Empty Seats – Kayleigh Duggan

March 30, 2026

There is a table, and it is real.
        It sinks into the Earth on bent legs, the flat surface carved in the middle from its years of bearing others’ weight of life and consumption. The furniture is crafted in raw lines, long but not wide, and it quakes at every disturbance; the shift of the wind, the growth of the grass beneath four asymmetrically built legs that curve in and out to form the shape of an ‘s.’
        Devoid of condensation from mugs or stains from under-seasoned sauces, the discolored grain of the striped wood appears as if a novice woodworker has, in a desperate fit, taken a sander to it.
        On four crooked legs, it stands, somehow impossibly, in the middle of a forest yet to be chronicled by the vultures of the media, by the soaring machines circulating the globe and whispering the demise of geographical landmarks. You would think this impossible, but even the greatest plant geographer would be unable to articulate the kinds of shrubs and roots overgrown in the area.
        The trees surrounding the table are large and consuming. Full branches, covered in shades of deep emerald green, reach their arms out to shield the table from falling debris or eager eyes from above. The steady sound of a running stream accompanied by the faint calling of birds and silent crickets creates an adagio for the audience of creatures, the orchestra of the forest.
        Despite the trees’ canopy, the sun continues to beam down on the scene, reflecting in between patterns of ragged leaves and overlapping branches, casting magnificent glowing designs. One might think this is paradise, but even Eve found sin in the garden.
        A table is meant for sitting, to host humans in their most primal and vulnerable state: hunger. This table has failed to complete its most basic purpose. There is no grand tableau of King Arthur and his knights, no family awaiting their festival feast, or forgotten lovers arriving together for a tense meal that will end in broken glass and crushed bones. The table is foreign, a placeholder in a patch of thriving grass that will forever live in solitude.
        The forest has refused all entry to sentient beings, even when their intention is to call for peace. A lost hiker will be steered away from the depths of the forest’s reach, and a highway will never be built on top of this land because this land is invisible to the human eye. You might start to question the reality of this forest. For it to exist in your mind, must you step foot inside, or will you blindly believe in the powers of the forest?
        You must believe in the table, the table is real.
        If a pinecone were to fall from the large, overlooking trees, there is no guarantee the table would stay standing. But for those still alive, graced with the presence of life and stillness, one can look closely enough and see the truth of the land. This truth is for everything. The chatter of high-pitched voices, anxious to hear themselves talk, the screens of white that blind us to truth and envelop us in secrecy and distrust. There are very few forests like this one, untouched by the invisible hand.
        The air thins the closer you get. It traps you in a universe no one can intervene in. No one knows how the table arrived. How dirty and splintered hands strived to create the perfect surface to eat and drink on. All you know is that the table is real, the rest is unimportant, the rest is a lie.
        As the Earth falls to ruin and humans turn to destroy themselves, driven by power and greed, will the table be the last to go?
~
Nigel is very hungry. Her stomach howls, like an animal scraping the inside of a cage, gnawing on metal and waiting for the bars to dissolve. The grumbling of her stomach shakes the tent like tremors in the earth, and it forces Mother to look up from the scribbled ink drawn across thinly veiled, grey-tinted paper.
        “Is that an earthquake?” The cigarette between her thin pink lips bounces between each word, ash diving towards the ground, eager to avoid an outburst. Nigel’s gaze traces the outline of the newspaper, desperately searching for a missing clue, a splotch of ink she has not yet traced and committed to memory. Mother never needed answers; Mother just needed stimulation.
        The weak sound of stiff sobs comes from the far corner of the tent where Father is half-laid out on a mahogany strip, dipping a decaying paintbrush into a rigid metal bowl and layering a wood polish over the finished product.
        “I’ve finally finished.” He is far too excited, too thrilled for something so tedious. Fathers should never celebrate their accomplishments, only what they can offer their wives and families. “I made something beautiful.” He drops his weight onto the surface, and Nigel watches thick arm hairs get caught in the sticky substance.
        “You’re dirtying the table,” Mother says, a bland look plastered across her face. She sighs as she tosses her magazine to the ground, filled with scribbles and unrecognizable pictures that Nigel still cannot decipher. Mother lets her knees fall apart and her legs spread on instinct, her body sinking deeper into the chair’s cushions. She takes a long inhale of her cigarette, and her eyes roll back in ecstasy. She looks peaceful for a rare moment before a sob from Father brings back the bulging vein on her forehead. “Stop crying,” she hisses, her body flexing in the chair, “look at your child.” She points at Nigel, standing in the middle of the large, cream colored tent. Nigel licks the sweat off her upper lip and wonders if she should run around the tent to make more. The salty taste provides more nutrients than she has had in days. Her mother calls her name, and Nigel flexes her feet, feeling the grass lick her bare toes. Nigel is not good at finding reality. “Nigel is starving! Fetch us dinner.”
        Nigel’s father—a tall, thin figure dressed in vibrant colors of the forest with large, thick hands covered in flour and wood stain—presses his fingers to his face with a gasp.
        “I’m so sorry, Nigel. As your father, it’s my job to make sure you never go hungry. I’ll fetch dinner right away.” He waddles to the corner of the tent where their hot pot and kettle serve as a kitchenette. Nigel’s family considered the tent their only sense of peace, a magical moving flap of fabric that guarded everything they owned and protected them from the elements, as any good home should. Nigel faintly remembers the story of a naive, blond little girl. She feels a similarity to her; their tent was never too small, never too big. It fit just right.
        Nigel tilts her chin towards the kitchenette, and a bright light crosses her vision and erupts in white. It forces her gaze downwards. A small hole in the tent is strong enough to blind her.
        “Are we poor?” Her voice chips off at the end as if the thought has been abandoned. She should drink some water; she sounds pathetic.
        Nigel’s father pulls a cut of tender meat from their cooler, and it squeals a sound far too lively when he drops it onto the cutting board.
        “Oh, honey, look at this table I made. Is that a poor man’s table?”
        Nigel wonders why a table is a sign of richness. If it were, why do the bears not sit in chairs and shove their snouts into ceramic plates filled with dead, meaty creatures? Nigel has never seen a bear use a fork and knife, and she has a feeling that no matter how much the prey begs, bears will always use their claws.
        Mother coughs deeply with the cigarette still lit in her mouth.
        Nigel lies down on the grassy floor, gazing up at the sky through the thin fabric of their tent. If you look closely, you can almost see through the fabric. Nigel can see the faint outline of a cloud that looks like a cheeseburger. “Dearest,” her father calls as the burning smell of ash cascades throughout the tent. The meat isn’t even on the grill yet. “Don’t you think you’ve had enough?” Her father says in warning.
        Nigel makes her way towards the corner to watch her show.
        “Shut up!” A snake with a thorn in its tail thrashes around in pain as it tries to smack it out. Its anguished motions only drive the thorn deeper into its scales. “You know this is the only thing that helps.” The snake is bruised, broken in a way that only animals can know, like a fox losing its ear or a wolf watching its litter die in a hostile territory, but an injury is never strong enough to stop hunger. To distract itself from its pain, the snake lashes out at something, anything else. It attacks the first thing it can find, wrapping itself around its prey, crushing its ribs just as someone tells it to stop. Nigel watches the show come to a close. Snakes don’t communicate well.
~
It’s late summer. Nigel and her family are moving away from a rocky terrain where the heavy rain has refused to yield. Father fears their death and constantly speaks of how the land will turn into a ravine and flood them out in their sleep. Mother fears nothing, but once they get a break in the weather, they decide to move toward a sunny spot where the ground is flat.
        Father squeezes Nigel’s hand tightly as the back of his pack weighs him down. Nigel’s father always liked to hold her hand when they moved from place to place. She thinks he has separation anxiety.
        Mother points to a new trail, her eagerness for change apparent in the way she stands, hands on her hips and gaze pointed outwards, like a world explorer on the brink of a discovery.
        There is no warning sign before it happens. Nigel’s family is too preoccupied with themselves and the weight of their actions to read the land, to listen to the way the forest quiets in preparation. A brown bear twice the size of Mother emerges from the forest. The bear’s claws tear into the ground, black beady eyes scour the dirt as if it has personally insulted the creature. The wind picks up and shoves against Nigel’s family. Father stumbles back, and Nigel steadies him just as the bear roars at the wind. The animal turns to Mother, who has stood unyieldingly to the elements and the life-threatening beast before her. Nigel’s father drags her into his arms even though they stand a distance from the danger.
        “Dear heaven above, please spare my child from the monsters of this world and take me in their place-”
        “Hey, bear!” Nigel’s mother screams while stomping her feet like a bull about to charge. “Go away!” She kicks the dirt with her soles, and it puffs up into the air in a cloud of smoke. “Think you can mess with me? I’ve eaten bugs bigger than you for breakfast!”
        The bear shouts back in its indiscernible language, and just when Nigel thinks the bear is about to run at Mother, something rams into the creature’s side. Animalistic sounds fill the air: growls, unhinged jaws, teeth snapping and tearing at flesh. It’s a visual mess, constantly shifting and altering until Nigel sees blood spray through the air like confetti.
        It’s humorous how quickly the bear gives up. It whines in defeat and limps back into the bushy forest with its fluffy tail stuck between its legs. The dirt clears, and a new animal is left in its wake, snarling at the space the bear disappeared from. Nigel hasn’t seen many creatures with blond pelts, and she leans closer towards the mystery even when Father starts to cry. Mother is the first to discover what it is.
        Mother takes a step towards it. It is a naked thing covered in knotted, ashy blond hair. Dirt freckles their face, and tiny insects leave a trail of irritated red flesh criss-crossing across their skin. Beneath it all, it appears human.
        The creature does not back away from Mother; it finds its way to her and starts to purr like a house cat. “Do you have a name?” Mother asks, and the creature howls gradually as if it is in pain. “I’ve always wanted a daughter. I shall call you, Cameron.”
        Nigel looks up as something bonks her on the head. Spiraling airplanes surround her in a storm of foliage, but then something harder hits her head, and she winces. When she looks down, she sees a moderately sized acorn. She finds the culprit mocking her from a high branch, snapping its teeth around a frothing mouth. The squirrel must be obsessed with her.
        A hand pats Nigel’s shoulder, and she looks up at her father.
        “It’s alright son, the only consistency is change.”
~
Cameron burst through the tent in a dramatic show of yellow teeth and wet mud that drips from her bare flesh. She reeks of piss and feces, and when she tracks a substance into the tent, Nigel swallows down his vomit.
        “Cameron!” Nigel’s mother drops the cigarette. She lets it burn up in the grass. When she smacks Cameron on the back, Cameron doesn’t topple over like Nigel usually does. His mother shakes around the hair on Cameron’s head, and Nigel wonders if she still has lice. “I haven’t seen you since last summer.”
        “Wolves,” comes Cameron’s scratchy voice that can’t quite speak English. Mother had tried to teach her for a while, but when she got frustrated with Cameron’s lack of progress, she would lash out at the tent and its inhabitants. Mother has always been good at breaking things.
        Nigel holds a hand to his stomach when it growls.
        “Nigel, take Cameron out to the stream and clean her up.”
        If Nigel doesn’t eat soon, he might die, but Mother has a temper, and he knows better than to say no. He drags Cameron out of the tent by her hand because she’s not good at following directions. Cameron follows him blindly with her tongue rolling out and leans close enough to lick a wet stripe across Nigel’s cheek.
        The stream is light these days from lack of rain, but there’s still a steady flow, enough for Nigel to cup his hands and start washing the mud off Cameron’s body. Cameron’s skin is calloused with strands of thick blond hair growing in strange places that don’t mimic Nigel’s body hair. Cameron has cuts and scrapes, some long healed and others bleeding when the water drips from her tender skin, burned from lying in the sun. Cameron flinches when Nigel’s hands pass certain scars, an animalistic hiss erupting from the depths of her throat. Nigel mumbles an apology, which is lost in the sound of running water.
        After the bear incident, Nigel’s mother became obsessed with the adventurous and wild Cameron. Nigel doesn’t want adventure; he wants food. But he can’t eat Cameron. Even if he wanted to, you never know what diseases the wolves carry.
        Nigel drags Cameron back to the tent when he starts hearing the screaming of metal and the clanking of pans. Nigel ducks just in time to miss a metal can soaring towards him from the flap in the tent. It hits Cameron on the forehead and knocks her to the ground. She cries out in bliss and starts to gnaw on it like a toy. Nigel leaves Cameron and enters the tent to see Father crouched over a boiling pot. His face is twisted in a strained image of peace. The cost of his peace was paid in the loss of his sanity.
        “Dearest, will you move the table? We should eat while it’s still warm outside.”
        Nigel finds Mother face-first in a pile of clothing in the corner. She throws objects blindly behind her with a crazed look in her dilated eyes.
        “Don’t tell me what to do, goddammit!” She drops her head back into the pile and mumbles to herself incoherent words that are most likely curses. She throws her hands in the air widely, then turns aggressively towards Nigel. If Nigel looks close enough, he can see drool dripping down her pink lips. “You took my lighter!” She points an accusing finger at Nigel. Nigel did not take her lighter, but he is still filled with an immediate sense of guilt.
        Nigel imagines Mother would lunge for him if she believed he was withholding her lighter. Instead, Mother moves toward the table and crawls underneath it on all fours. With a strangled scream, she lifts the long table onto her back with the rage only a mother possesses. Nigel moves quickly from the line of fire and pulls a half-conscious Cameron out of the way as Mother emerges from the tent with a table on her back. When she drops the table onto the forest floor under the expanse of the blue sky, Nigel feels the Earth shake at the intensity with which Mother lets it fall. Violence incites violence. “I have to do everything around here,” she says in a curt murmur. “Marry me, have a baby with me, stop smoking cigarettes, be nicer to the children,” she cries out in a high-pitched voice that Nigel suspects is a mimicry of Father’s. Mother paces around the table, murmuring to herself while Cameron chases after her on all fours, nipping at her heels like a dog waiting for food to drop.
        Nigel wants food. Father emerges from the tent with colorful plates, honey-glazed ham, and freshly baked sourdough. He drops them on the table and returns with four bowls of fresh steamed rice and coconut curry. He is multifaceted, everything a father should be. He even cleaned. “Where are the goddamn chairs, bitch?” Mother says harshly. Father looks around at the forest floor, his eyes wide, glazing over with unshed tears.
        “I-I,” he stutters, anxiously looking for answers in the grass.
        “Who builds a table without chairs!” Mother criticizes, slamming a hand down on the table and rattling the platter of goods steaming with love and spice.
        Nigel ignores his mother and points to a pile of rocks by the stream, too heavy to pick up but easy enough to roll. Nigel urges Cameron to follow him. Cameron follows his movements as if it were a game, pushing her rock to see who can make it to the table first. His mother, fuming, stomps to the pile, lifting a rock twice Nigel’s size with ease and bringing it to the head of the table. Nigel’s father is still recovering, weeping into his hands and wiping boogers from his nose. Nigel, with his arms aching, rolls another rock for Father to the table. He pulls on the bottom of Father’s shirt and points to his sediment chair. Nigel’s father cries harder, now with joyful tears. He doesn’t sit down, but he seems happier.
        Father kisses Nigel’s cheek and then serves Mother a plate of potatoes, peas, pink beets, and yellow squash. Her plates are piled high, colorful, and a mess of flavors, sweet and acidic and salty. Nigel piles food onto his plate only after Mother is served, and tries to stay out of Cameron’s way as her hands fly into bowls, stuffing her pudgy fingers and long, clawed nails into her mouth. She shoves so much food in her mouth that she starts to choke and has to spit it all out onto the forest floor.
        Once Nigel has enough food, he realizes that it’s all gone. Nothing is left for Father. Father is standing at the ready behind his chair. He just smiles when he catches Nigel’s gaze, then kisses his cheek.
        “I don’t need to eat, honey, I’m on a diet.” His father’s deep voice fades into a whisper. It’s like the wind is stroking his face, sending a cold shiver down their spine. The banter fades out, like the static scream that comes from wires pressing too close together or from a crooked TV antenna.
        With Nigel’s gaze trapped on their meal, too scared to look up from the rice and curry, they try to imagine what their voice would sound like if they screamed. If it were low and deep or high-pitched and squeaky.
        The plate of food mutates. The mustard yellow melts into a dark brown of despair, and the sun yields to the clouds, losing its magnificence. The rice is spiky and gray, like the pebbles in the stream. Nigel looks up from their plate full of pinecones and mud seasoned with dirt and sand. They drag a finger along their plate and trace the cold ceramic, a wet piece of bark. When they pull their finger away, a slimy worm curls around the tip. Nigel wipes it off on their napkin, a yellowed leaf.
        Nigel looks towards Mother at the head of the table. Chalk-drawn circles trapped in a shocked expression are drawn onto the stone. She’s smoking, but wooden sticks don’t contain nicotine.
        “You should really stop smoking,” Nigel says to the rock. They feel more confident now to stand up to Mother, especially when she doesn’t blow out smoke. Their father never sat down, just watched from a distance like the squirrels above the table.
        Cameron is there. She sits on her stone, naked and wild, watching Nigel from across the table. She’s hairier now. What season is it?
        “Pack where?” Her soft, raspy voice tickles the hair near Nigel’s ears. Nigel didn’t know she could whisper. Is she the one they always hear talking? “Pack dead?” Cameron whines like a dog taken on a road trip and left at the gas station two states over. Cameron scratches a tick behind her ear with her toes, staring expectantly at Nigel while her toenail tears into her skin and crimson blood leaks down her neck. Nigel feels the air fill their lungs, soon it will be gone; everything ends sooner or later.
        “No Pack.” Silence.
        A bluebird new to motherhood regurgitates food for her four hungry babies. A lost and blinded deer is struck on I-95 by a red truck that doesn’t stop to wipe the blood from the headlights. Far away, a mosquito is trapped in a spider’s web, and the spider is finally fed. All of these creatures experience the cycle of life and death; all of these creatures are real.
        Cameron stomps on the ground and punches the table like a gorilla on the Empire State Building. She kicks at the table legs like they’re the backs of someone’s knees, knocking the joints out from under them, but unable to buckle the table’s stability. Her shouts are gut-wrenching, metal against metal, nails against a chalkboard. Cameron howls in pain. She doesn’t stop. It echoes through Nigel’s head like a nursery rhyme, and Nigel hums to the tune of Cameron’s screams. The two harmonize in pain, but Nigel was never much of a singer. Nigel stays on their rock, motionless in the eye of a violent storm with no end in sight. Cameron acts out for a while longer, huffing, barking, and rolling, turning over every rock and slobbering on every surface till it is claimed and coerced. Nigel continues to hum until their lips go numb.
        When the screaming stops, Nigel falls backward into the grass, their gaze trapped on the ever-blue sky. They raise a tentative finger towards a cloud in the shape of a wolf. “Are you real?” Clouds do not answer.
        Nigel is still hungry.
        They are going to die soon. The sun beams down on their face, a warm embrace, and the skies are clear. Nigel thinks today is a good day to die, at least it isn’t raining.
        They continue to stare at the rolling skies and wonder if they ever had a name. They wonder if they were ever held in the arms of someone and promised to be cherished by voices they can no longer recall. The being feels like death has strangled them for too long, but the approaching end pulls at their lips till they form a genuine smile. The death that is coming is one they have never expected, an act of pity that will free them from the torture of their mind.
        This death will bring peace, but it is not Nigel’s death that awaits them. Only living things can die. Are you afraid?
~
The forest bides its time to all who enter. A forest that holds a catalog of all those who came before us. It connects us and keeps truths rooted deep underground, even on the road often traveled. Nothing ever escapes this planet. Even in death, the ground contains the remains of what we have lost and nurtures the hope of what we hope to grow.
        A pinecone dangles from a high branch while a gray squirrel swats at it and tries to claim it for their family. The squirrel’s fluffy body jumps up and down on the thin branch, and just as they reach their claws out, the pinecone slips and falls from their reach. The pinecone falls for an eternity.
        One of the bluebird babies is now full-grown and flying over Niagara Falls on its first solo trip. The moose travels the length of the highway in constant search for his lost mate. The spider’s web falls apart at the first tug of a strong breeze. The forest dwellers all take a collective breath as they recognize their place in the world and the rare gift time bestows on them. A moment of silence.
        The pinecone falls.
        The table collapses.