The Community

Blood soaked the cannabis fields, and I stood in the middle of it thrumming, alive. This was my fifth, and easily my best. I had carved my victim just right, each cut deliberate, each piece arranged in perfect display.

I knelt, blade still slick, and sliced strips of flesh free. Warm. Tender. Wrapped carefully in cloth, tucked into my pouch. Saved for later. The thought alone made me giggle, my shoulders shaking.

A floodlight snapped on. Voices. Shouts.

I froze.

They were too close, trampling the far rows. If they saw me with my work… no, not yet.

I bent quickly and plucked a few fat buds from the stalks, crushing their resin between my fingers as I bolted. The sweet, sharp scent clung to me as I tore through the field, leaving the body behind.

The wood line emerged on me and quickly swallowed me whole. It was like the cannabis fields and the woods were connected.

I ran until the field was no longer visible when looking back. I ran to The Tree of Arrival. Its trunk was scarred with hundreds of names, gouged deep by hand and blade. Every soul who’d joined our community had carved there, bleeding themselves into the bark as proof they’d cut ties with the modern world. They called it sacred. They whispered about the tree, the tree that drank the names, held the weight of every secret, every sin.

I pressed a palm to the rough bark, dragging my fingers across the grooves. So many marks, some shallow, some nearly grown over.

Normally I would enjoy the presence of the tree but tonight, the tree was only a compass. Westward, to my cabin.

I sprinted the last stretch. My chest heaved as my cabin rose out of the dark, small and hidden at the edge of the woods. I slowed, scanning the neighboring cabins for movement. Quiet. Empty.

Inside, I went straight to the bed, pried up a floorboard, and pulled out the safe beneath. A cold box I’d built myself, perfect for preserving meat. My trophies slipped neatly inside, waiting.

The rest was routine. I stripped, and dunked my clothes in raspberry and beet water until the fabric bled into a deep, saturated red. The same red everyone wore here, dyed and re-dyed when garments grew thin. It was the community’s way. They thought of it as practicality. I knew better. It was my camouflage.

They’d never suspect me.

I leaned back, breathing deep, the iron tang of blood still in my throat. And I smiled, because I already knew- there would be a sixth.