Welcome Home, Stranger Me

The last bus dropped me two miles from my cabin. The forest road was pitch-black,

my flashlight beam a frail tunnel in the swirling mist. The silence was wrong.

No owls, no crickets. Just the crush of my footsteps and the ragged sound

of my own breath. Then, I heard the second set of footsteps. They matched mine

step for step, twenty yards back. I stopped. They stopped. My light swung behind

me, finding nothing but mist and pine trunks. Panic,

sour and metallic, filled my mouth. I started to run. It ran too. Closer now.

I burst into the clearing where my cabin should have been. It was just a charred,