I was bored on this gorgeously-rainy day, so I decided to look for a little writing challenge. Went onto a place where I found a short-story challenge generator. Anyway, this was the challenge I got. Rated 12+ for minor violence and such.
CHALLENGE: The story must have an owl in the middle. It must have a hammer in the beginning. In the story, someone inherits a lot of money.
Jackson struck his hammer hard, one time, then another. He breathed heavily, wiping the sweat from his face. Another hard days’ work had made him exhausted.
He trudged into his tiny wooden cabin, hanging his rain-drenched coat on the hook before collapsing into his old leather seat. Jackson rubbed his face with calloused hands, now dirty with mud…and red with blood.
“I’m a killer,” he breathed, so unaware of all else that he didn’t hear the clicking of his wolf hound’s claws as he padded across the floor and rested his large head on his master’s lap. “A murderer.”
For a moment, Jackson sobbed, something a man like him was shamed to do - but in this day he’d already done so many things he was ashamed of. Killing an innocent man for money. So what if it had led to him gaining an inheritance? He’d killed his own grandfather, and that was that. Jackson had never known him, yet he knew enough to realize he’d killed a man with a better life than his own. His wife would be waiting at home expecting him back in an hour or so, their daughter Lara…his sister…probably there making some of that hot chocolate that tasted so good. Jackson had never had any interest in meeting their grandparents, but Lara had, and was out there with them almost every weekend. Surely she’d be waiting. And her son, too. The one she claimed looked so much like him. “Your perfect green eyes, and that sandy-colored hair,” Lara always said. “He looks just like you, Jack. That's why I named him after you.” But there was such a difference now, because that little six-year-old was young and naïve. He didn’t know that evil lurked in the world - even in himself. Jackson had never thought he’d be so desperate as to kill a man, and for what? A fraction of a fortune. Pathetic. His green eyes were no longer beautiful or unusual; they were dark with desperation.
The rain ran down the windows. Flames licked the logs in the fireplace, making shadows leap along the dark walls like ballet dancers across a stage. This should have been comforting and warm, yet he’d never felt his blood so cold.
There was a knock on the door. Jumping from his place on the seat, his heart nearly leaping to his throat, Jackson raced to the backdoor. His grandfather’s body lay there by the woodpile, near the red-stained axe. His strange green eyes remained lifeless. The guilt was pushed aside, replaced by manic fear. No one could know, not a one. Not unless he wanted to spend the rest of his life in an iron cell…or worse. Without thought, he struck a match upon the corpse, brought to life by gasoline, before racing into the forest.
He was surprised by how loud the woods suddenly seemed. Branches crackled, rain rattled the pine needles, the wind and his breath letting out loud labored gusts through the chilling air. Jackson didn’t look back at the fire he’d started, nor at who was at the door. He didn’t think about whether his poor hound was still inside, or about the fact that everything he owned would most likely be eaten by a cloud of smoke and ash and flame. In fact, he didn’t think at all.
For a while he ran, mindless and without direction. Adrenaline pulsed through his veins, a predator now transformed to prey. “Damnit,” he muttered, gasping now as he fell to his knees. Pine cones crackled under his weight as he lay there, staring up towards the towering pines as they swayed back-and-forth, lulling him to sleep.
When he opened his eyes, an owl sat perched on the lowest branch of the nearest tree. “Who?” it inquired, as owls often do. Yet this wasn’t a bird’s sound, not at all. This was a knowing voice, a voice that plainly asked “Who?”
“Who?" Jackson asked. "I don't know who! Not me!"
The wise old owl’s large orb-like eyes glimmered with a sage patience, familiar green eyes glowing, saying yet again, “Who?”
Jackson shook his head, covering his rain- and tear-drenched face in the hopes that no one would see his weakness. “Me! It was me! I did it, I did it!”
The owl looked rather amused now, flapping its wings and cocking its head. “You?”
“Yes, yes! I did it, I did it! Lord, just kill me now! It’s all my fault, it’s all…”
He stopped suddenly, narrowing his eyes darkly. “You’re a bird. A bird. Some stupid bird. I don’t need to tell you anything, and it won’t matter if I do! You are a bird!” Jackson laughed madly to himself, kicking off his shoes and dancing around on the leaf-littered floor, unfazed by the needles and thorns that prodded his feet. “A bird! Just a bird! No one knows but a stupid…old…bird!”
“My god…Jackson?”
No, this wasn’t the bird this time; an owl doesn’t know names, or have the ability to speak them. And in fact, the owl probably hadn’t been asking who was to blame to begin with, but instead called out for his fellow bird friends to come join his laughing at the crazy man in their forest. But this voice was not a bird.
Jackson turned, to see the stunned face of his sister Lara. “I-I saw your house on fire when I came to visit. Then I let your dog out and he barked like crazy and raced into the forest. I called the fire department then followed him along the deer path to find you. What…what happened? Where’s Grandpa?”
Jackson looked at the tree once more, at the familiar green eyes…the strange, strange green eyes. “Grandpa…” he whispered in disbelief. This was not just a bird in a forest, not just an old owl who sat watching in amusement. “Who” was not a mindless sound of a bird, nor was “you.” This bird was his grandfather, demanding the truth, demanding his insanity, his guilt, his hopelessness. “I did it…”
And with that, Jackson fell to the ground, strange green eyes now lifeless, and the owl took to the sky once again.
