The body hung from a handmade rope, still swaying gently from the door that life had just closed on it. The old sagging barn timber had held the weight with no objection. The barn walls ignored the screams that had penetrated them just moments earlier. The screams reverberated off emptiness and collapsed into whatever I am.

      Two vicious dogs barked at a tree full of nesting crows scattering them to flight as the buggy approached the homestead. The dogs turned their attention to the doctor driving the buggy. The horse unknowingly trotted forward pulling the buggy and contents into fate.

      A dead baby isn't an unusual sight for a mother nearing death herself. Eleanor knew her baby may be still born as her own ending had been near. But for death to reap so closely would have been a shock to anyone who would have witnessed.

       The two vicious dogs began to fight each other, tearing patches of skin loose, neither would break away. Both set on killing each other they mortally wounded each other and continued snapping even as they died.

         The aging doctor found sadness as he entered the log cabin. A black feather whisked across the floor from the breeze of his passing boot. On a bed laid Eleanor and the new born baby both dead. He turned an looking through the one glass window he could see the body hanging in the barn.

          The horse suddenly bolted, head down at a full gallop dragging the buggy behind, it slammed itself into the tree where the crows had been. A broken neck it thrashed beside the torn bloody dogs before finding it's own death.

           The doctor stood alone in disbelief, listening to his own screams echo as he once again recognized his own corpse hanging from the rope.

        
       I try and count the crows returning to the tree, but I never get past four.