The darkness is thick, the way cornflower mixed with water might be. Thick and sticky with Summer humidity. Flannel is an extremely stupid thing to wear even in the relative cool of evening, but when you don't have many options, you suffer through it.
The empty lot is still scattered with vestiges of brick and mortar debris from the house that stood in its place a month ago. Semi-Opaque plastic tarp flutters with a nocturnal breeze, covering the site from the street and filtering far reaching sounds from a squealing automobile. In the center of this space is a beaten wooden door, carelessly toppled and abandoned, still shut in its frame. After a brief moment of consideration, the man snakes out a probing hand. Long sharp fingernails grind against the painted surface, swiping in lazy circles of approval.
Grunting as he squats over in the near darkness, the man grasps the door frame and lifts. A thin steel pillar that descends from the tarp bearing skeleton seems like a good enough place to prop the door, and the man sets it there upright.
Hand curls to fist, dark purple, flushed with red from clenching. Like every inch of skin is a bruise. The fist thuds against the door, once, twice, and at thrice a spurt of dust suddenly bursts from the doorjambs along with the primal smell of deep forest. The quiet night holds its breath as hand finds the portal's plain fake brass knob.
At the turn, silence is pierced by a frantic hooting wail. The door bursts open into a cavernous bramble of luminousless green, and dead center of the entryway is a hideous amalgam of ostrich and wolverine and neon. The wooden door sports the three clawed wound from the creature's menacing leg, and the fang stuffed mouth sprays enough hungry saliva to satiate a small garden. Eyes rolling in its head, erect plumage phosphoring with electric color, the creature closes on its prey.
Arms shoot out like javelins the length of a man, no, more. >SKWAAaaaaark...< goes the beast in sudden surprise as mean fingers close on its throat. In the next instant two hands twist in either direction and the whole mass of animal flesh goes limp in tandem with the snap of its neck.
Grobbler steps over the corpse without a second look, peering through into the thorns.
"Yea, this spot'll do," Grobbler chortles, his perfectly white teeth flashing and gnashing and monstrous.
Ax bites, bashes, brutalizes brambles. Grobbler comes back a second, third, and fourth day tearing apart a clearing beyond the door. The wood he piles up in the circle's center, as if he was preparing a great Pyre.
Faerie magic quickens the strength of his arms, and he cleaves through knotted wood with ease. On day three, his ax splinters. He is forced to take a day's time off to steal a new ax from Ace hardware.
Hard work cleared his mind, as if all the ugliness that he was bottling up leaked out in his sweat. Thunk, thunk, his clearing grows twenty feet wide. Half the huge tangle of wood becomes fencing, a dense net of fibrous hedge woven between the living flora lucky enough to have grown an inch further out of his ax's reach. Whatever wood was nearest to straight, Grobbler set on with fervor, hewing rough logs to become two rows of seats. For the table, he fells a great old tree with sap like blood. The wood is stained deep, a red that puts mahogany to shame. Without a proper tool he uproots and steals a traffic sign post and stamps its edge flat with terrible force, using the edge to shear the great wooden plane into shape.
On the end of the sixth day, Grobbler looks out over his work. The table is uneven, the seats wobbly and uncomfortable, but after all the sweat and blisters it looks beautiful to him.
Somebody else better bring the fucking beer. He decides firmly.
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