The BOOK of RENEE Ch. 01

"WHAT?!!" Renee screamed into his ear before he even had a chance to speak. There was a cacaphony of noise in the background comprised of people talking and what sounded like playing children running about.

"I took a shower, and uhm, came out... you left."

"YEAH, SO WHAT, AIN'T YOU TIRED OF LOOKING AT MY FAT FACE?!!" Renee was still in a shitty mood.

"Hey, I'm sorry about slamming the ..."

"MISS ME WITH THAT SHIT!! I'LL SEE YOU WHEN I GET BACK, BITCH!!" Renee ended the call as quickly as it began, leaving him alone in the woods. Jaquan stood there on the overgrown wooded path, processing. His brow furrowed, teeth clenching out of abject helplessness at dealing with his woman. He nearly threw his phone into the thick brush, catching himself at the last minute. Jaquan dialed again.

"Motherfucker." The call went straight to voicemail.

Jaquan turned around realizing he couldn't see the cabin anymore.

"Fuck man, aw shit." Jaquan hurried back the way he came realizing that he'd gone further than he thought, swatting the errant tree branches out of his path. Some of the brushes were taller than him, presenting this nigh impenetrable wall of foliage. It was just about dusk outside with things taking on an orangish hue intermingled with slivers of darkness from the gnarled hanging branches above.

"AWK!!" Jaquan tripped on a rock hidden by a wealth of leaves, pinecones and stringy wooded residue, barely able to catch himself as his phone went flying. He quickly scrambled just off the path following its trajectory, quickly realizing his predicament. His height made it necessary for him to squat down using his hands until the tips of the fingers on his right tapped the phone. Jaquan snapped it up to his chest.

"Thank god, I'm out!" He hurried back onto the path but found he didn't know which direction to go, instantly panicking.

There was a rustling of some bushes a few feet away that made him go in the opposite direction hoping a bear or some other wild animal wasn't about to pounce.

He hurried almost going into a sprint but stopped short at muffled sounds just ahead. Thoughts of rampant hillbillies, maybe actual Klan members got him jumpy enough to hop off the wooded path headed away from the voices. There was no telling how many people were there as Jaquan kept moving further away content that he'd pop out near a road and regain phone service. He nearly faceplanted a few times tripping over thick tree roots, get briefly entangled in thin birch trees growing at odd angles.

"Shit!" Jaquan stumbled over off the path again but managed to hang on to his phone through the tumble head over heels. He recovered himself after faceplanting in the grass and leaves but kept quiet at the sound of men talking on the other side of the dense underbrush.

"Aw shucks Tommy, this some ole' bullshit."

"No, it ain't, my cousin Jimmy done seen it himself back here, man."

"Jimmy's lying his ass off ain't no..."

"Terry seen it too, alright?"

"Terry, on the football team; aw hell Nall Tommy; you for real about this, ain't you?"

"We're here ain't we?"

"Aw you're probably just scared cause of all those rumors about haints back over here in these woods!"

"Fuck you man; wanna see some pussy, or not?"

"So, you ain't worried about all of them stories bout haints and wood people out here playing with Satan's claw?"

"Shut up."

"You are scared, aren't you?"

"Fuck you, I'm gonna go see that doe. You kin figure thangs out for yourself." Jaquan remained silent watching two teens argue, wondering what they were referring to. Both guys went further down the path as he started to get up noticing the encroaching darkness.

Instead of moving back onto the trail, he figured he'd take the path of least resistance letting the guys move ahead while he followed the sound of their footsteps crunching the leaves and grass under foot.

"You think it's real; I ain't heard nothing about it since I was little. They used to tell us not to go into the woods cause we wouldn't come back."

"Yeah, my dad used to say the same thing, but he and my uncles kept coming out here too. Guess that's why my mom left."

"I thought your mom left because your dad got hurt when that tractor trailer fell on his leg, and she didn't wanna take care of him after that."

"Yeah, well he was still going out there in the back of Uncle Hank's truck so it couldn't have been that much of a loss."

"Back in the day, I heard everybody blamed it on the blacks; they went over there and set thangs right. At least that's what my granddad told me when I was nine."

"Whatever, hey here it is right here; the creek is down there."

Jaquan hung back watching and listening glad that he hadn't come out into the open given the stated verbal heritage of the men involved. He watched both disappear into another covert break in the overgrowth, intending to keep it moving when he discovered it was a dead end of large trees bent and warped into this gnarled natural gate or wall. Jaquan considered going back the way he came but didn't know where it would lead. Jaquan slipped onto the path, following the two men at a safe distance.

"Huh?" At some point he lost track of the two men a good fifteen feet ahead finding that he was forced to use his hands to move some of the low hanging tree branches while stumbling forward.

Jaquan pushed through a wall of foliage and vines through a wooded glen finding with a shallow looking creek. His calves and ankles were stinging from forcing his way through the bushes. This creek was surrounded by scores of ashy looking birch trees, some crisscrossed. Their positioning was almost intentional looking. A rustling and crunching of leaves underfoot alerted Jaquan who inched backwards partially hidden, watching. There was this feeling in the still woodland air, an expectancy of sorts.

His gaze drifted to the shallow creek noticing it was darker, early evening. The water was illuminated with the rising moonlight. He looked about seeing and hearing nothing but somehow knowing he wasn't alone. The wooded area around the creek was visibly vacant of people, but he just knew.

Then it happened.

A black woman stepped out of the brush a good fifteen feet away; some slender black woman wearing a loose-fitting diaphanous gown to her narrow shoulders by thin straps. The material was so light and sheer, it looked as if it could tear way from her body like tissue paper. Jaquan couldn't see her face, but her hair was long enough to reach the middle of her partially exposed back. His eyes widened.

It was sort of a pale lavender color, lighter towards the ends adjacent to her elbows. Her skin was a rich medium coffee color which made her hair stand out, almost glow in the early evening darkness. She was facing away from him looking towards the edge of the creek's opposite side. Jaquan wondered if she suspected there were people out there watching as he noticed a tin bucket in one of her hands. The moonlight shone brightly creating this silhouette from the back that left no doubt about the nudity hidden by her clothing as Jaquan watched her set the bucket down and start to unbutton.

The dress came away from her slender frame almost floating away like an errant leaf in the wind.

Jaquan got an eyeful.

This woman was model slender with a defined figure akin to an athlete or professional dancer, not like a traditional ballerina but more earthen and natural. She was tall, probably about five eleven, just under six feet. The thing that stood out from his vantage point, were the anchor shaped hips perched atop long slender, yet well-defined legs. Jaquan's eyes lingered on the tight rounded, smallish yet completely full buttocks noticed the tiniest bit of diamond shaped negative space between her smooth thighs. No, this woman wasn't built for power, but instead for speed with the figure of a humanoid gazelle.

He remarked internally that her slightly narrow hips and rounded buttock approximated a bell shape to the whole affair. Jaquan was enchanted as were the others hidden about the shallow creek under the ethereal moonlight's glow. He watched as she timidly approached the water dipping a toe, before walking in ankle deep still facing away from him. Jaquan liked what he saw responding below the waist.

His curiosity about her face prompted him to inch closer making the thick, overgrown brush shake audibly just as this woman knelt in an open legged squat splashing herself with creek water. His intrusion did not go unnoticed as she quickly stood up, turning about, facing his immediate direction.

"What-the-fuck?" He whispered at her visage.

Her face was covered with a mask of sorts; it was covered in light brown fur with flecks of white and grey. Two short, spade shaped ears protruded from the temples in concert with an abbreviated pair of horns rising upward, unfinished or broken dually with uneven edges.

It was the face of a doe.

Her dark eyes held a tiny glimmer matching the reflective look of the creek under the moonlight; almost as if they were glowing.

"DAMN BABY!!" Someone shouted off in the distance, distracting this woman who appeared to be looking directly at Jaquan. She turned art the waist twisting in the direction of the person who yelled, then faced that way dropping onto her haunches folding her arms across her chest. Some idiotic laughter gave away the others in hiding as she crouched lower, then hurriedly snatched up the bucket.

"Fuck." She stood up again, staring off into the distance, this time looking Jaquan directly in the eyes. Her eyes were expressive surrounded by pools of darkness behind the odd mask. There was no doubt the masked woman was staring at him, seeming affected for a moment. Jaquan wondered if he were looking at a mask, or if it was her face as goosebumps prickled and the hair on his arms stood up.

Then, just like that she was gone bounding into the thick brush and foliage disappearing from sight.

"AW SHIT TOMMY!!" One of the teen boys shouted at his friend for blowing their cover, a good twenty feet from Jaquan at the edge of the creek.

"FUCKING SHIT MAN, THAT WAS...AARRGH!!" Jaquan was startled by the bloodcurdling scream which snapped him out of the bubble left behind in the doe's wake.

"FUCK MAN!! RUN!! HERE IT COMES AGAIN!!" He couldn't see anything in the darkness, despite the moonlight and he didn't want to. Jaquan just started running for his life figuring maybe some wild animal had rushed the teen voyeurs. There was a voice in the back of his head insisting otherwise which ramped up his testosterone as he bulldozed through several overgrown bushes bumping a tree or two, finally making it into a clearing facing a blacktop road. He accidentally dipped the tip of his foot in a ditch but managed to hop across it onto the road as more screams echoed from the forest.

"OH, HELL NO, IT DON'T!" Jaquan took off down the road in the darkness with the pervasive smell of pinecones intermingled with raw sewage assailing his nostrils. It was pitch black at this point with little pools of light provided by these primitive streetlights, little more than logs vertically posted in the ground with light affixed at the very tops. He ran at a clip aiming for each isolated pool of light.

An avid horror movie fan in his youth, Jaquan's mind was filled with the unfortunate opening moments from the John Landis movie "Amewrican Werewolf in London. He didn't want to end up like those guys.

"SHIT-SHIT-SHIT-SHIT!!" Jaquan was running at an Olympic clip when this busted 1972 gremlin nearly clipped him skidding to a stop at an angle with its nose facing the dense wooded area to his immediate right. An expansive field sat to his left as Jaquan stopped short a few feet away from the car which sat there like inert matter. He was glistening with sweat, shirt stuck to his back. The white gold chain about his neck stung his oily dark skin. Jaquan stopped looking back over his shoulder finding woods and roads as far as the eye could see, then looked back at the car. He didn't know what to make of anything.

"FUCK!!" Jaquan barely had time to hop across the ditch as the gremlin backed up with this herkie jerky movement skidding to a stop again with its right rear tire on the edge of the ditch. His chiseled chest was full of fire after running a horrified sprint down the blacktop unsure if some wild animal was chasing him or not. The passenger side window slowly lowered with a loud, creaky scrapping sound.

"Aw shit."

"Where do you think you're going, bright eyes?" Daisy Mae sat grinning behind the wheel; she was leaning over to the shotgun side due to the primitive window needing to be cranked to lower it.

"Uhm, I got lost."

"I could've told you that, get in here." Jaquan hesitated for a moment glancing back the way he came.

"Aw shit, fuck me." Daisy Mae was already mashing down on the gas before he fully got into the car laughing as he nearly rolled from out of the seat onto the blacktop.

"What, you gotta problem with me?" She asked as he righted himself making use of a too worn seatbelt.

"I didn't say nothing."

"No, you didn't; so, what're you doing out here after dark? You trying to run on my little cousin?"

"I thought she was your niece."

"Yeah, that too; you trying to run out on Renee and leave her holding the bag with your bun in her fucking oven?" Jaquan checked the seatbelt tugging on it as Daisy Mae approached a darkened intersection faster than she should with her foot mashed down on the gas.

"Hey, don't you think you should slow down?"

"Hey, don't you think I you should answer my fucking question, Jaquan?" He rolled his neck cracking some bones as the intersection fast approached.

"I GOT LOST TRYING TO GET A SIGNAL ON MY MOTHERFUCKING PHONE!! I WALKED OFF ONTO THAT PATH ACROSS FROM YOUR HOUSE AND GOT TURNED AROUND!!...Fuck, Renee hung up on me, anyway."

Daisy Mae chortled with this lively look in her slanted eyes. Her eyeglasses were sitting atop a very cluttered dashboard with litter and used fast-food wrappers. He noticed a pair of vice grips amongst the trash, then glanced over finding the steering wheel mauled.

"Serves you right."

"Excuse me?"

"Well, from my understanding you've been treating her as less than during a very delicate moment in her life; and we both know you haven't been exactly faithful."

"Bullshit."

"Yup, took the words right out of my mouth and then you got the nerves to wanna be treated like the King of Siam or something! What's up with that, shit? Man, you really shouldn't be out here on these backroads, especially after dark."

"Wasn't trying to be out here."

"But look where I found you; do you have any idea what's going on back here in the sticks, huh?"

"I WAS TRYING TO GET A SIGNAL!!"

"Why?"

"SO, I COULD TALK TO RENEE!!"

"Well, did you?"

"I told you she hung up on me already."

"So, it was stupid for you to leave the cabin after all, and you went and got yourself lost in these woods with no flashlight or nothing. Geez, how stupid can you be? Renee obviously measures your worth with what's below your beltline!"

"Miss me with that shit; it was still light out when I went into those woods."

"Where did I find you?"

"Fuck." Jaquan sat beside her sullen, both knees drawn uncomfortably up because there was a lack of foot space. Daisy Mae zoomed right across the intersection onto a block with no lighting whatsoever plunging the car into complete darkness. He stared out of the window into an inky darkness thinking about the strange, masked woman he spied at the edge of that shallow creek.

"Penny for your thought?"

"Nothing."

"Come on, don't be that way, spill." Daisy Mae sped along at a clip without headlights.

"Don't you think you should turn on the headlights?"

"What headlights?"

"HUH?!!"

"Relax, I've made this trip a hundred times or more; tell me, did you uhm, see something back there? I mean, you were running pretty hard all, and you absolutely stink of fear." Jaquan did a doubletake at her odd assessment of him.

"Uh, I think it was a bear or something." Daisy Mae started laughing.

"Ain't no fucking bears around here' maybe a wild cat or two. Come on, tell me." The way she talked reminded him of Renee making him wonder if their dual nasty demeanor was hereditary.

"It wasn't nothing." Daisy Mae raised a brow at his attempted dismissal.

"Did you see a haint?"

"Nope."

He squinted as the car crossed another intersection drenched in pitch blackness. Jaquan couldn't believe he'd gone as far as he did. Daisy Mae shot him a few glances eventually speaking up.

"Did you see a doe?"

"WHAT?!!"

"So, you saw her, huh? Just be honest with me; it'll do you a world of good, trust me on this." Her tone was glib, but laced with a serious undertone that wasn't lost on the displaced lothario.

"I didn't see nothing."

"Damn."

"What?" She was shaking her head, musing to herself eventually looking him in the face.

"I wanted to leave you be." Daisy Mae slowed the car to a gradual stop switching off the ignition, remaining silent long enough for Jaquan to become anxious.

"What's going on?"

"Come on, hurry up." Daisy Mae snapped her seatbelt getting out of the car while he hesitated slowly going for his belt only to accidentally pull it loose still attached to the metal buckle. She appeared in front of the car, then walked forward starting to blend into the darkness. He quickly followed.

"Uhm, I think I broke the seatbelt; I'll pay for it to get fixed."

"Un, huh right." Daisy Mae was walkign about looking down at her bare feet, then grabbed a handful of her skirt drawign it up so that she could squat open legged. He didn't know what to make of things as she quickly walked back with a large stone in both hands.

"WHAT'S UP WITH THAT?!!" Jaquan motioned towards the rock, apprehensive.

"Chill the fuck out, take it."

Daisy Mae shoved the stone into one of his large hands. It was as big as a football.

"Okay, I'm holding it; what now?" They were standing ten feet away from the car with a wall of tall hedges across the ditch at their right side.

"Throw that shit over these bushes, nigga." Daisy Mae pointed in the direction she wanted him to throw.

Jaquan launched the rock like the aforementioned football earning the loud sound of shattering glass. He'd broken a window as filtered lights illuminated his features as a baby began to cry loudly.

"Daisy...?"

The thick shapely woman was bounding off at top speed into the inky darkness as he heard a screen door open loudly followed by the safety clicking off on a rifle.

"I HOPE YOU'RE STILL OUT THERE!! IT'LL BE WORTH YOU DOING IT IF I CATCH YOU BACK THERE!!" Some elderly sounding man sounded like he meant business as the baby cried louder.

Jaquan was gone, running top speed into the murky darkness only able to follow Daisy Mae by the color of her skirt which was barely visible to his squinted eyes. She ran half a block and jumped a ditch into a heavily wooded area. He was reticent to follow, but glanced back as he was running finding the silhouettes of two men wielding weapons next to the abandoned car. A third appeared as he watched.

"HEY RODNEY, AIN'T THAT YOUR CAR WHAT GON STOLEN YESTERDAY?!!" Some guy with a hick accent exclaimed.

Jaquan didn't wait to hear the answer jumping the ditch into the thick underbrush following Daisy Mae. He didn't know where he was going just following this invisible line into the murk fighting multiple branches, stumbling and tripping over his feet. A tree appeared out of nowhere striking him in the bicep. Jaquan favored his shoulder looking around without a clue where Daisy Mae had gone. He didn't want to call out to her worried the men from the house were hunting them.

"Did you see a doe?" Her voice sounded next to him, but he couldn't make her out in the darkness, eventually using the flashlight on his phone which flickered a bit, the battery waning.