If Baba sees Sela nearing the forest's edge, he'll pull his thinning hair. Jump up and down like the monkeys that run through the market. Maybe he'll even pull a switch from their garden. But he always waits to whip her legs. Baba will never chase after Sela into the forest. And by then, after all that waiting, he'll be drunk.

"The forest's dark and strange," Baba likes to say. And after a gourd of palm wine, he weeps about the ones who live there. The dreaded ones. The ones who rip little girls apart. "Don't go in there."

Sela's only seven, but braver than anyone she knows. She shakes her head as she thinks of her baba. The wooden goblet, always in his right hand or raised to his trembling lips. The slow collapse of his soul. And the smell of fresh baked pie that clings to him.

"The dreaded see you, but you don't see them," Baba likes to say.

And he says this moments before Sela hears the thunk of his goblet hitting the wooden floor. Then Baba falls asleep, snoring softly in his chair at the dinner table.

"Silly Baba," Sela whispers as she leaves the house that night. She cannot be afraid of what she already is. She sings as she skips through the forest. "Sweets in my mouth... fills up my belly..." She raises a hand and wipes from her lips her Baba's dripping soul.
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DW McKinney is the 2020 Web Resident in Fiction for The New Southern Fugitives. She lives in Nevada.

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