(A really old one i wrote so long ago that i finally found.)
One crisp autumn night I saw it.
I knew this was a dream unlike any other.
It's pure visceral nature has etched itself into my memory, burned itself into my mind's eye.
Like any truly horrifying thing, I was alone. I could feel an unease in the pit of my stomach urging me to continue onward on my journey to whence I know not.
At the moment I didn't quite feel isolated from the world, merely I was in a forest that happened to fall betwixt me and my destination. The air was a kind of unnoticeable temperature, neither hot nor cold; the kind of feeling that lets you forget the reality around you. Like you're walking through a Picasso painting or perhaps Salvador Dali's Persistence of Memory, that painting with the melted clocks... You know the one. The sky above was grey, white, the kind of clouds that let you forget there's a blue sky above; just an empty canvas stretching forever, an endless blank space just filling up the necessary ingredient of "sky" in this landscape.
The ground made no sound as I wandered my path.
It was an ashen color.
Not quite white but not quite dark brown.
I left neither footprints nor any signs I'd been through this path, in this forest, on this strange day. Yet I felt a sense of familiarity, as much as my solitude unnerved me. It was not unlike walking home from a nighttime job at the library. At such dark hours nary a passerby is seen, you are on edge because of the quietness that hangs over you like a thick humid air. Yet you are comforted by it as well, because you know at this kind of hour, in this kind of place anyone, no anything you meet would most certainly be unpleasant. That kind of feeling. As I made my way through this forest more and more this vague scenery, this nondescript utterly forgettable atmosphere finally bared its fangs. Maybe it was this empty atmosphere that prevented me from noticing at the very start of my venture into this land. Either way I became distinctly aware that I was making my way through The Human Forest. The trees were white, an ivory color on this empty night.
From the look of it they were smooth. As a child I would pick up sticks from the ground and, using my fingernails, strip the bark from them until only the smooth light-colored wood remained, these trees looked as if they'd suffered the same indignity.
Amid the virgin white of the trees patches of rust could be seen. Like gashes from a knife or perhaps splotches of dried blood. Their shapes reminded me most of when one is bleeding from a wound and showers, the way the blood lightens and becomes semi-transparent yet still retains its color. The way it forms a fuzzy outline around the sharp concise shape of the wound, I cannot think of a better way to describe those impurities. As my attention was drawn further from the path, I wandered to the trees around me I became aware of their distinct deformation.
From the base the tree grew as if it were five separate trees that'd ingrown together, fused you might say. The way one braids a tree by stripping parts of it bare adding water and moss and then tying another tree's branch whose raw flesh had been exposed so that they might grow together. As I followed the trunks up, I came to realize the core trunk was only a little taller than me...so a little above 5'3" at the most. From where the mast of the tree ends countless branches stretched out towards the vacuum of the sky. I say branches but I would prefer you not get the wrong impression they were branches for lack of a better term to describe them. Jointed like a normal branch yet they bore no leaves and no diverging splits. One simple line with joints that bulged outward, giving the whole structure the feeling of elongated skeletal phalanges.
The phalanges that were reaching towards the sky, all originating from a bulbous growth at the very end of the trunk. Rather not "a" bulbous growth, but "several" bulbous growths, five in fact.
They were not perfectly circular but rather ovular, misshapen even. The part facing me was smooth and slightly flattened, while the top rounded backwards, it seemed to be leaning towards me a little. The way one's head hangs forward after they are hanged.
Yes. They were almost like heads with no facial features.
