A Little Background
Most of the time I know what I’m writing. Sure, I’m uncovering the map, and truly profound discoveries occur, but I always remain on the same map. I don’t hop between genres, times, and tropes like a hipster’s Pictionary. This story was a little different.
A flash of a scene came to me. Half-buried in front of me was a rotted beam with a rusted saw blade partially protruding from its center. A dark green moss caught a sliver of moonlight, bordering the edge of this lumber mill like flowers in front of a headstone.
From there, I just let the fingers fly. And I ended up creating a place that I have never written about nor thought about: the afterlife.
The Lumber Mill
Part I
Bobby found it first. Sorry, “Robert”. He doesn’t like his old name anymore. Most don’t once they settle in.
It was buried at an odd angle like a ray from a setting sun shooting through the day’s last storm cloud. It was mostly rotted except the crude metal core which possessed a vitality by comparison.
Bobby rallied some people out of the slumber, myself included. Granted my slumber was not as deep as others with the crackling fire keeping me up. The wood in this forest popped louder than gunfire. A sound I did not miss. A sound that oddly puts most of us ill at ease.
“I found something. I think it’s old.” Bobby’s announcement was only heard above the grumbling because his voice was somewhere between a rockslide and a thunderstorm. We tried to get him to whisper, but he didn’t bite. He’d always answer with something about how he didn’t get to where he was by whispering.
“What is it?” I asked, pretending to be grumpy despite being intrigued.
“Dunno.” Bobby said over his shoulder as he moved away from the dwindling fire and back into the shadows of the night. “It’s long, like train tracks, but we’re nowhere near any of that.”
“Definitely not,” I replied. I stood, stretched, and hoped that my hands would reach the stars hiding behind the canopy of the forest that never fully revealed the diamonds in the sky.
Nights were long here, but not as long as the nightmares that came when my head found a pillow. I wasn’t the only one either. There was an unspoken edge to everyone when morning came. The clear sign of bad sleep, little sleep, and demons that freely wandered our minds when we were supposed to be recharging. Also unspoken among us was that this was the price for what we had done.
I shook it off, released the stretch, and headed in the direction of Bobby. The shadows and the potential harm they protected were of no concern compared to what awaited the next time I closed my eyes to rest.
Part II
Pine needles crunched beneath my shoes. The soles still retained some essence of their original intention. I can’t say the same for the laces, but I had no one to impress nor was I running any marathon in these woods.
“Bobby, give me a click.” I spoke the words slightly upward as they would echo farther than a shout thanks to the branches that started growing about fifteen feet up. We never figured out why they didn’t grow lower to the ground. Maybe there once was a herd of animals that made this forest its home. And said herd grew to that height. Nature does have a way of trying a few times before saying “fuck it” and trying a new solution.
But we didn’t spend too much time pondering that. There were many words shared across the licking flames of our morning and evening fires, but nothing about what lived here before. Only what lives here now. Which is why we occasionally made clicking noises that sounded closer to a branch snap than pen clicking in the nervous hand of an audited accountant. Or worse, a bookie with a barrel being used to point fingers instead of, well, fingers.
Bobby didn’t hear my request which meant he’d taken off. The first rule of this place was to not shout into the darkness. It wasn’t a rule we made up. It was a rule enforced upon those who wanted to live by those who didn’t care if we did.
I clicked my tongue. The first attempt was weak. I put my frustration into the second one. It made the bush to my right waiver briefly. My heart lurched in response. Not the kind that you realize you’re doing 20 over in a school zone. No, this is the lurch that awaits after a blood test from the oncologist. “Not this time,” I pleaded under my breath.
A click at a certain level carried just fine through the woods. Like a bird song, it danced and bobbed until gently fading into the horizon of the listener. A click that moved anything as if it was wind made shadows dance and bob until one of us was swallowed. It wasn’t always this way, but it had happened enough that we treated it as if it always happened.
“Please, not me,” I begged a little quieter, feeling my insides attempt to shrink. I’m six-five, 275 pounds of near solid muscle, and, in that other life where people paid me to make things go away, had been called The Trunk. But guess what? Fear doesn’t discriminate. Its swath takes out knees and heads of the short and fat the same as the tall and muscled.
The campfire behind me gave another pop, making me externally jump while simultaneously making me internally shrink. Another pop filled the air, not as loud as the last, but I didn’t really hear it. I don’t know if it was because of my fear made reality or the shadows had muted it as they raced across the forest floor, heading straight at me.
Part III
It was clear and distinct like looking through a window. Quickly, it progressed and I couldn’t keep up. It happened like looking through hundreds of pieces of slowly falling glass. It was blurry then clear for a breath or two then it was blurry again before the cycle started over.
The fear that captured my thoughts and turned the blender on high had begun to dissipate. My thoughts actually slowed like the falling glass shards in my vision. In the distance, like the mirage at the end of a desert highway on a long day I recognized there was a forest. I knew it was night. I knew it was where my body stood rigid and likely my heart still raced. But I could not reach it as it was more like a memory; the way you knew how full your belly felt after eating five ice cream floats on a dare decades earlier as a child.
“What’s happening?” I asked aloud yet no sound came out. I laughed as I remembered I was not in my body.
The falling glass shards began coalescing. The mirage of the place that had become the new home where I drew breath was fading thanks to the bigger view through the glass. Yet it wasn’t as clear as the individual shards. It had a curve to it. A familiar curve I couldn’t place.
Images of parallel lines and concrete and the scattered garbage of humanity filled my mind. The gallery stopped on an image of a tall figure looking out on the street, the head turned upward.
Ahh, yes, that’s it, I thought. A parking garage. The mirrors that are curved outward so you can see traffic.
Realizing what the curvature reminded me of didn’t return me to my body nor fully bring back the forest. But it did bring me more calm.
Is this the tunnel, and I’m looking at the light at the end? I mused. Is this what they saw before the end? Was it not me at the end of a barrel and a hammer after all?
Part IV
Tomatoes, strawberries, and celery. All blended. A Bloody Mary with a twist. Except this wasn’t a Mary; I don’t recall his real name. He seemed to walk the line between humble and smug fairly well when he told them to call him Trunk. Of course, the shadow doesn’t care about the name nor the size of the man. It chews through you all the same. It blends you into a bloody mess then disappears into the ground like water into a sponge.
It’s too bad. I liked Trunk. We never talked. In fact, he never saw me. Like all the others, he never looked up for too long.
I’d look down on them for hours at a time. I’d hop from tree to tree thanks to skills I don’t remember gaining yet I was assured with every leap or rope toss to another branch. And I’d see the whites of their eyes shoot past me to the stars above. Sometimes I’d wave, but they always looked away just at that moment as if another force had yanked at the collar of their attention.
Trunk would leave food out on the fallen log he’d made his chair and table. I’m certain he saw the rope because before falling asleep, he’d elevate scraps of food in such a way that I could easily loop the rope around it. And sometimes I’d lower a handful of berries wrapped in the insanely large leaves that provided the cover I needed from the berry-sized rain drops that never fully made it to the ground.
“At least I get to keep the berries now,” I mumbled. It was odd saying that while looking at the blended mess of muscles, bones, blood, and the half-digested berries. But that sort of thing never bothered me.
“You’ve got the stomach of a medical examiner.” That’s what dad told me growing up. It’s the only memory that I have where I know the people. His voice strong, deep in my mind. “Hell, you’d probably set your sandwich on some poor bitch’s leg while you were cutting her open.”
I grinned, thinking that I probably wasn’t always the daughter he wanted. It’s not like he was always the father I wanted. But that doesn’t matter now. He doesn’t matter now. Just like Trunk. He’s a few layers down, but Trunk’s blend will seep and find him eventually.
I flung the rope with the hooked rock at the end to wrap around a branch on a tree fifteen feet away. I gave another glance at the ground, gave a pitiful smile, and whispered, “They’ll be one more star in the sky tonight.”