Taming the Beast

She gathered her clothes from the floor and discovered that even though they’d been close to the hot stove all night, only the top bits were dry. The parts of her pants and jacket and sweater that had been touching the floor were cold and soggy and caked with mud. The dry bits didn’t look much better. The mud had cooked into the clothing forming a pebbly brick like texture.

The idea of wriggling into those damp and filthy clothes filled her with a squeamish sort of dread. Still, she had to get out of there. What if the chopping noise was Ronald, doing something stupid and dramatic to wake her up?

She recalled the first time he’d made his presence known. She’d been working in the library on a wintery afternoon. School wasn’t out yet, so the large one-room library was quiet. Senior citizens read newspapers in the big cushy chairs. Two women poured over immigration books and spoke Vietnamese in hushed tones. One teenager sat on the floor devouring stacks of manga. It was a day like any other. Until Ronald came in. Apparently he’d seen her in passing somewhere—likely walking home from work in the evening—and had become smitten.

He’d kicked open the door to her library like a gunfighter entering a saloon. A dozen of his black-suited goons swarmed in behind him, carrying bouquets of roses while Ronald eyed her like she was an expensive toy he wanted to buy.

“Get dinner with me, honey,” he said by way of introduction. “I’ll make it amazing for you.” Ronald was in his forties, but dressed in shiny track suits. He wore gold necklaces over a white tank top that was stained at the neckline from his bronzer. He smiled at her with his too-white teeth but there was no joy in the smile. It was mechanical, almost threatening.

His goons had shoved books off her display table—the table she’d spent hours arranging with the best holiday books for kids—and covered it with roses.

“You brought me roses,” was all she could think to say. He wasn’t the first man to make the mousy small town librarian the object of his affection. Indeed, Rose got flirted with and asked out constantly, but usually by the elderly men who treated it like some sort of sad game. This felt different. Ronald was no senior citizen whiling away an afternoon with idle flirtations with a woman half his age. No. He was a predator.

“Your name is Rose, isn’t it? So of course you like roses.” Ronald delivered the line without even looking at her. “How about you close this dump down now. I’ve got my limo outside. It’s brand new. State of the art. It’s a fantastic automobile. You should see the interior. It’s all leather. The way it feels on your naked skin is just luxurious.” He looked her in the eye again and a chill ran down her spine.

“I don’t care for roses,” she said. “In fact, I’m allergic.”

“No one's allergic to roses. That’s impossible,” Ronald said. “In fact, I’d like to see more roses in here. Libraries are such stuffy places. They need more light. More air. More flowers. Make a note,” he said, snapping his fingers at one of his goons. “Deliver fresh roses here, every morning. And you, little miss hot-stuff librarian, I expect to see the roses on display when I come back or you’ll be out of a job.”

He wasn’t her boss. He wasn’t officially anything. But his father was the mayor of Poppy Valley and had been for decades. Ronald could do anything he wanted and no one in town would ever stop him.

That was just the first visit. With each additional meeting he grew cruder, more insistent. The man could not believe someone like Rose could rebuff him.

But she did.

Rose shook her head.

She needed to get out of the cottage. She needed to see what that sound was.

But first she needed clothes.

In the same wooden chest, she’d found the nightgown there’d been other clothing. She struggled into a blue dress that was a size too small for her and found wool socks. She stoked the fire and flipped her old clothes over, hoping to dry them enough so that eventually she could try and wear them. Her boots were damp and muddy, but not as bad as she feared. The new wool socks kept her dry enough. And she stole a blanket from the chest and wrapped it around herself before opening the door and going off to explore.

The rain had stopped sometime in the night, but the world was a sea of puddles. The morning light sparked on the standing water. The ground around the farmhouse seemed to be cratered with dinner-plate sized potholes, each now overflowing with captured rain. The forest loomed on all sides, with the topmost branches nearly forming a canopy overhead, even over the farmhouse. The tree looked too big to her. It was as if she’d shrank in the night or as if the world of people had grown smaller and nature itself had doubled in size.

The chopping sound came from farther behind the farmhouse. Perhaps down a little hill. The house itself looked even worse in the daylight somehow, with great holes gaping in the sides and deep slash marks marring the shake exterior.

Stepping carefully so as to avoid the puddles, Rose walked to the top of the hill. Peering down, she saw a man—the biggest man she’d ever seen. He was well over six feet tall and massive. His back was to her but he wore muddy gray pants and enormous rubber boots. Over his back was what looked like a canvas tarp that had been fashioned into a hoodie. He’d been chopping wood—the evidence was scattered all around him—but she saw no ax. He stood with a hunched posture, his head hanging low before him but as she watched he perked up and half-turned to her.

“Good morning,” he said, in a voice that was half-purr and half-rumble. “Do you eat eggs?”

Rose blinked at the question. “Yes?” she said. Then, more firmly, “Yes. Yes, I do. Thank you.”

The man nodded three times then gathered up a mountain of split firewood in his arms and walked up the hill toward her. “Come inside, if you like. I have fresh eggs from the hens and bread and honey.”

The man’s face was hidden in the shadow of his hood, but even so Rose could see that something was wrong with it. His cheekbones were bunched and bulbous. His jaw jutted out too far. She saw his silhouette just a moment as he passed her but it was enough to give her the impression of great deformity. He looked like no man she’d ever seen before. Her breath caught in her throat and the man noticed, sighing in what seemed like disappointed shame.

“Don’t be frightened,” he said. “And please don’t stare. Come in and have some food and tell me what brings you here.”

The giant man walked into the house through a hole in the rear where a door once stood. The splintered remains of it moldered on the ground nearby, Rose saw, as if it had been wrenched off its hinges and hurled away years ago.

Should she follow him? She could run—it would be easy to get away she thought. She could run up the driveway, back to the road, and keep moving westwards towards the sea. Once she hit the coastal road, she could hitchhike down to Bodega Bay or even all the way to San Francisco.

But then what? No, she needed a plan. Or Ronald would find her.

The smell of frying eggs wafted out of the house and Rose’s stomach leapt to attention. Maybe she should stay? Just for breakfast, and to ask the man for directions, and then she could leave. But to walk into some abandoned farmhouse with a monster like him? Wasn’t she smarter than that?

Rose turned to walk