Lonely Reflections

By Dillon Jackson

There’s no room for life in this place. So why are you here?

Your suit is spotless. You smile. Laugh. People never reach this tree, never whole, and yet you’re here nonetheless. You glide among weeping groves and wilted leaves like a living specter, free from rot. The spores beneath your feet reach for your soul, can you feel them? Thousands of tiny fingers rising from decay, each blade darker than the last. These grounds won’t feed long, starved as they are. You’ll fade in minutes. Nameless. Voiceless among the collective… but still conscious. Consumed, processed, born anew as another finger reaching into darkness for the life you once had.

The tree beckons. Withered branches open wide for your embrace. A gaping maw of wood and loneliness. It senses your heart as surely as it did mine years ago. It binds us here, claiming us from the rough collars we made. Sturdy necklaces fit to test its branches well. How could you continue in the face of such misery? You, armed only with flowers for one such soul chained here forever… What hope do you have of leaving now?

“I’m sorry I missed your birthday, bud.” He drops the bouquet beside the tree. A framed photograph joins it. The picture is familiar somehow… A face I recognize but can’t place. Fresh tears wet the ground beneath the branch I once dangled from. Or was it a different branch? A less forgiving one, one I’d recognize if I ever saw it again. The limbs sway with the wind, imperceptibly struggling to seize you.

The rotting branches reach betwixt life and death to claim their prize, a visitor overstayed by sorrow and remembrance caught unaware. The still moving corpse walks among us without realizing or understanding death’s occurrence, its final result yet delayed. He mourned deeply, too deeply to evade the great oak’s notice – it has him now. His thoughts, his dreams, the death of a soul precluding the drop of the body. But we know better than to eat too soon.

***

“I miss you, bud.”

The heart stirs beneath the dirt, rotten beat. A moment of clarity in the midst of madness. The final recognition of what was lost before the consciousness is swallowed whole. The oak’s wretched roots chaining us to spoiled earth like so many before you. We writhe, but never break free, never feel free again. The sun is black, our night everlasting. To persist now would only prolong the pain, it won’t save us from the great oak. A tear falls, but isn’t replaced.

Your rope sailed over the lowest branch of the great oak without difficulty. The moment lingers, fuzzy to a brain that doesn’t seem to be mine. Thoughts appear crystal in the moonlight before the chorus drowns them out.

Feed, feed little ones for dinner comes sparingly. Especially one so savory as this.

But this fear tastes too familiar, too poisoned to be palatable. You cross the ends, pulling them taunt, creating the necklace I once made for myself before surrendering the great oak it’s bounty. You move like I did, cherishing the photo of someone who looked just like me… a older photo of you and I with two others wearing smiles. But you’re diseased now like I was, the great oak poisoning the well of despair you’ve consumed for so long.

“I’m sorry.” The photo falls from your hands as the rope catches the great oak’s quarry.

You returned here in death without glory, another limp strand swaying from the branches of the great oak. Three moons passed, perhaps, but the wretched wood works in secret from beyond. It infects the mind, poisons the thought, all to savor the life of those yet undying. But die they will, spiritually, emotionally, the great oak drinking from the everfull cup of sorrows until only surrender remains. Still it feeds, still it shackles, stripping away those flourishes of personality as a child might with unloved toys.

For all you were, your dreams, your hopes, your love for those still living, all you will be in the end is… Hungry.