The Recording

By J.S. O’Keefe

The sunset bleeds into the hills as if the sky had been chopped up with a pickax. Mid-autumn; the tree leaves have turned gold, light yellow, rusty red. It’s picture-card beautiful.

Then the ground trembles. It’s an earthquake, or divine judgment. Or something worse. What could be worse?

At the far end of the clearing, something enormous rises with a groaning heave. It’s an ogre; one-eyed, huge, twenty feet tall, maybe more. He lumbers toward me, slamming into the earth like a falling meteor, shaking the ground with the weight of a T. Rex.

My heart crawls up my throat. I fumble for my iPhone and hit record. I try to speak but only staccato hisses emerge.

The monster towers above me, raising one colossal foot. I know this is the end. Instead, his foot lands on a jagged rock. The ogre’s howl shakes the forest and reverberates through the air. The giant staggers off, limping into the distance.

The seismic steps fade. I collapse against a bush and swear to become a better human being, or at least a good one.

Days later, I finally gather enough courage to watch the recording.

It shows only me. I wear an eye patch over my infected left eye, grinning wide in the dim forest light. I’m stomping an injured bee on a carpet of pine needles. My laughter is high-pitched, feral, thirsty for destruction.

The clip ends with a bloodcurdling scream as my bare foot crashes onto a sharp rock, and the camera jerks up to the sky and trembling treetops.

J.S. O’Keefe has published several shorth stories, creative essays and poems in print and online literary magazines. More at his website: https://www.szjohnny.net