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The Greenest

Writer's picture: Nicole EvansNicole Evans





 

 

This isn’t going to be the story you want it to be.

To be fair, most people don’t want this story to exist. The possibility of it being true, that there is more life than we hoped would exist on this planet, that nature might be alive in more ways than we were able to comprehend. That this forest, these trees are more like us than not is unsettling. I had taken this pathway from the library on darker nights than this. Nights of full moons, howling beasts, stirs, echoes, and grave footsteps coming towards me. A shortcut that wasn’t short on danger and, yet I remained safe. I would get home, unbothered and unscathed. Very unlike tonight.


This night was cool and silent. The smell of the earth cooling after being heated by a long, hot summer’s day; ripening figs on their thin, woody branches, catching a chill after baking in the sun all day. I was surrounded by greenery in every way possible. It was almost romantic, an affair with nature filling my senses, fully and completely. I could taste the air, it satiated me after a long day indoors, researching under the library.      

It was too quiet. All I could hear was a soft wind blowing past me, gently touching me as if goading me in a new direction. I followed its guidance unwittingly. It was foolish to leave the library so late and all alone. My brother asked if he should meet me on his way back from school and I told him not to bother. Now here I am, on the edge of despair, staring an impossible monster in the eyes, praying not to die. From the darkness a sudden burst of life: green, vibrantly verdant leaves. They are petals of velvet, smooth, dry, moist, leathery, and feathery. They seem to be many, but they are really one. They open their eyes and then I see, they are not leaves, but a leaf-covered face, peering back at me.


         I ran, feeling it’s presence on my heels. It gave chase and my heartbeat thumped in my eardrums. I was nearing the pathway to my front door, strung with amulets of shiny silver, and arrows of black tourmaline, obsidian, and smoky quartz for protection. I knew it could come to this. My family wasn’t as superstitious as I’ve turned out to be, but I have stronger intuition than they do.


         I knew it the day of the winter solstice. I could hear its cries as the river began to freeze. Everything else went silent but I heard gentle weeping. My brother, Garvin, tried to tell me it was the wind. It was then that I understood he heard it, too. He wasn’t ready to question if it could be anything more than what he could make sense of. So, I left it alone, but I knew there was something more.


         Everything went completely silent in the dead of winter because, I assumed, that whatever it was, was dead. Or, at the very least, hibernating. I put it out of my mind and continued to focus on what was actively in front of me. I had work and I had school, no social life because I was consumed with my studies.


          The day it returned, or the day it awoke, on the cusp of spring, a girl I worked with disappeared. Her name was Chalene, and we went to school together. We weren’t close friends but friendly acquaintances who happened to share a lot of the same interests. We wound up in a lot of the same places, but due to my inhibition, we never became close. I am notoriously shy and have a difficult time making friends. Chalene was supposed to open the Library that morning. I was scheduled to come in at noon but I got a weird phone call pleading with me to come in earlier. I didn’t ask questions, I just agreed to come there straight from school. By the time I got there, I noticed a couple of police cars and a clean-up crew.


“Hey! What’s happening?” I asked Melanie, the Librarian. I noticed leaves and chunks of wood everywhere. The doors were wide open, which was unusual, and the leaves seemed to spill inside.


“We don’t know, Chalene was supposed to be here at 9 to open, I got here at 10 and this-”, Melanie said, motioning to the mess,”-was what I found. No Chalene anywhere.”




The detectives and officers took note and they left the clean-up crew and repairmen to get everything back to normal. Except, Chalene was now missing. The rest of the day went as usual, except I noticed the sound of weeping had returned. I asked Garvin to pick me up after work that day.


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