An Acorns Flash Fiction Feature
By: Sarah Jean Benvenuti
The rain played upon the tin roof, plunking out a tune that the General couldn’t quite follow. His eyes blurred the ledger lying open on his desk as his ears focused, trying to make sense of the metallic tings that sounded atop the howling wind. It had been steadily picking up over the last hour, creating a tension that kept distracting him from his work. Just when he began to hum along, an arhythmic knocking on the wooden door broke the spell.
“Enter,” he called, voice gruff with frustration.
The Captain stepped in from the rain. “Sir,” he said, standing stiffly at attention with his eyes leveled at the wall. His salute was wobbly as he maneuvered around his sling and neck brace.
“At ease.” The General stood to make it easier for the other man to look at him. The man’s blue eyes seemed fogged over, looking through the General rather than at him. The Captain should be resting so soon after the accident, but he had begged to finish out the mission. I’m getting soft in my old age. “How are the preparations coming along?”
The Captain’s posture eased slightly, but he shuffled from one foot to the other, hands tapping his thighs to the rhythm of the rain on the roof. “On time, sir. But this storm…”
“Hmph. A little rain never stopped us before.” The General sat back at his desk and looked down at the ledger.
“I know, sir, but it’s just…well…” The Captain drifted off as he gestured towards the door, his eyes lingering on the window.
The General’s hand tightened around his pen in frustration. The man hadn’t been the same since the accident. Lost his damn nerve, the General thought, cursing his own sentimentality. He should’ve put the man on leave as soon as it happened.
“Out with it, soldier!” he said, impatience sharpening his tone. “We need to leave within the hour if we’re to meet the king’s deadline. We don’t have time for this lollygagging.”
With a boom, the door flew open, wind and rain blowing papers off the desk with a piercing whistle, causing the Captain to slam his hands over his ears and huddle behind the folding chair. The General rounded the desk and shut the door. “It’s just a bit of wind, man.”
Looking up from where he was crouched, eyes wide, the Captain pitched his voice high as he said, “I do not think that is simply wind, sir.”
The General shook his head and put his hand on the other man’s shoulder. “This is my fault. I should have sent you home as soon as it happened.” The other man shook his head. “You need to take a break, Peter.”
“Sir, respectfully, I’m not losing it. Ever since we cut down that section of old ashwood, ever since…” he held up his bandaged arm and touched the brace “…something has been off. And now this music on the wind…”
The General coughed, covering his discomfort as he remembered his own humming. “Enough. It’s just wood, soldier. It is the king’s forest and the king has every right to harvest it. The forest may push back now and then, but we have the law and the gods on our side. I’m sorry you took the brunt of that last hit, I truly am, but you will not hold up this operation any longer.”
Peter attempted to shake his head around that ridiculous brace. “But, sir, it’s not just me. The others…”
“The other soldiers report to me now.” Peter fell back into the chair, head held low, as the General loomed over him. “You are relieved of your duty. Go back to the barracks and collect your things. I will go with the transport and you can leave once this storm has blown over.”
Without waiting for a reaction, the General grabbed his thick rain slicker off the hook and stormed out into the tempest. He could barely see a meter in front of him, but he could walk this lumberyard with his eyes closed after all these years, leaving his mind free to think. He believed fully in everything he’d said to Peter about these woods, but the king’s hunger for growth was outpacing their resources, pushing them deeper into the forest than they’d ever gone before. That last accident was different.
The wind howled around the piles of logs, creating percussive tapping where it had blown up a bit of tarp, whistling as it moved through the small spaces. Even the sounds of his men in the distance seemed to add to the symphony as engines revved and voices seemed to harmonize, the edges of the words softened by the rain.
He shook his head. Just get this shipment home. He would report the anomalies to the royal advisors, but it was unlikely they would change course. They never did listen. Perhaps it was time he started thinking about retirement.
His feet began stomping to the beat, creating booming splashes in deepening mud puddles. Each flap of his coat was the flash of a cymbal; the water on his hood the tinkling of chimes.
When he looked up, he was facing his men. How had he gotten across the facility so quickly? He rubbed his face. Tired, that’s all. That final push deep into the ashwood forest, Peter’s accident. He needed to get back to the city and wipe the past week from his memory.
The men were lined up in front of him and he almost jumped in surprise. He huffed a small laugh. “I guess we’re ready to go.”
The soldier closest to him stepped forward. “Oh, we aren’t going anywhere.”
The General’s brow furrowed in anger. Did Peter get to these men? “Soldier, are you disobeying an order?”
Through the rain, the soldier’s eyes seemed to darken. The wind whipped through their ponchos and an escalating rhythm seemed to be tapping right into the General’s skull. He tried to shake the sound out of his head. When he looked back up, the young man had stepped closer. His eyes didn’t seem darkened now; they were dark, a deep black like endless wells. The General took an involuntary step back and looked at the rest of the soldiers. Too few of them were here and they all had the same bottomless black eyes.
“What have you done with my men?” He yelled, continuing to step backwards.
The soldier shrugged, gesturing to the fallen trees piled around them. “You took so many of ours. It was only right that we take some of yours.”
The rain and wind strengthened, creating a vortex of sound. The General slipped, falling into the mud. The rustling of tree branches, water dripping from the piles of wood: it all moved through his mind, blinding him and blotting out all thought. In the distance he could hear someone screaming. A man, an old man…screaming.
About the Author:
Sarah Jean Benvenuti is a writer, musician, professor, and creative entrepreneur. She is the Founder and CEO of Benvenuti Arts; an adjunct professor for Master of Arts Management Programs at Carnegie Mellon University and the Università di Bologna; and a cofounder of the roving artists colony, the Wandering Theatre Collective. Her arts management writing can be found on the Benvenuti Arts blog and she has been published in The Atlas of Gratitude & Delight by Write Pittsburgh. While based in Pittsburgh, she has been nomadic for over a decade and can be found frequently in Bologna, Italy and Inverness, Scotland.