Free This Is How I'd Love You by Hazel Woods

sundown, she can hear her father’s footsteps coming home, the notes of his distinctive stride carried to her through the thick adobe walls.
    There are plenty of storefronts lining the wooden sidewalk—even a Chinese food restaurant and a dry goods store with several bolts of decent linen. But Hensley doesn’t want to go out again, she doesn’t want to acclimate. Nothing feels real here. Or, perhaps, “here” has very little to do with it. She touches the desk, the doorknob, saying the words to herself, or sometimes aloud, just to remember the existence of concrete, actual objects.

C harles leans so far forward, his chin nearly rests on the wheel. The use of headlights is strictly prohibited so close to the front. Nobody’s eyesight is good enough for this, he thinks just before the road is illuminated and then decimated by a barrage of light. He stands on the brake and turns the wheel into the darkness. His chin hits the steering wheel and bounces off with a surprising smack as his molars slam together and ring in his head. The truck hangs on two wheels before jamming to a hard stop against some unknown obstacle. An inordinate amount of wet, slick blood drips into his lap.
    He cuts the engine and grabs for his helmet, holding it over his head, waiting for another shell. The fear that makes his hands tremble turns his thoughts fatalistic. As he huddles there in utter darkness, already bleeding, he imagines the disappointment his father will feel at his death. How irked he will be that the fortune will have to transfer to his second cousin.
    But the singe of smoke in the air is all that follows. And then, just beside the King George, there is an awful, deep howling. He must investigate; he must respond, damn it. As Charles reaches for the torch, he hopes this dim light will not get him killed. It appears that he is smack up against a tree, its deeply wrinkled bark almost an outgrowth of the truck’s green metal. The incongruity of the two objects is momentarily disorienting. It is a blooming tree, with white flowers that are falling around him like a winter blizzard. The shrieking continues and Charles steps out of the truck, surmising that he’s inadvertently come upon a field of wounded. Using the torch, though, he sees nothing but grass. No bloodied bodies, no pits emanating smoke and rot, no destruction at all.
    He follows the sound with his light and is startled to see a horse, its nostrils flared, its eyes alight with panic. The horse bares its awkward, yellowed teeth, bellowing another horrible complaint. “Damn,” he says quietly, wishing he hadn’t bothered to get out of the truck. Wishing he’d just backed away from the tree and driven on into the darkness. But now he has no choice. Charles moves toward the animal and it quivers. It is standing on three legs, the fourth nowhere in sight. A bulging, inside-out wound is throbbing and oozing, its parts hanging in the space where there was once a leg.
    “Oh, hell,” Charles says, pressing his sleeve against his own chin. “What’s happened to you, huh?”
    The animal tries to move, to rush at Charles, but it stumbles and falls, crushing its own entrails beneath its body. It howls a terrifying protest and Charles holds both his hands out in front of him, hoping to calm or quiet the beast.
    Charles realizes immediately that there is nothing to be done. He kneels on the ground and the horse continues to fight, thrusting its good legs in desperate, painful attempts to right itself.
    Charles places one hand against the beast’s face, wishing its terrible moaning would cease. The flanks of its jaw are soft and significant like Charles’s favorite childhood Labrador, Tux. He strokes the horse gently with his fingertips, remembering how when he was a boy, he’d often sneak Tux to his bedroom, allowing the dog to sleep on his bed. Tux’s heavy body near his feet was a constant, unspoken reassurance and when he awoke with the dog’s soft, graceful profile