EVANORA

He found the darkness strange in the forest. He had always lived in a city and always had some sort glow of street lights to keep him company as he staggered home swimming in alcohol. As he left the paddock and stepped onto the pine needles at the entrance of the forest he couldn’t believe the blackness he was seeing. It was absolute and total. He tilted his head backwards and looked up skyward at the millions of stars dotted on a black canvas of night. Evanora moaned and vomited down his pant leg in her sleep. None of the light made by the stars filtered into the forest at all and he was glad he bought his torch with him.

"Soon baby girl...soon" and he headed off into the darkness switching his torch on and lighting the way ahead of him.

Night time was always the time that his demons came out begging him to come and play and bringing out the worst in him. Ever since the car accident his life had been one jumbled self contained disaster that continued daily and nightly until the line between what was right and what was wrong had vanished completely. Drink blurred his reason and his dignity and left him with no sense of shame or compassion.

He became the monster he always wanted to be and took out all the things he always wanted to do on Evanora. His sick and perverted obsession for his daughter had led him down the ever broadening path of depravity obscuring all the rules he was bought up on and had adhered to all his life until he met her mother. Then he changed. She changed him. She made him feel inferior. He pelted his shovel against a pine tree and it quivered raining pine needles and cones down on him and on to the unconscious body of Evanora on his shoulder.

His feet announced his arrival into the glorious clearing that Evanora now called her new home and he plunged the shovel into the soft rich fertile soil letting Evanora slide off his shoulder on to the forest floor at his feet. She groaned. Perhaps the drugs were wearing off? She was coming back to the real world. He held the little mirror to her mouth under torch light and it was still fogging slightly so she was still alive and breathing but the next needle would finish her for ever.

He walked around the clearing looking for a place to dig a hole deep enough the put Evanora into and to his surprise the pine needles hid every area he shone his torch. It almost camouflaged the entire clearing all but one space seemed to be the only place to start digging. It looked to him like an old fire pit close to a really ugly tree that was gnarled and loaded with sharp spikes protruding from its bark. He walked back and retrieved his shovel yanking it firmly from the ground and clenching it in his greasy hand then proceeded back to the fire pitt and buried the shovel into the dirt and old ash that was on the surface. It didn’t appear to be to hard to get into a good rhythm throwing shovel loads out on to the pine needles and the hole began to to shape, size and depth.

Evanora suddenly felt the night air on her skin.

She was waking up.

She heard the shovel throttle the dirt beside her and dislodge the previous years exhausted ash then she heard it emptied from the shovel on to the pine needles. Some one was digging next to her...but who? She clenched the pine needles in her hand out of site of the digger and she knew where she was.

She was home.

He kept digging and every so often he would pat his pocket to feel the needle tucked into his handkerchief just to make sure it was still there and after reassuring himself that it was...he continued making the hole deep enough so as not to attract attention once he put Evanora in it. Something flew by his head and he heard a flapping sound close to his left ear. He picked up the torch off the forest floor and did a quick sweep of the clearing to see if he could see what it was.“Most likely a bat” he thought.

The shovel was now reaching into softer soil the further he went downward and the hole was gaining depth quickly. Another flapping sound close to his ears and now he was angry.

What the fuck is that?.....

He looked back into the hole with his torch and it was deep enough now, so he dug the shovel into the dirt beside the hole and then felt for the needle in his pants pocket.

“Its time baby girl” he said unwrapping the needle from its confines and gently squeezing the plunger to push the sleep syrup into the tip until it dripped on to the forest floor. His torch was pointed towards the hole he was digging in and with the needle in one hand he reached down with his free hand to pick the torch up and he turned to point it at Evanora’s body on the forest floor....and she was gone.

He dropped the needle....

His torch went out..........

He was in complete and total darkness.......and he wasn’t alone.

“EVANNNORRRAAAAA !!!” he screamed into the blackness and at once the forest came alive around him....there was no escape.