11/4/1864
Dear Mother,
We just arrived at the site. It’s a humongous, redwood forest. The trees are each around 10 feet thick. It’s going to take a long time to cut them all down. I suspect a few months, at least. But we’re going to get paid good money. Mr. McKay already gave us our first payment. It’s twenty bucks and we haven’t even started!
Is Michael okay? Last we spoke, he explained to me how a medic might have to amputate his legs. If you can get in touch with him, I’d appreciate it a whole lot. I love you, Mother. Stay safe, I’ll be home soon enough.
~Jackson
11/9/1864
Dear Mother,
Sorry, I haven’t written in a few days. There hasn’t been much to tell. Anyways, you owe me a quarter. The other lumberjacks and I haven’t been getting along well. They’ve already broken into groups of friends. Everyone except me. Some have started to tease. They say I’m too skinny for a “man’s job”. It’s worth the money, though. I’ve just made my first $100!
Your last letter has me worried. Brother doesn’t seem to be getting better at all. If his infection gets worse, he won’t leave with the ability to walk. Worse, he might not leave alive. Tell him that I love him and pray he gets better. I love you, Mother.
~Jackson
11/11/1864
Dear Mother,
I’m already on my third tree last I wrote to you! I’ve been paired with a gentleman by the name of Gerald. He doesn’t seem to like me very much, but he’s not like the others. The others say things about me that I don’t like hearing, Gerald doesn’t. Though he never directly stated that he isn’t pleased with being paired with me, you can hear it in the tone of his voice.
I’m so sorry about what happened to Michael. There was nothing else they could do. The infection must’ve been spreading too quickly. Cutting his legs off was the only way to stop it from spreading. Tell him I miss him and love him.
~Jackson
11/24/1864
Dear Mother,
While we are working, you’d think everything would be chaotic and loud, with all the axes hacking into their own designated tree. And it is, but at the same time it’s quiet. No one says a word. We all work like steam-powered machines. I like it this way, because when people speak it’s never to give a compliment. No one has had something nice to say about me, and I don’t understand why. I’m going to connect with them by the time we’re done with this job. I’ve already set that as one of my goals.
Sorry, my letters are so short. Everything isn’t as eventful as I had originally anticipated. I won’t be writing for a while. I’ll write when something exciting happens. I love you Mother. As always, be safe.
~Jackson
12/6/1864
Dear Mother,
Hello, again. I just wrote this to tell you how sorry I am. Michael was such a wonderful person with a huge heart. I’m sure he’ll be wearing a smile when he’s walking through heaven’s doors. Hearing that he’s passed hurts me just as much as it hurts you. This is going to be a sad part of our lives, but I can assure you we’ll get over it.
For brighter news, I told my partner about Michael’s death and I think for once he felt empathy. I believe we can finally learn to connect. And who knows, we could become friends!
~Love,
Jackson
12/12/1864
Dear Mother,
I think something else is here with us in these woods. I was working on a tree, today, with my partner and I saw it. It was ginormous. Four long legs. A slender body. Maybe I’m just hallucinating. Anyways, it scared the living hell out of me. We just finished cutting down our forty-sixth tree! It was a pretty big one, too. A quarter of the forest has already been cleared.
I’m looking forward to your letter. I love you Mother.
~Jackson
12/16/1864
Dear Mother,
It couldn’t have been a hallucination. Whatever that thing has just killed two lumberjacks! Both of their mangled bodies were found pretty deep into the woods. The others assume a tree fell on them, but that couldn’t be right. There were no fallen trees near them, and if there was what are the chances one tree manages to hit both, experience lumberjacks, of them?
Next time I see the beast, I’m going after it. If someone doesn’t try to stop it, there will be more than just two dead bodies. I love you, Mother. It might be a lot longer before I can write again.
~Jackson
12/25/1864
I woke up early, grabbed my ax, and headed towards the tree we were going to work on cutting down next, trying to see if I can catch that beast. It was Christmas morning, and we were getting a break for the day. But I needed a better chance of spotting that four-legged beast again. It was dangerous to do this alone. But I needed a better chance of spotting that four-legged beast again.
It was too dangerous to do this alone, but it would be just as dangerous if I didn’t do everything I could to stop whatever it was. I know it will come back and it’s not like anyone would know that I was gone. No one cares where I go or what I do. And it’s not like Mr. McKay does a three hundred people headcount for each lumberjack every morning.
I spent hours there. I had only actually been hacking at the tree for around thirty to forty minutes. The tree’s trunk was ten to fifteen feet in diameter, so it took a while to cut it down. The lumberjack business gets real boring real fast. Very tedious but also very dangerous. It sure does pay well, though.
I had come over to the tree at around fifteen minutes past seven A.M. now it was almost noon, but that’s when I heard something. The crunching of leaves and snapping of twigs as something walked over them. A light chirping noise, next. Followed by a loud squeal. I spun my head around towards the area where I heard the noises and spotted it. A huge, olive-green colored, four-legged monster. Each of its legs was as thick as the Redwoods we were cutting down and almost as long, too. Its forelegs were inverted like they were actually its arms. Its feet were webbed. It had the stance of a spider, but only had its four legs. The head of the beast hung low, hanging off the end of a long neck. It appeared as if the beast was so slender because it was extremely skinny. You could see each vertebra poke out of its abnormally-shaped back. This was something you’d heard described by a fisherman singing his tales from out at sea.
It appeared like it didn’t see me. It just kept lumbering through the forest. Crawling, like a spider. What confused me was how it made a low, chirping noise, like some sort of bird, but closer to something a… turtle would make. It didn’t look like either. It didn’t look like anything God would put on this Earth!
It traveled so quickly, even though each leg moved so slowly. They were just so long! Once it walked to a point where it looked to be just as big as I, I started to follow it. I needed to maintain this distance if I were to stay unnoticed and in turn: alive.
After a few minutes of walking, I saw our camp. The camp where I woke up from. The beast was heading towards it! I ran as fast as I could, but I was no runner. I had to stop to catch my breath.
“Aahh!” The screaming began. The beast had begun stomping on the tents, crushing anyone inside. A few people sprinkled out of the tents, but the beast ripped them up into his mouth and crushed them.
“NOO-” I began to scream, myself, but a hand covered my mouth.
“Shh,” the voice sounded familiar. “If you scream, it will hear you, kill us both and eat us for dessert.”
When I stopped hyperventilating, he took his hand off. It took me a minute, but then I managed to figure it out. The voice belonged to none other but my partner.
“Why weren’t you at camp, Jerry?” I asked. “Celebrating Christmas, with everyone else? Err.. before all of this happened, that is.”
He explained how when we were about to feast in the main tent, he realized that there was no one being picked on, like I normally am. If there was no one picked on, there was no one to pick on. That’s how he knew that I wasn’t there. Gerald looked back at the tent we slept in and I wasn’t there. The first place he went to look at was at the tree we were going to work on next. And luckily enough, he just caught me walking away. Following the beast.
“I need to find out where this beast goes,” I told him. “Someone has to at least try to stop it.”
It seemed like the beast was finished. The screams had ceased, and the beast continued to walk, again. Like nothing ever happened. Like the beast did this on a day-to-day basis and didn’t have time to think about what just happened.
“All right,” Jerry replied. “I don’t know how far you’ll get, but I’ll try my best to help.”
The beast was already a good distance from camp, so we dashed over to the site where chaos had just taken place. The bodies were everywhere. At least most of them were already half-buried when the beast stomped on them. Gerald ran inside and grabbed his ax, and we set off. That murderous monstrosity was already so far away, looking no bigger than an ant. Almost hidden by the trees. We had to run as fast as we could to close the distance just a little bit.
The plan was to wait for the beast to sleep, then we could kill it while it dreamt of its next victims. But it never seemed to tire. We, on the other had, did. After hours and hours of following it, we stopped to rest. A fire was made and Gerald passed out almost immediately. If we didn’t make it, I had to at least get the word out. While Jerry was asleep, I started writing what could end up being my last letter. It was going to my mother.
12/25/1864
Dear Mother,
Hello, Mother. This letter might not make it to you, but I just wanted to tell you I love you. I saw that beast again. It murdered every one of those poor lumberjacks, but I wasn’t so unlucky. Right now, I’m writing this to you somewhere deep inside the woods and Gerald -my partner, who also wasn’t a victim of that monster- is here with me. We’re trying to chase the beast, as I told you I would. We’ve only stopped for now to rest.
If this becomes my last letter, then I’m sorry. I know that I promised I’d come home in a few months, but I don’t think I can keep that promise still. Anyways, I love you, Mother. I hope to see, or write to you, soon.
~Jackson
It hurt to write the letter, but she had to know. I laid back and, with the letter resting on my chest, fell into a deep slumber.
“Ahh!” I woke up to the sound of screaming. “Jackson, help!”
I jumped up and saw the thing we were trying to hunt. It snatched Jerry in its mouth, and I witnessed it crush him in half. Blood everywhere. My only friend… was dead.
And I was next. I reached for my ax and swung right at one of the beast’s legs. Nothing. Not even a scratch. It was as if I never hit it in the first place. The only effect it had on the beast was angering it. It croaked and lifted the same leg. Slamming it down on my own legs.
“Gah!” I winced in pain.
My legs were nothing but a pile of mush, now. The pain only lasted a minute, then the effects of shock took place. The pain was practically gone, but still.
“Please, I beg you. I have a mother waiting for me at home!” I pleaded.
“Please, I beg you to give me mercy!”
The beast stared right into my eyes. Then it started to chirp and croak. Somehow, I understood it. I could hear the words in my head:
“At least you had a home.”
Then darkness.
It was a horrid, sad story for one to hear, yet another meal for the Wandering God. Such is life…