Me Myself And I

Are You Listening

I can speak to trees. They talk in a sad voice. Whimsical. Dulcet. I try talking to them, but they never listen. People always say trees are wise, they're wrong. They talk utter rubbish, and they never stop. When I need peace and quiet away from people, I can't go outside because sooner or later, a tree will realise there is an audience and start babbling.

I discovered I could talk to trees right after I had brain surgery. It was a tumour caused by overexposure to a chemical. The mine down the path had dug up. That's not the only change that overcame me. Mushrooms started growing on my body, not Shaggy Inccaps or Fly Agarics, very small grey ones. I have to scrub and wash my body every day. The last difference is that animals downright avoid me. Anytime I am walking, they run away or snarl, squark, and hiss noncommittal banter, which I can just about understand. It's weird, I know. My parents believe in all of it being magic, and well, I can't say I don't blame them.

As I walked past the mine on my way to school, I noticed a strange substance trickling from somewhere out of sight. I debated investigating, but I was already running late, and well, I didn't fancy any more fungal issues. So I steered clear. Then I noticed the trees weren't talking. Further down the path, a dead mouse lay on the pathway. I decided to move it on the way back home. But about half a meter away, a sparrow lay on a dried puddle. This was just a sad coincidence, right? With every step I took, a new victim appeared in front of my feat. What was going on. I ran and didn't look down. I couldn't see all the corpses underneath my shoes. I tried to ignore the crunch of bones under my feet. It felt like the path would never end, but of course, it did. I mean, this is still the real world, after all. I finally reached an inhabited area, and as soon as I reached the end of the path, the carpet of dead animals stopped too. I turned round. They were still there. My best friend came running up to me. I asked her if she had seen anything, and I wasn't specific about what. She said she saw two of our classmates walking in together. I laughed, trying to forget about what had just happened.

Isn't it funny how the world is so clearly divided? It's like everyone has a barrier surrounding them, and if something awful happens to one, that others are uneffected.

I was planning on taking a different route back home, but I had forgotten by the end of the day. When i reached the path, I remembered the animals. However, that was soon forgotten as I saw the same hue spilling from the mine this morning had entirely engulfed the forest and forever silenced the trees.