Survival

For as long as she could remember, the tree had always been there. It had withstood the fiercest of winters, horrifying thunderstorms, and several tornados. The great willow had stood the test of time as all around it other trees had surrendered to nature. In the end, the willow had stood all alone; it had been that way since she had taken over the family farm. Through everything the tree had been able to survive, but it had finally fallen by nothing more than a rusted piece of metal and mans own hand.
This winter had been the hardest on her family. Half of the cattle had frozen to death, while the other half had succumbed to disease and died. Wolves had taken nearly all of her hens; leaving the rooster to walk aimlessly around the coup. She couldn’t blame the wolves though; they were just trying to survive, after all.
Survival: that’s why she’d had to chop her tree down. They’d run out of wood the night before and, in desperation, she felled the tree. Killing the tree might mean life for the rest of her family. Well, what was left of her family, anyway.
They had lost Clementine to the cold and disease, and her husband Michael had not returned from his desperate attempt to ride to the nearest town for food and medicine. She figured he had frozen to death, like the cattle had, weeks ago. It was so cold and bitter out, that they had not even been able to bury Clementine, her body sat out under a pile of snow in the barn. Now, all who were left were she and her two twin children: Sarah and Nathaniel. They were too young to understand what was going on around them, too young to understand death.
Everyday they would ask her where Clementine was, or when Papa would be coming home. Yet, as hard as it was, she could only lie to them and say, “soon”. That’s when, when they would ask her about the ones she’d already lost, that’s when she would go to her small window and gaze out at her willow tree. Her strong, resilient friend. She would stare out at her and remember all the warm summers she had sat under her branches and dream about her life to come.
Reality was not that kind. Reality was not what she had dreamt. Not this one anyways. Food was becoming dangerously low, and this willow tree was going to be the last of the wood. She had thought they could survive any winter.
She had thought wrong.
Nearly all the cattle meat was diseased or rotten; she had no chickens left to give her eggs or food. All that was left was the rooster, a bit of flour, and a couple of roots in the clear. Unless a miracle happened upon their door, they would be dead within a couple weeks.
The previous week, she had had to kill their dog. Faithful and loving as he had been, he ate too much food and didn’t do anything else. Her children had been starving and she couldn’t find the rooster.
She told them that she had found some good meat left on the body of a cow. She had resisted the urge to throw up as she watched the children eat their lifelong pet. When she hadn’t been able to hold it in any longer, she ran out to her tree and dry heaved; nothing came up because she had not eaten in days.
She sighed.
That had been last week. She now knew where the rooster had been. She knew why she hadn’t been able to find him the week before. The bastard had decided to fly up, freeze, and die on the top of her willow tree. She’d never really liked him. Come to think of it, she really didn’t like any of his ancestors either. It angered her to remember that she had felt a pang of sorrow for him when all the hens had been killed. That damn chicken had probably been hiding in her tree the whole time.
When she finally retrieved the rooster from under the mess and tangle of branches, she saw his last ‘fuck-you’ to her: he had barely any meat on his body. He’d pulled out or had lost most of his feathers to show her that he had nothing to give her for all her hard work.
Bastard.
She threw his stiff body on the ground and smashed his head with the flat end of her ax. Tiny chunks of frozen chicken head flew up in the air, sprinkling the ground like the toppings of a cake.
Standing up in the open field, she realized just how cold she actually was, and how late it had become. A cold breeze flew by and ran up her coat. A shiver ran down her spine as she grabbed the broken body of the bird, a few logs that she had cut, and headed back to the house, her heavy boots crushing and sinking deep in the crusty snow.
Near the door, her foot caught a heavy piece of ice and crusted snow and she tumbled over. She dropped her load as she went sprawling across the ground.
She let out a gasp as she hit the hard ground under the snow. She swore under her breath as pain rang throughout her body. She lay there for a minute, letting the cold wind whip her body and slash at her with hard snow drift. Taking a heavy breath, she pushed herself up to her knees. She took in her surrounding: the logs were strewn all over and the rooster’s ass was sticking up in the snow a food in front of her, mocking her. She let out a long, desperate sigh, pushed her hair out of her face and up behind her ear and tried to stand.
But she couldn’t.
She looked to her legs, they weren’t broken. Why couldn’t she move?
It was then that she saw a slight steam rising out of the ground from beneath her. Slowly she turned her gaze down.
There, buried deep in her stomach was the ax. Her blood slowly ran down the handle and onto the ground. The entire bottom of her jacket was saturated with blood.
Feeling woozy, she turned and fell back on the ground. Her breathing became labored as she blinked blackness from her vision.
Hearing a soft crunch ahead of her, she turned her eyes to the top of her head to see in front of her as far as she could. But all she could see was the splintered trunk of her willow tree, silhouetted by the setting sun, sticking out in the barren field. A low growl sounded from her left. She heard more snow crunching around her as her fate surrounded her. She closed her eyes, and let the teeth begin to rip at her body.