It’s been two days since the stranger came.
He came to our door in the middle of the night. Momma asked Daddy not to answer, not to let him in. But Daddy said it didn’t matter. Because he’d always come back. He looked so sad and mad at the same time. Said he was sorry, but there was nothing he could do. So Daddy opened the door and the stranger came in.
None of us liked him. Momma said he smelled like copper, and AJ said she couldn’t look at him too long else she’d get a headache. Daddy would spend his nights screaming and yelling and begging him to leave.
But he never did.
The stranger sits between Momma and Daddy at the dinner table. It stares at us and doesn’t ever eat. Just stares.
It’s been two weeks since the stranger came.
Momma and Daddy fight a lot more now. I always hear them yelling’ from downstairs as AJ and I huddled in the corner. Starin’ at the stranger in the corner as it watched us with its cold dead eyes. They reminded me of cherry pits. Cousin Maple choked to death on one of those years ago, that’s what Braeburn told me at the last family reunion.
It’s the reason why Daddy had us cut down the cherry tree in our backyard.
When I asked Daddy if it was true he just kind of looked at me strangely. I didn’t bring it up again.
Dinner is scary now. Momma won’t look us in the eye, Daddy is always screaming and yelling, and the stranger never says nothing back to him. I almost wish he would because maybe then it’d make him stop.
It’s been two months since the stranger came and I’m alone.
AJ always looks tired. She spends most of her time in Momma’s room, the two huddled up by the curtain. Daddy hasn’t left the kitchen in awhile. At night I hear him shuffling downstairs and opening the fridge. Sometimes he cries.
Once I heard the breaking of glass. Like someone was walking around the living room and shattering all of the windows. I heard Momma whispering to Daddy: are you sure? Are you sure? Are you sure?
It’s been two years since the stranger came and I’m alone.
Momma up and left a few months ago. She just opened the door and walked into the snow. We found the front door open and her hoofprints trailing into the forest. AJ wanted to follow but Daddy said we couldn’t and the stranger closed the door.
AJ hasn’t left her room since. She just sits on her bed and cries. Nobody goes in there, not even the stranger. She has nightmares, sometimes I can hear her wailing and screaming like a timberwolf and it almost makes me want to join in.
Sometimes I dream too. I dream that I’m walkin’ in the orchard, but the path is made of cherry pits and the trees are ponies, all stretched out and weird. I’m following’ the stranger, but I don’t know why. We stop in a field, and there’s somethin’ light green and white sticking’ out of the ground.
Daddy started hitting us. We begged him to stop, but he kept swinging. Kept hitting. We kept bleeding until we cried and we’d huddle beneath the windowsill while the stranger stared at us.
One night I went downstairs and found Daddy in the living room. He had taken all the pictures and photo albums from the mantle and the wall and dumped them in the fireplace. He told the stranger that what's done is done, and the stranger burned all the photos.
Two more years and I’m still alone.
It’s just AJ and me and the stranger now. In this house full of spiderwebs and cherry pits. AJ says she misses going to school and seeing her friends and playing in the yard. She says she forgets what it was like when the stranger wasn’t here.
I try to tell her stories of what I can remember, but the truth is he’s been here so long that I can’t remember much neither. So I just tell her everything is gonna be ok.
One day I got a letter from Cousin Maple. I can’t tell if I’m imagining it or not.
The stranger moved to Momma and Daddy’s room. I asked him to leave but he never does. Just stares at me. Eyes like cherry pits. Something is growing in that room, something light green and white and old. It smells fresh, like a harvest of apples.
Two more years. I can’t take it anymore.
I yell and scream like Daddy did, I mope and whine like Momma did. The stranger still won’t leave. I couldn’t take it anymore. AJ wanted me to stop but I knew that we’d never be safe, we’d never be whole while he was still here.
She’s been having nightmares again, something about a pony named Smith who lives in the living room. I told her there used to be one in the family, but she’s been gone a long time.
Applejack asked me when she’d come back, and I thought of the thing upstairs. I remember how Daddy and Momma came home one night covered in dirt and mud, and they told us someone familiar would be coming home soon.
That made me mad for some reason.
So at night, when she was asleep, I took a knife from the kitchen and went to Momma and Daddy’s old room. I opened the door and closed my eyes.
I stabbed and stabbed and stabbed until there wasn’t anythin’ left. The floorboards stained red like cherries.
Now she sits in the rocking chair downstairs and tells us stories of our parents. Tells us about how things used to be, cooks us dinner and teaches us the best ways to harvest the crop. Like she’s always been here.
It’s been two years since and I’m still alone.
