The green city

The white bush

A short distance down the deteriorated dirt path the old man clad in robes stops dead. He hurriedly gestures with his right hand towards something off to our right.  A strange all white bush off the side of the path.

The bush is completely untouched by the green mist. The purest white I have seen all day.

But what about the bush does the old man want me to see? I turn my gaze back to forward to see the old man had completely vanished, as if fleeing from some immense danger. 

Control given back to my muscles, I remember what the mission is about and decide to turn back towards the TV and finally escape this green hell for the day. That is when I hear it.

A heartbeat.

Slowly and very carefully I look back at the white bush and concentrate on it. The bush is very faintly throbbing, the leaves slightly jiggling at each pulse. Pulse and rustle, pulse and rustle throb and shake. With each throb I step closer, step, throb, step, throb, step, throb, until i am off the dirt path.

Step, throb, step, throb, step step stepstepstepstepSTEPSTEPSTEP.

A voice asks me to join them.

I dash into the bush, wildly pulling at the leaves and snapping the branches wherever my hands find purchase, kicking at the trunk and biting off bits and pieces of the incessant leaves, out of everything i have had to put up with these last few days, it was the annoying throbbing bush that sends me over the edge and into the pits of rage.

Many voice scream out in agony inside my head, a few beg me to stop and others are screaming murder into my mind. I continue thrashing and destroying the bush until there is only a mutilated trunk in front of me.

A lone voice in my head weakly whispers for me to leave and asks how i knew. I completely ignore the voice and place both hands firmly over the stem of the bush. Manifesting all of the hate for this green hell I have put up with for days on end I heave at the roots of the stupid twig.

Pulling harder for everything i have lost. Pulling harder for everyone who left once i was convicted. Pulling the hardest because i want to go back to my white, rectangular room in the huge facility with the scary guards and nightmarish secrets kept behind steel doors and key card readers and thumb scanners and-

The roots pull out of the ground with a crunch and several meters of roots become now exposed to sunlight from the gaps in the treetop far above. The tree Evaporates into grey smoke and a lone scream echoes the dissipates in the recesses of my mind.

Feeling alone, hungry and only slightly miffed i trudge back onto the dirt path, retrace my steps i took unwillingly with the old man and find my way back to the clearing with the TV.

Infuriatingly the immense head pain returns and i collapse only maddening centimeters from the front of the TV.

My eyes open to greet a clinical environment, with men in hazmat suits and with disinfected equipment in hand, slathering my body with a viscous blue liquid and plugging my nose. One of them even asks me how the trip was this time. Before I even have the chance to speak the Television set in front of me displaying static turns off and I realize after i had collapsed the science team must have reached in just far enough to drag me back out of the green dreamscape.

In the green jungle, next to the green city, in the green world, in the pocket where other colors are found, an old man in all white flowing robes stands above the hole where a bush must once have been. He chuckles and kicks the hole, pulls a cane from behind his back where there was no cane and starts to walk back towards the city.