“Never go into the woods without Skip,” Father always said. The smoke from his pipe would curl up around his newspaper and obscure his eyes. Though obscured, I knew they held resolve, and so I always obeyed him. Skip was always with me, wherever I went, like a shadow. He overshadowed me once more during that walk through the woods when I was older. Tall and gaunt, he walked beside me and his feet trampled the dead leaves beneath his feet, but he never took his eyes from what lay directly before him. The last leaves clung to the boughs far overhead, barely visible through the fog. I was disgusted with them for refusing to let go. The barren leaves beneath my feet, though dead, were free at least.
"Do you know where we’re going, Skip?” I asked.
“No, I don’t understand.”
“You’re here because I am here.” There was bitterness in my voice. “And I’m here because you are, Skip.” There was a silence. I knew there would be. My reasoning was not logical. “Because you’re always here,” I added. “And I’m no longer a child.”
We continued through the woods and the farther we went, the darker it became. I glanced over at Skip’s chiseled face, and read nothing in his expression. We came to a stop under the gnarled oak tree.
“Skip,” I began. “Do you remember the first time we came into the woods?”
“Yes.”
“I was a child then. When I slipped and fell, you carried me home. I’m not a child anymore, Skip. I don’t need you to carry me home. I don’t need you at all.”
Was there sadness in his inscrutable eyes?
“You father thinks you need me,” he said.
“I don’t!” I snapped peevishly. I glanced searchingly at the old, gnarled oak, seeking wisdom from its weathered bark. The mist, the crickets, and the growing darkness- they all added to my impatience. The oak offered no sage advice, so I turned back to Skip and his old, beaten form and I glared with no small amount of loathing into his eyes.
“I don’t need you, Skip.” I reiterated. “That’s why we’re here. Do you know where we are?”
“The woods.”
“Yes. In the center. Next to the old oak tree.”
“The one some say is haunted.”
“Yes, Skip. So no one will come near it.” I looked up at it again. Whatever spirit clung to its gnarled mass would have no hold on me. “Skip, when I was a child, I needed you. You took care of me.”
“It was my-”
“But I am not a child!”
Skip seemed to consider the repetition of this phrase logical. “I understand.” He stammered. “You don’t want me.” He looked away into the fog. “Then what good am I?”
“None. That’s why we’re here.” I paused. He didn’t turn back to me. “Skip, if I went home, would you follow me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because it is my purpose to watch you.”
I waved that aside. “Your purpose is whatever I tell you it is. And right now you have none. You do nothing but interfere with my life, and so I am leaving you here.”
He looked back at me then. Yes, I think there was sadness in his eyes. “Because you don’t need me anymore?” he asked.
“Yes, Skip. If I were to go somewhere Father has forbidden me to go, would you stop me?”
The slightest hesitation, then: “Yes, because I must obey your father.”
“But you must also obey me.”
“But I must obey your father, because I love him.”
“Do you love me too?” I asked, my lip slightly curled.
“Yes.”
“We make sacrifices for the ones we love. Will you sacrifice for me?”
Skip was silent. I think he knew what I was asking of him. He may have been pondering the logic of my actions, or wondering at my motive. But like any thinking creature, he desired the continuance of his own existence despite my desires.
“You want to be free, don’t you?” he finally asked.
“Yes.”
“Could you trust me to set you free?”
“No, Skip. It’s against your nature to contradict my father.”
“But we make sacrifices for the ones we love.”
“But you are capable of only one kind of sacrifice.”
Again there was a silence. The silence was intensified by the death of all chirping throughout the woods. The heartbeat throbbing in my ears was nothing to what Skip must have been suffering. I could almost see the wheels turning, but I didn’t care. I was beyond caring. Then, tentatively, he backed into the old oak and slid to the ground, his back scraping the bark as he sank into the dried leaves.
“I realize I have no purpose,” he said. “If you do not love me, you cannot make a sacrifice for me. But I will sacrifice, just because you desire it.”
Skip was right. I could not spare him, though he needed me. My longing for freedom was too strong. I knelt next to him and reached for his neck. As if in one last plea, and with a voice full of metallic sadness, Skip picked up a dead leaf from the ground beside him.
“It is free,” he told me. “But it is dead.”
I paused then, my eyes widening. I beheld the leaf, crumpled and brown in his sturdy hand. The fog was clearing, and my eyes traveled up the old oak to the leaves still clinging to the highest boughs. How small and faraway they looked! How lonely and forlorn! Suddenly, one of them fell. I watched the exhilarating descent with my grip tightening on Skip’s neck, and just before it hit the ground, I pulled.
With a flash of light, the piece pulled free and Skip’s head fell forward onto his chest. I stood up, my own face perfectly calm, holding within the palm of my hand the central power source of the SK-16, 2234 model, my guardian.
Without a backward glance, I made my way through the woods, and into the fog.
postscript
This is a short story I wrote as an assignment. It could be anything- as long as it fit length requirements. It also needed a certain amount of characterization, symbolism, and also needed an "epiphany" at the climax. It's completely different from what I usually write; rather dark. I also find it odd for me to be posting something this dark on Good Friday, and this near Easter. But it was a good opportunity, so yeah. I haven't gotten it graded yet, so I may make some changes later according to my teacher's recommendations. Tell me what you think of the ending, eh? And crits are welcome.