As many people have pointed out, this Subaru commercial is basically the set-up for a horror film. Blind old man lures dipshit hipster couple out to “the place on the map only he knows the way to,” turns out to not really be blind, murders them and steals their Subaru.

But I realized it’s not just this Subaru commercial…

 

 

“Grandma, I doan wanna hug no more trees,” Keilyreine said.

“But this is the tree, I swear it’s the tree,” Grandma said, hugging the old tree as hard as she could. Her hands were bloody from the rough bark; the front of her dress hung in ribbons.

“Keilyreine!” her mother shouted. “You hug whatever Grandma tells you to hug!”

“It hurts, Mommy,” she said, her tiny voice lost in the fields and hanging mist.

Grandma let go of the tree and twirled around drunkenly. “No!,” she shouted, pointing. “That is the tree! That is the tree where your Grandfather first took me!” She took off in a stiff-legged toddle across the field.

“His seed!” she screamed. “His seed steamed on my thighs in the morning air!”

“Go with Grandmother,” Keilyreine’s mother order.

“But I’m scared,” the small girl replied.

Grandma tackled the tree, ripping open her face. “It did mix with my maidenhead and flow out onto the ground!”

Keilyreine looked at her mother and father, and then to her Grandmother, bloody-faced against the tree.

“The tree, child!” Grandmother called, waving a veined hand. “Come and hug the tree! I can hear your grandfather calling!”

Keilyreine began to cry, great sobs that she struggled to breathe during. She clutched at the thin bones of her chest where they burned with pain.

“This is barbaric,” Keilyreine’s father muttered.

“This is my family,” her mother said coldly. “Our rites, our traditions. You knew this when you married into our clan. It is just one child. I am still fertile. Come, take me into the sacred forest. Plant another child in me if you can.” She stared at him until he finally looked away. She let out a snort of disgust.

Keilyreine’s mother stalked away, picked up the crying child and carried her Grandmother.

“Yes,” the old woman croaked. “This is it, this is the tree. I can feel him in it. Touch the tree. Know.”

Still holding on to the struggling child, now in full-blown tantrum, she reached out and placed her palm flat on the trunk of the ancient oak. She could smell her father’s tobacco. She could hear a faint echo of his voice. She could feel his rough hand sliding up her inner thigh. She shuddered and stepped back and swallowed hard against rising vomit.

“Could you feel him?” the crone asked.

The mother nodded and thrust the maiden forward.

“Just get it over with,” she said. She held onto the small, struggling form as the old woman, hands shaking, pulled out the knife, black with a thousand years of blood. Keilyreine began to scream and scream. Her voice filled the forest.

Grandma opened the girl’s throat and then her own. They both collapsed against the tree and blood gushed over the bark and soaked into the ground.

Keilyreine’s mother picked up the knife and left them both there–old and young, small and pale; left them there for the forest–and got back into her Subaru.