to a frantic walk. So the hallucinations are physical now, wonderful. It is getting harder and harder to think that a nap will solve this.
Oh who am I kidding, naps fix everything.
The automatic doors opened and I got out in the rain. It was really coming down now. Oh great, I’ll be driving home hallucinating but also on very slick asphalt. A recipe for disaster.
I try for a deep breath. This is all fine. I will get home and hey maybe I might even wake up from this. It might just be a bad dream.
I shake it off and put on my helmet. This is all fine. I just need water, food, and a nap. Maybe even a call to my mom. Couldn’t hurt.
I get on the highway, wheels zipping over the inch of water that covers the road. I’ve ridden in the rain a lot and used it to my advantage but with this hatchet situation my heart will not stop racing. I can’t even listen to my metal music as it blasts in my ears.
I’ll be off the highway soon, almost in the clear. Then I noticed something. You know how those billboards along the highway will advertise for your local plumber or weird harassment lawyers? Well I was on a section of road where there were a few of them.
They all read “Bury the Hatchet”
That’s when I lose control.
My hands slip from the handles. The front wheel slides left. I shut my eyes tight. My bike and I skid from the right lane into a random exit.
My right side and the helmet take the brunt of the burns. I open my eyes and see my bike in the scrubby grass and muck on the shoulder. The pain must be there but I can’t feel it as the world starts to grow dim.
I gotta call my mom.
It takes some doing to roll over so that I can free my phone from my leather jacket’s front right pocket. I type in the only number I know by heart and press call.
The ringing is tinny in my ears and she picks up three rings in.
“Hey, honey. Are you okay?”
“Yeah mom, I’m fine.”
“Okay, what’s going on?”
“So, um, it’s kinda hard to explain.”
“I’m sure it’s not all that bad.” Even in its crackly state, her voice almost convinces me that everything’s alright.
“I just, I don’t know if I can trust my brain. It feels like it’s playing tricks on me.” I skirt around the whole hallucinating thing. I shouldn’t have called. I’ll just deal with it. Somehow. “I guess I keep thinking about the same thing over and over and I’m trying not to but that makes it worse.
There’s a pause and then she tentatively asks. “Is it about your ex?”
“. . . Yeah.”
“Well, from the way things ended that makes sense. Sometimes when things are that quick, you hold on to all this anger and confusion. You can’t just let go of that. You can’t just work hard enough and it all goes away.”
“I see.”
“These emotions aren’t just torture. They’re indicators of what you should do. If you just sit there with them, you’re going to drive yourself crazy.
“You need to confront the problem. You can just solve it so easily all you have to do is go see them. It can be over so quickly. This mental torture that you’re going through, done like that.”
She’s so vague about this. Like I got what she is getting at, but this is such a weird way to say that I should just communicate with you and try to talk it out. Plus, my Mom would hardly be this calm about this. She doesn’t like you at all and was glad when you left. “So you’re saying I should?”
“I’m saying you should bury the hatchet. If you just bury it, all of this will be over. All the torture and the hearing things. It’ll stop bothering you. Just take that hatchet and bury it.”
Her voice is no longer convincing and goes whispery and soft. I immediately hang up and lay my head against the pavement.
Maybe I should.
Maybe all these hallucinations and life threatening situations have some merit. It’s clear that the hatchet must be buried. But I never dug it up. It was you.
You tripped on that handle. You dredged up all those terrible memories and made them small. You drowned me in love and affection and your needs. You dragged me along and made me feel like I could have all that. That I could have you.
But you ripped it all away from me. Stranded me only to crawl back searching for my gullible sympathy. It couldn’t be just my mind betraying me. You betrayed me. So I’m going to do it.
I’m going to bury the hatchet.
My mind clears and my heart rate slows. It’s that simple really. I’ll just do what the voices say.
I roll over but feel no pain from my torn right side. I army crawl over to my bike and stand.
I right it and hear a thumping sound as something hits the side of the storage compartment. I flip up the seat and there it is. The hatchet.
Did I put it there? Did it follow me? Who cares. It’s here for me to bury.
I grab it and wheel my bike to the side of the noise reduction wall. I sling the hatchet into the back of my jacket and begin to climb over the wall with all the handy little pieces that stick out.
I vault over the wall and find myself in the forest we loved so long ago.
You’re not far now.
The handle is smooth against my palm. The wood is easily decades old. It weighs about five pounds and it knocks against my leg as I shamble across the uneven ground. The rain is pounding on my back and neck and streaming down my face. It filters through the overlapping branches. It’s cold and unforgiving. I’m moving slowly but surely toward where you live. I nearly fall because of a root sticking up. That wouldn’t be good would it. It is pretty sharp and I am not. I’m running on two hours of sleep in the past four days and a protein bar I ate two days ago.
Time is wasting.
I finally find myself at your house. It is tucked away in the woods and deceptive, like a witch’s candy cottage. You invite people in to eat them alive.
Fortunately your house’s old brickwork has also settled to provide me with purchase so that I can scale your walls.
I climb once more and take off the jacket, hatchet at my hip. I wrap my elbow with the jacket and am about to bash your window in, but pause. I push my hands against the glass and direct the pressure upwards. Of course, you in all your security wouldn’t lock your windows.
I slip through and see you.
There you are. After all this time, your beauty has not changed. You’re laying in your bed, sleeping on your back like there’s absolutely nothing to worry about.
I stand over you. This reconciliation is exactly what we both need. I can finally move on from you. Be free of your power.
And so, I bury the hatchet.
In your heart.
