Heavy labored breathing rang in his ears as he frantically ran back and forth through the forest undergrowth. Where is he? Frantically looking around the trunks of trees as he dashed, he couldn’t slow his beating heart as it wildly thumped in his chest.
He was too old for this, and the shuddering impacts of his overweight torso falling down and crunching his knees was the worst memory of pain he had recently experienced. Save for one other source of discomfort.
An uncomfortably long strip of skin had been sheared off the back of his right arm, enough of it being peeled away for blood to start pooling up when something absorbent was held against it. It stretched down from right above his elbow almost down to his wrist, and it even felt like the cut had almost made its way into the meat of his arm at the joint.
The heavy scent of copper had filled his nostrils almost the moment he had taken notice of the wound, and even now it still invaded his senses. Currently, he had a makeshift gauze made from a ripped undershirt loosely tied around the wound, and it only did a passable job at stopping the blood flow.
He knew that it wasn’t the right course of action to do a half-assed job when it came to serious injury, but he needed the distraction of his own blood soaking the forest floor taken away from the forefront of his mind.
It was awkward feeling the windbreaker he had on top now against his skin, and his jeans weren’t exactly meant for all this running. He was grateful that he had chosen to wear some old sports sneakers he had been trying to wear out on purpose. Due to their ratty condition, they likely wouldn’t cut it out here for long, but that would be just fine if he could find his son.
He kept moving forward, going at a speed his beleaguered body hadn’t achieved in likely many years. Every step sent jolts up his frame, and he could tell that if he kept pushing himself it would mean unconsciousness at best. I need to find him.
Stopping against a tree, its rough bark numbing his hands as he just about slammed into it, he tried to steady his breathing. Only, he couldn’t stop gasping. It felt like someone had placed a cord around his lungs, and with every inhalation, his diaphragm weakly pushed against the restriction.
Coughing, he began to scan the forest once more. The issue with his current surroundings was twofold. For one, he couldn’t see past the myriad tree trunks surrounding him, several varieties of trees such as aspen and ash blocking his line of sight. It made it incredibly difficult to discern where his son had gone, the person he was frantically searching for.
And secondly, he didn’t recognize this forest at all. Despite the common tree varieties he had become aware of quite readily, still more eluded his description. Some trunks sported colorations that were odd to behold, such as one tree possessing a distinct marbling of its trunk.
It looked like it was a pillar of wood hewn from granite, and the colors it held throughout the stone-like material shifted from ivory white to an aquamarine blue, with some dark grays and light blues in between. Topping normal enough looking branches despite the coloration, each limb held crystalline leaves at their ends, with shining gems faceted from garnet and sapphire shining. An internal light source gave the gems their illumination, lines of light snaking back into the stone of the branches they extended from. Like veins.
That sure as hell wasn’t a tree he knew jack shit about, and he considered himself well-educated on flora in general. The sight made him curious, so he began to look around at more trees in his surroundings. Birch, black and chestnut oak, willows… and yet more he couldn’t define easily. He even noticed one tree that let off a soft, ethereal glow, its radiance shining dimly in the lowering daylight.
Curiously, he noted that all of the varieties he made sense of were a fraction of what was present in the area around him, which made him wonder why there were even that many tree varieties to begin with. Typically, forests didn’t acquire this diverse range of plants unless someone purposefully put them there. So what if it’s a man-made forest. Just find Jacob.
At the thought of his son, strength filled his limbs once more, and he set off to find him. He had avoided making any noise outside of the panting and shuffling sound he produced everywhere he went, as he was well aware that there could be any number of predators prowling in the area.
Especially considering the nocturnal nature of most of these kinds of beasts, plus the failing light disappearing even now, he felt no lack of urgency as he raced to find his boy.
The tree trunks were not difficult to get around. Many differed in size, both vertically and horizontally, but most were spaced out enough to not be an issue. For example, the granite tree was given a wide berth from all its brethren, and it accounted for a large portion of real estate being eaten up by its stony branches.
Underneath the stalwart gazes of the stretching stone appendages above, a plethora of rocks and granite flakes littered the ground. Evidently, it dropped quite a bit of detritus due to the nature of the tree, and the stone pieces he could see lying around differed in quantity, remaining quite heavy directly underneath the center of the tree and slowly growing more sparse the farther out towards the rest of the forest he looked.
These stone flakes meshed with the rest of the loam and greenery that composed the forest floor. He wondered how the tree even dropped them in the first place, as the tree didn’t seem to sway in any breeze that he could see, as even now, the tops of the rest of forest swayed gently in an evening gust. How does it support solid stone sitting in the air? There are no supports to speak of, so how is it doing that?
Moving past what had to be an easily thirty foot wide trunk, he kept moving. Only to stop as he heard the muffled cries of someone sitting against the trunk, the sound working its way past the crunch of rock underneath his feet.. If anything, it sounded like the crying of a young boy. “Jacob!” he yelled with what little breath he still held.
A surprised yelp, and a grinding of more stone underneath foot echoed out together. Easing around the edge of the tree, he could see a shock of messy blond hair and scared blue eyes, ones that almost burst into renewed tears at seeing him in the darkened surroundings.
Rushing forward, he wrapped Jacob up in a tight hug, holding his son’s head to his own as he silently thanked the heavens. He didn’t believe in divine providence, at least, not anymore. Even still, he gave as much silent gratitude for his son’s safety. “Are you ok?” He tried to soften his voice as much as possible, trying to avoid instilling more fear into his son.
“I-I’m fine, dad. But, where are we? I saw something scary…” Jacob was having a hard time talking, the mucus from crying alone in an alien environment evidently getting to him. Did Jacob recognize that they hadn’t arrived here normally? The transition had been abrupt, and he could hardly recognize
Realizing something important after finally having some of his own stress alleviated at finding his son, he looked at his phone. No reception, and evidently no signal to be had of any kind. He could see that it still read “Emergency Calls Only”, but he took that for the bullshit it was.
“Alright, look at me.” Lowering his son’s small frame away from himself, he gently set him on the ground. Tears were falling again, and he gently wiped them away. “It’s going to be just fine, got it?” He slowly nodded his head, and waited for Jacob to reciprocate.\
“Ok, we have to be careful, ok buddy? You know, we uh, have to stop making so much noise, or else we’ll wake up whatever you saw earlier. And we don’t want that, do we?” He was using that tone of voice everyone used when they talked to kids with big round eyes, the kind of speech that got right into the part of their brain that agreed when an adult spoke to them.
What he needed right now, above all else, was to figure out what to do in his current situation. He arguably couldn’t ignore several pressing needs, chief amongst them being his now somewhat dried wound. It had stopped openly pouring blood now, but it was still a serious problem. Focus on damage control.
He knew that in a situation like his, stranded in the woods with a small child, his best options were to stay still and wait for help, or try to find his way to the nearest stretch of road. The issue with that being that he held the sneaking suspicion that where he currently was didn’t have any pavement for him to find. Whether it was the statue tree right beside him, or the glow stick tree only a couple dozen feet away, everything about his current location felt fantastical in nature.
This was not a good thing. If anything, he only felt cold dread at the realization, the synapses of his brain firing and coming to only one logical conclusion. If what he suspected was true, then he was well and truly screwed. So, if he were acting on the assumption that help wasn’t going to arrive any time soon, what would he do?
He had one desire in mind, and it was the most pressing: water. He needed running water especially, and despite the fact that running water wasn’t guaranteed to be clean, it was his best bet. It was always times like these that he wished he had been some kind of nutjob, focused solely on their effective survivability in a situation where they ended up stranded in the middle of the wilderness.
That wasn’t really a fair assessment, considering that his lack of survival knowledge was why he was feeling more worried than ever. How the hell was he supposed to take care of his kid and look for help? He didn’t even know where he was or how he got there, and his chances of staying alive while taking care of a six-year-old child were definitely slim.
First, finding water. “Jacob? We have to go looking for something important, alright? Daddy got hurt, so we need to find water. Just tell me if you hear anything, ok?” With that, he gently held his son’s hand as he tried to make his way through the quickly darkening forest.
Knowing it was probably a poor decision, he elected to use his precious battery to provide some illumination, as that would at least mean he wouldn’t accidentally run into something while guiding Jacob.
He established in his mind the location of the granite tree as firmly as he could, hoping to use it as a landmark to prevent getting more lost than he currently was. Heading directly away from the tree, in a direction he mentally marked as north, he attempted to find water.
Not only did they both need something to slate their growing thirst, but the potential for relief at knowing his chances of getting a serious infection or even gangrene would go down significantly was what drove him.
He walked carefully, taking as long as he needed to make sure that he and Jacob didn’t make as much sound as they had before. Their chances of running into something dangerous grew exponentially the longer he chose to stay away from somewhere secluded with cover. Then again, all the places that would make a semi-functioning abode were probably occupied by dangerous critters, so it was best to avoid them for now anyway.
As he trudged through the loamy earth, the occasional leaf and root sticking up to impede his progress, he wondered if there truly was anything else in this forest besides trees. It didn’t really feel like it, as he hadn’t noticed the typical variety of plant life and assortment of insects that would usually fill this space. If anything, it felt eerily quiet. Only the occasional bug flitted past, and they were still in short supply
Moving forward, he kept a steady pace as he guided his son towards a growing sound that he presumed to be water. As he moved past a large mound directly in the path of his walking, he stepped into something wet. He knew this because the sensation of liquid filtering through the absorbent material of his shoes became readily apparent, and looked down to find out what he had stepped in.
Immediately, his hands snapped to Jacob's eyes as he picked him up, averting his son’s gaze as he looked on in sudden queasiness. Blood. Not his own, but a stagnant pool that had managed to find a hollow in the ground to nestle in. It was very shallow, the majority of the liquid likely having seeped away into the softer soil of the area. Why is this here?
“Dad? What’s going on?” Jacob’s muffled voice asked. He had accidentally covered the boy’s mouth when he abruptly blocked his vision. “Nothing sweetie, I just wanted to give you a hug for a bit. If I ask you to, can you please close your eyes for me?”, hoping Jacob would cooperate. He felt the nod as his son’s fine hair brushed against him, lifting him up higher until he held him in a sidearm carry against his chest.
Thinking, he checked the mound he had mistaken for upturned dirt, having dismissed it out of hand because he hadn’t determined what it was in the faint lighting of his flashlight. He gagged as he realized what he had found, the sound coming out involuntarily.
Flies crawled over vacant eyes, staring into the far distance with shock written across a canvas of slack skin. It was an old woman, likely in her sixties, her corpse only having been there long enough to lose all of the blood he currently had soaking his shoes. He knew this woman. And as he recognized her, memories flooded back into focus.
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He was sitting on the bench of a hospital waiting room for children, idly scrolling through his phone while looking for something to pass the time. He settled on watching some YouTube videos to pass the time, and occasionally checked on Jacob as he played with the activity center toys that most children’s areas had in hospitals.
It was a ubiquitous sight in this kind of environment, and he laughed to himself as he saw Jacob fighting with another kid for control of the slotted colorful plastic knobs set in faux wood.
Down the bench from where he sat, he saw an elderly woman smiling in exasperation at what he assumed to be her granddaughter. He leaned back in his seating against a wall, settling back down to watch some videos. His bulk rested against the seat uncomfortably, his fat belly serving as a place for him to rest his phone and arms.
As he got back into his video, his earbud case on the bench next to him, he heard an odd sound. It was akin to a ripping of fabric, but it had an ethereal echo to it.
Despite having his volume set near to full blast, a self-inflicted condition of minor hearing loss spending his youth at too many concerts, he could hear this stentorian blast as an almost physical force. Ripping out his earbuds and slamming them back into his case, he looked around for the source of the sound.
Suddenly, the other three people in the room with him were gone. He was alone in this space, the solitude causing an eerie feeling to wash over him. He first glanced at where his son had been only to find a good chunk of the floor and wall around where he had sat was gone. He got up in a fright, afraid that something had happened when he wasn’t paying attention.
Moving forward, he called out. “Jacob? Where are ya bud?” Touching the cut concrete flooring left behind where his son had been before, he noted that the texture was unlike anything he had touched before.
It felt like the surface of a cue ball, not shined to the point of being reflective, but perfectly sanded down to a professional level of finish. The cuts were divots into the floor and wall, like a sphere of material had been removed with an exacting level of precision.
What the fuck is going on? As he glanced back towards where the old woman had sat on the very same bench as him, he saw that the foam and fabric composing the seating were similarly disassembled in a discomforting ball of deletion. A curve arcing slightly into the wall behind where the old woman had sat was gone, but that wasn’t the most discomforting sight.
Blood poured out of a twitching strip of leg, still covered in the dress that the elderly woman had been wearing. In horror, he yelped at the sight. Immediately, he moved to the door of the room to call for help.
As he went to yell out for assistance, a sudden blackness enveloped him, immediately followed by a burning sensation on his right arm. And for an indeterminable amount of time, he felt no more.
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He shook his head, the instance back in the hospital rushing back in far more clarity previous to now. Seeing her features reminded him of what felt like had only occurred hours prior, and it brought him back into the here and now.
She was upturned, her face towards the now brightening lights of the stars as she had her final moments in relative peace on her back. After she had died, to whatever it was that finished the job, it seemed that a beast of some kind had torn her entrails open, leaving them to pool on the ground. Bite marks could be seen on places where her torn flesh showed chunks missing, and it all made his head spin in disgust and repulsion.
This was all marked by the tiny moving dots of flies and small beetles crawling across her form, their dark carapace stark against the pale skin left unmarred. Peering closer despite his revolting stomach, he checked one more thing that bothered him about her body.
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He looked at her lower half, particularly the legs. As he leaned, he made sure Jacob still had his eyes closed, but he knew that both of them were probably becoming more ill by the moment as the scent of copper in the air grew stronger. He just had to answer one question. Why does she have a cut like mine?
He had been thinking about his own injury since he had arrived here, and here he found evidence of what he had seen in the hospital. All along the outer edge of her left leg, there was a strip of flesh that had been perfectly severed off. It was nowhere to be seen around her, and the only marks that it was different to his were the indications that more animals had eaten on the exposed muscle.
There was a curve to the wound, as if a curved knife arcing to the side had gone done the leg. Due to the anatomy of the human body, this meant the cut took off more in some places than others, as it had seemed to follow a path through the air instead of following along her leg. At the meat of her thigh, bone peeked out into the open air, with a small divot into her bone marrow being exposed.
What caused this? This isn’t like any injury I’ve seen before. It made him ask questions about his own injury, and the way it was so perfectly cleanly sliced off. It was like something had rubbed all of the skin and muscle on a perfect plane off his body, and left him with an incredibly smooth surface of exposed flesh.
Grunting, as he could no longer stomach the sight and scent, he ran with as much fervor as he had when looking for Jacob in the first place.
Eventually, the smell stopped invading his nostrils, and he finally found the source of water he had both heard and smelt as he worked through the forest. He wasn’t sure if it was just him, but he knew that he could tell when he was close to a body of water based off of the scent alone. It had a distinct note of nature to it, if he had to ascribe a quality to it.
Setting his son down far away from the bank of the river, he took stock of what the rushing water before him held. A glossy black ribbon of water flowed past in a rushing stream, with a velocity that surprised him. The river was easily fifty feet wide, and it had several gentle curves at the area he found himself situated.
It was impossible to tell how deep the bed of the recessed water went, as not only did the land slope down to its location until there was an almost five foot decline, but the time of night and his lack of high-power lighting meant he couldn’t see into the water whatsoever. Hell, the dark coloration of the liquid could be its actual coloring, if that was possible.
Turning to Jacob, he addressed one important matter before he went down there with him. “Ok buddy, are you thirsty at all? I need you to tell me.” “Only a little, dad. I… I had my water when we got here, but I lost it somewhere.” Remembering now, he had the distinct impression that he had given him a water bottle before they went out for the day. He was regretting not taking his own with him especially now.
“Ok, you need to be extremely careful. I’m going to hold you, and you’ll take a sip, just like at the fountain. You remember the fountain, right?” He was referring to Jacob’s love of being held as he drank from public water fountains, something he had found personally gross while his son found it to be an intense source of fun. “Yeah, dad.”
Leaning forward, he slowly lowered Jacob towards the swiftly moving current. It was extremely awkward, as he had to not only keep himself balanced away from the bank to prevent his own fall, but also keep his son elevated enough that the process of getting a drink wasn’t impossible. He engaged in this idea mainly because he worried that Jacob’s shorter and weaker arms would get dragged away from the rapid water, so it was best to just hold him in place as he drank.
Is this a good idea? I haven’t cleaned the water, but getting found by a bear if I start a fire seems like a terrible idea. What if we end up getting dysentery or cholera? It didn’t seem like the water was infested with human waste, but he ran the risk of developing some illness if he drank now.
His throat burned at the thought, and he knew that he wouldn’t be able to even attempt sleep that night if he didn’t sate his thirst. Bringing Jacob back to the shore, he could see that the water had shocked his son back to full wakefulness, as his eyes had grown drowsy in the near complete darkness surrounding them. ‘T-That’s cold, dad.” “I’m sorry bud, I’ll make sure to get you something to warm you up when I can, alright?”
Moving forward, he scooped up some of the flowing water and slurped it from his clasped hands. Dirt, bark, blood and other debris filled his mouth, and he almost cursed at his own stupidity. Of course he should’ve washed his hands first. When he could finally taste the water itself, he found it to be a biting cold that worked its way down his throat, the distinct taste of minerals heavy in this particular river.
It was crisp, wonderful to the senses, and it gave his parched throat new life. He almost drank until he was sickly full, considered the consequences of doing so, and reasoned that it was better than dying of dehydration, and continued until he couldn’t stomach more. Running like this, with water sloshing around an empty stomach would be a bitch though. Best to walk slowly from here on out.
Turning around to Jacob, he found him sitting, playing with a very large branch that had probably broken off from one of the numerous trees running along both sides of the river. “Found a stick you like?” “Yeah, but I don’t think I can hold it.” At this, Jacob attempted to lift the branch, but it likely weighed a good ten pounds or so. Long and unwieldy, the branch was likely an inch and a half in diameter, resulting in a hefty hunk of wood. Jacob used his arms to attempt once more, but he gave up in defeat shortly after they failed to move an inch. “I got it, don’t worry. Your old man can handle a little branch.”
Hefting both his son and the branch in his grasp, he elected to drop the branch if he could do so discreetly. It was almost impossible for him to both hold the flashlight out to see and carry the branch, so Jacob would have to deal with the disappointment at his dad letting him down. As he decided to move back towards the granite tree, the only location he had firmly set in his mind at that moment, he heard a growl.
For the first time in that forest, he finally found a distinctly present lifeform besides Jacob, the occasional bugs, and himself. Whipping around, he brandished the light forward, hoping to scare whatever it was that had made the sound. Only to come face-to-face with the snarling maw of a beast, inches away from him.
It was distended, a swollen snout that seemed to writhe in the light of his flashlight. He didn’t know what to call it, as it seemed to be a mix of animals he was familiar with. A honey badger, fox, and bear blended into one terrifying creature based off of its facial features. Long whiskers pulled away from its face, drooping with congealed blood. An extended jaw, similar to the sleek length of a fox’s face, with the snout of a badger and the teeth of a bear. Its eyes glowed a disturbing, unnatural purple, and the fur that he could see was pitch black.
What he knew about the creature was limited, for even as he attempted to get a better look at the rest of its body as he shielded Jacob, the flashlight’s beam was eaten by the shadows coiling around the creature. It hadn’t attacked him yet, but the look on its face indicated that it might at any second. In a moment of hesitation and action, both warring for control over him, he made his decision.
With as much care as he could, he just about dropped Jacob as he choked up on the tree branch he held in his hands. In order to accomplish this, he also dropped his phone, the spinning of the flashlight as it fell to the ground being the last source of light in this oily blackness.
Save one. The glow of the creature’s eyes burned brightly in this hellscape of pitch blackness, and that let him know exactly where to aim. With adrenaline thundering through his blood, his heart pounding wildly in his ears as the scent of blood filled his senses, he readied himself for death. Either his, or the monster’s.
The strength of a father protecting his son filled every ounce of his being. Despite years of slacking off and letting his bodily temple grow weak and filled with the detritus spawned from modern day diets, there was still strength in his frame. Stancing up, his feet sliding in the dirt to account for the torqueing of his body, he prepped for a fight that wouldn’t end well for him. As the eyes shifted forward, narrowing as they moved in for the kill, he made his move.
Every fiber of his being moved, for a single moment, in glorious synchronicity as he blasted the branch in an upward arc. As he swung for the fences, he wondered if the dark had led to him miscalculating where the beast was to the point that he wouldn’t make contact.
Then, as it reached the apex of its swing, the wood connected. In a crunch of impact that he felt throughout the entirety of his bones, the branch in his hand shattered. He didn’t know if that had been just the branch or the creature’s skull. The wood fragments sprayed outwards in every direction, just as a whimpering form the size of a mountain lion was blown back from the force, tumbling ass over teakettle. It seemed that its body’s shape had become easily perceived the moment it was forced out of a state of concentration.
That had hurt like hell. Every inch of his hands was covered in rough abrasions, likely from how hard he gripped the rough bark. Scrambling in both body and mind, he rushed towards where he last remembered Jacob and his phone being. How did I do that? That thing was massive, and it still got thrown around like a napkin in the wind.
He called out softly to Jacob, looking for him at the same time he pawed at the dirt for the sleek surface of his phone. Latching onto both at the same time, he almost tripped as he finally revealed the scene once more. Broken pieces of wood littered the soil, some of them covered in the beast’s ichor. It was a mess, and the beast was nowhere near the beam of the flashlight streaming onto the ground.
With as much strength as he could muster, uncomfortable in multiple ways, he began to run. The only place he could think to go towards was the tree, with the hope that he could somehow manage to climb up its trunk until he found a safe spot. Maybe the creature couldn’t climb? A roar of rage, blending the hissing and yipping of its badger and fox portions into the bellow the bear possessed, echoed out into the night behind him. It would be a hell of a run.
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Out of breath, feeling every muscle in his body stitching at the lactic acid build-up, he almost fell to his knees as he finally arrived at the granite tree once more. The gravel sprayed as he came to a drifting stop in the loose gravel, nearly falling against the tree with Jacob in his arms. His arms especially burned, most notably because of his need to carry his son while holding out the flashlight to see.
As he looked from the ground to the trunk to scan for footholds to get him up its surface, he noticed more figures in the darkness. Is it a pack beast? This is getting more fucked by the second… Except, one of the forms was far too small to be a predator.
He realized that, as he swung the light onto them both, that he was staring at a woman and child. The same child from the hospital, the one that had been playing with his son. Thinking rapidly, knowing that the bear hybrid was still going to chase him here after licking its wounds, he yelled at them both.
“UP THE TREE, NOW!” He couldn’t help the volume, despite not wanting to hurt Jacob’s hearing. It was a necessity that they get moving immediately, and any time wasted was a death sentence. It might be a surefire way to die if they climbed anyway, but it was better than staying on the ground. A roar from the distance reverberated through his bones, the sensation a familiar one after his long run.
Jumping in surprise, the woman picked up the young girl, and attempting to follow his lead, looked around the trunk for places to put her feet to climb. Unfortunately, perhaps just to spite him and the woman attempting to save innocent children, the tree had no easy handholds.
No low-hanging branches to climb up and hoist themselves onto, as the nearest one was easily six feet in the air. He frantically went around the massive trunk, searching desperately for something, anything.
Then, as he began to assess where the next place to run would be, he saw it. A slight crack in the stone composing the tree’s trunk could be seen, just wide enough for someone to slip their fingers into it. It ran diagonally, going from around his chest to It was possible that the world’s greatest rock climbers would find it easy pickings to climb, but his beer gut made the sight more disparaging than uplifting.
It was a mockery to what he had fought for. There was no salvation here, and there likely never would be. Dammit! I can’t run anymore. My legs can hardly move, and I’m risking genuinely shitting myself if I push any harder. Then I’ll have to die embarrassed and terrified.
Grimacing, he faced the crack once more. He could see in the shining light of the crystal leaves, their internal glow acting like radiant spots of sunlight in the dark abyss of the forest. He could see how, if you had the upper body strength, it might be possible to lift your body using the tight confines of the slit in the stone to work your way up to the branch. Until you got the tip of your foot into the hole, it would be free-climbing with nothing but his arms. Injured ones at that.
Looking within himself, he psyched up what little strength he had left, turned to the side as he gently set Jacob down, and cracked his joints. This was going to hurt. A lot. Jamming his fingers into the crack at the narrowest point above his head that where they could fit, he lifted himself off the ground. He trembled over every inch of his body, remembering days back in high school attempting a similar enough climb up a rope.
There was no chalk to make this experience easier with dry hands, and the smooth granite inside the hole would have made his hands slip immediately if not for the pinching pressure exerted on his fingers. He screamed a little in white-hot agony even as he rose higher. Do it for him. There is still strength in me yet.
Despite the difficulty, he was ascending quickly enough that eventually, he managed to worm his feet into the crack as well, probably making for the weirdest sight he would have ever seen, had he the perspective to do so. He almost started laughing at the absurdity of his situation, and sobered up when another roar blasted out. It was getting closer much faster than he had hoped it would.
Still, I bet my sweaty ass is probably the most uncomfortable looking creature to have ever attempted to climb this damnable tree. Eventually, despite every facet of logic dictating that he should never have been capable of the feat, he collapsed onto the incredibly wide and sturdy branch he had been aiming for. He looked at his bloodied fingers, the sharp edges of the granite having parted his flesh like butter. It’s all for him. I can do this. I just need to be stronger.
Leaning off the side of the easily foot wide branch, he lowered his arm towards the woman who had stared on in shock as he climbed. “Please, pass me my son! I’ll get you both up, we just need to hurry!” Moving forward, she picked Jacob up and passed him towards him, allowing him to hoist his son into the air as he set him on the branch next to him.
“Careful buddy. And please, for the love of God, do not fall on your ass.” “Oh. Dad, I thought we weren’t supposed to swear.” He looked at his son, his own flesh and blood, thinking about the lack of care in this kind of situation. Then, he remembered that he was barely six. “You’re right.” he sighed. Leaning down again, he lifted both the woman and the girl onto the same branch as them. Despite tapering towards a smaller end the farther out the limb went, it easily supported all four of them.
“‘Kay, plan’s simple. I’m going to do that again, we pass each other the kids, and then we keep going till I can’t no more.” Without waiting for a response, he climbed up, bracing himself for another round of agony. He saw a path up the tree, one that had to take several detours to account for a lack of a convenient branch that still went up into the air. This meant they would climb down and to the side at times, slowing their progress.
And so it went. He bled more and more profusely each time, even though he had learned from the previous attempts by wrapping torn cloth from his bandage around each finger. The thin amount of cloth he was able to put on the wounds was meager, as any substantial amount of cloth would make it nigh unfeasible to work his way into the crack.
The hairline fracture, that being the scale of the split against the enormity of the tree, wound its way in a sweeping arc, like the swirl of red on a candy cane. It wrapped around the tree in a very normalized way, one that indicated it was made on purpose. Almost as if this were normally a staircase that wrapped around the tree, and he was the bumbling idiot dumb enough to try climbing without turning on the stairs.
He shook aside that notion, and began to climb once more. As he did so, he wondered where the strength to do this came from. He had never done something this taxing in his life at any point, and he knew that the moment he came down from the still-pumping adrenaline rush he felt, he could easily fall into a sleep deep enough to kill him. It felt like that, if he stopped moving, he would collapse and become one with the forest around him.
It was disconcerting, that feeling of oneness with the earth. Yet, it was almost comforting, to a certain extent. He knew that, if it did end with him giving up the ghost, the earth would still happily receive him. With loving, open arms. Shaking himself awake again, almost feeling like a daydream had washed over him, he pulled again. And again. At this point, despite feeling like the greatest mortal representation of Sisyphus to have ever lived, he recognized that they were only fifty feet or so off the ground.
Looking down at his kid and the other two passengers in this journey, he could see the fright they exhibited at their location. The branches had slimmed down as they went higher, only by a fraction of their original breadth, but it was still noticeable enough to be disconcerting.
The woman stood there in deep blue polyester scrubs, evidently having been a nurse from the same hospital they had all been at. She was quivering with both of the kids held against her as they sat on the branches, straddling their length while he did all the work. Not that he cared, as this whole execution of his plan would have been impossible without her to hand Jacob up to him.
Turning back to the climb, he muscled himself up again onto the next branch. Where was this strength before? It feels like, with every passing moment, I can grip easier. My body even feels lighter. Then, his eyes were greeted with the most pleasant sight imaginable.
There was a door recessed into the wall of the trunk, the base of the door intersecting with the same line he had been inching his way up with the whole way. The line and door frame were interrupted by the branch he stood on, this one becoming far more smooth than any previous one he had stood upon.
“Quick, get up! I think we might be safe here!” Leaning down on his stomach to pick them up once more, he assessed their situation once all of them were standing on the doormat branch together. It was good, all things considered. If they could make it inside whatever this structure was, they would be safe from the bear thing that was likely even now attempting to climb after them. When he looked at the ground to check this, he found nothing there. “Odd.”
Looking at the architecture of the door, it wasn’t immediately clear where it hailed from. It bore the same granite/marble coloring of the tree, with streaks of blue running throughout its shiny surface. It held no embellishments, and it was only discernible as a threshold to another space by virtue of the edges it cut into the tree. That being said, there was no handle. “Shit.”
One thing that he was positive of was that staying on the branch wouldn’t be a good thing. While it was a comfortable space to stand on so high in the air, it would not work as a place to rest a weary head. Banging his hands against the door, he contemplated crying in frustration. It was bullshit, the whole ordeal. He blood marred the pristine opalescent whites of the granite, the red of his blood covering the blue streaks shining through.
It created a purple hue of incredible depth, and it was almost beautiful to look at. Almost. He felt immense grief and anxiety, terror and exhaustion, overwhelming every part of his body. He had reached a point where he would be safe from the bear thing, at least for the time being. His body was taking that as a sign to kick his parasympathetic nervous system into gear, returning his abnormally high levels of everything to a homeostasis that he didn’t want right now.
Then, past the anger and despair, another sensation grew stronger. One he knew he had felt while climbing, the weirdest feeling he had ever sensed. It felt like the stone of the door was… calling to him. It spoke, not in actual words, but in feeling. It was apparently deciding something. And, maybe feeling what he felt in that very moment, it chose. It welcomed him in. The door swung open, and relief filled his entire being. They would be safe, at least for now.
The tiredness fell in a wave over him, and his brain almost started to short circuit as he attempted to move inside. When he finally did, he noticed that there was something akin to a bed on the right-hand side of the space. No other details managed to make it past the haze of his brain fog. Not knowing what else to do when it felt like every melatonin pill in the world had hit him at once, he collapsed into oblivion.