A Picnic in the Woods
By Karen Schauber
Boat-tailed grackle and bronzed cowbirds swoop down onto the plaid picnic blanket, ravenous. They pick and poke at plastic tubs of melon cubes, ziti rice with pecan bits, bony shanks of cold fried chicken, and bite-sized squares of lemon curd cake. Famke waves her hands madly shooing the little peckers off and mouthing terse protest cries. The birds immune to her feeble gestures. Olaf is off relieving himself in the bushes. He’s walked away to find a deep dark remote private spot and is now entangled in the dense undergrowth of braided roots, craggy scrub brush, and strangling alpine creepers. He does not hear the commotion on the blanket.
Famke suspects Olaf has wandered off on the trail of a rare, ruffled fungi species — its velvety porcelain skin cleaving to bark and sapwood, stumps and fallen branches. He has left her alone in this godforsaken middle-of-nowhere picnic spot. The ‘perfect’ spot he assured her, just the two of them, to celebrate their 10th anniversary, and to rekindle things. Away from everything, no kids, no dogs, no phones, no work emails.
Olaf had chosen this scenic site, less than an hour’s hike up the mountain, overlooking Emerald Lake, especially because of its remote distance from other tourist sites. They would make new memories, could even be a bit frisky, he said. Famke had suggested lunch at a charming two-starred Michelin restaurant nearby at Otter Bay, but as with most plans, he overran hers, and she dutifully capitulated.
Mulling over the conversation, Famke is annoyed with herself for agreeing to Olaf’s ‘remote’ destination, against her better judgement. Shaking her head, her thoughts derail to tales of cougars and bears, and timber wolves. She sniffs the air with short seesaw breaths. Would she get wind of a savage beast first before hearing or catching sight of one? Dabbing her clammy forehead and neck with the worsted napkin, Famke begins to hum to distract herself from needing to pee, pausing every so often to listen for sounds of Olaf’s return.
In short shrift, dusk settles in without fanfare. The light folding like origami. She holds fort on the blanket made filthy by the invasive songbirds who have picked clean the chicken bones and scattered them across the now drab plaid weave. Just beyond the treeline, sounds of rutting deer, screeching owl, snuffling and grunting of black bear can be heard off-in-the-distance. Famke considers Olaf may not be coming back. She fumbles with the torch, the neon light a mere flicker.
Famke peers into nightfall, the lifeless blue moon drooping above. Iridescent wings cast sombre shadows as vampire ruby eyes bore into innocent unprotected prey. She tells herself that she is safe, impregnable, as long as she remains on the picnic blanket. Venturing out of bounds she would become a target. Just like when she was a small child alone in her bed at night, she would pull the coverlet up over her head and become invisible, the boogeyman completely unaware of her presence. The memory comforts, the nocturnal utterances do not.
Famke must pee. Squeezing her thighs together is no longer working. Counting backwards from one hundred, aloud, she tells herself that she must be back on the blanket by one. She plucks up a wad of napkins and tiptoes into the blackness, her counting holding the scary at bay. Crouching with wrinkled slacks crumpled around her ankles, Famke glances up —the moon now fat and purply like a rutabaga. Anger surges between bouts of fear… “where are you, Olaf,” she moans. Crackling and snapping noises girdle around her.
Famke slaps her exposed bare bum with the flat of her hand, skinning the long-articulated furry legs of the giant spider. She doesn’t notice the pincers tipped with fangs, only the bite—stinging, numbing, disorienting. She slumps, tangled in her bunched-up humus-beige cargo pants, far from the blanket, paralysis sinking her deeper into a stupor. Famke cannot cry for help, her lips swelling like giant gummy worms. Tingling and weakness has spread to her upper body and arms. She can no longer move her eyes, but she can see them coming.
The forest is on high alert—a blight in its midst. Spiderlings, the colour of leaf litter, swarm. Their silken threads bind. Famke’s body pinned like Gulliver. Mother trees stand tall, orchestrating from on high. Detritivores converge, the horde covering her like a mound furred with ants. Gnawing. Gobbling. Gorging. As flora and fauna band together, fragmentation, leaching, catabolism, humification, speed up, frenzied, like a Cuisinart.
Thin shards of light rip through the darkness. Morning breaking. Olaf, arms flailing, clawing the air, hobbles into the clearing, swatting away greedy insects infiltrating his nose, eyes, and mouth. With bottom lip torn and bloodied, his fine cornsilk hair festooned with burrs, catchweed, thorns, and prickles, he pants like an injured animal, eager for Famke’s attention and sympathy. Olaf does not notice her absence. He collapses with dramatic form onto the remnant of picnic blanket, gasping, dehydrated, and reaching for the overturned chardonnay bottle. His makeshift woven twiggy sack of exotic mushrooms spilling. Palms blistered and raw, he crawls forward like a segmented earthworm.
Karen Schauber’s flash fiction appears in over 100 international journals, magazines, and anthologies with nominations for Pushcart, Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, and the Wigleaf Top 50. She is editor of the award-winning flash fiction anthology The Group of Seven Reimagined: Contemporary Stories Inspired by Historic Canadian Paintings (Heritage House, 2019). She curates Vancouver Flash Fiction, and in her spare time is a seasoned family therapist. Read her at: https://KarenSchauberCreative.weebly.com