[CW07] The Inescapable Forest

Preface

This is a horror story. It is heavily influenced by a recurring nightmare I had for years.

Content warnings: Insects, pain, mutilation, parasites, wounds, blood, death, potentially trauma.

The Inescapable Forest

Crunch, crunch, crunch

With every step the golden autumn leaves wetly give way under my feet. The forest floor cushioned in a layer on a layer on another layer of them. Even through my thick boots I can almost feel the cold slimy leaves.

Not many hours of sun are left, the rays shine on the floor through the crowns of the trees, reflecting their golden and brown colors bathing the surroundings in a warm tone betraying the coldness of the environment barely hold back by my coat.

I don’t know where I am, I think I forgot hours ago where I was or where I was going, I am lost. Step for step I am looking for a path out, or in? Somewhere to? But every tree looks the same and whenever I spot a narrow opening in the trees what view I could gain is limited by the fog. I don’t know where I am, I just know that I must go, get away, the sun is setting.

Every step I take I hear the leaves crunch under my feet. The longer I walk, the more hours I waste the more I have time to observe what is under me. A forest has many noises that one can hear, squirrels swooshing through the leaves of the trees and birds making their nests and calling their kin, but this forest is quiet, awfully awfully quiet. I can hear all of them, I can hear them all scouring through the leaves and the wood, the citizen of this place. Their little legs and fleshy bodies move through the underwood by what must be millions. Little pinchers gnarl through leaves I just stepped on, little legs walk over leaves I would crush just walking past, thick and slow bodies slide over and through dirt underneath. Creatures without purpose, some without smell, some without sight, moving through the organic compounds on the floor by algorithmic automation engineered by selection. They make homes and houses and families, but they do not care for construction, for community or for rites, they prolong and procreate for the sake of it, less so even, no sake can be given, they just are.

As I walk I can spot a fallen tree, unlike its neighbors this one has reached the end of its life. Or rather, it is made to reach it. Who knows how long a tree could survive like this, it might even reconnect itself with the floor and feed itself again, becoming life once more. But the creatures of the floor have already judged its future to be less important than their own nutrition. The critters started taking apart the bark and the wood, and the thin sheet of life between them. The wood is wet and mushy by now, stepping on it must make an awful sound of decay. What used to house moss is now permuted by maggots, ants, and mushrooms. Little creatures with six and eight legs flourishing on its corpse, the corpse they made such. I keep on going, the sun is setting, I need to move, to move on.

The last rays of sunshine disappear above the horizon, the light is fading.

My legs are growing weak with every step. With every step, with every pressure my feet exert on the ground my legs want to give in just a little more. The wet crunching under my sneakers grows louder and so does the creaking of my joints, my body wants to rest. I cannot rest, I need to find a way, a way away, far far away. With the warmth of the sun — what little it provided — gone the wet stench is rising from the ground filling the air with decay. I want to lift my head as far above in the air to escape it, I barely want to step on the ground let alone rest on it. I have to keep moving.

Maybe seconds are passing, maybe hours. The less sun there is left the less I can see. Tonight there is no moon, not even its cold light could guide me. There is no darkness, there is something much worse awaiting me, the absence of light. The sun has faded, the darkness has given way to the absence. My eyes might as well be pierced by this point, I cannot even tell anymore if I’m blinking. Eyes closed or open its all the same, I have lost my main sense of avoiding obstacles and trees. I could not figure out a way to go or where I was, and I am sure as hell won’t be doing that now. I need to keep moving, I need to keep away. The cold is tugging at my body, wanting to drag it to the ground. I have to keep moving. My hands in front of me, impacting trees occasionally, so I have to try moving around. My pace has slowed significantly, I step on branches I could not see, I almost trip over wood I could not anticipate. All that’s left is the wet crunch, the tiny legs and soft bodies slithering around. The forest feels louder than it ever had been. In the absence of sight all I have is the cold and the noise, the last things I would like to be stuck with. I need to keep moving.

My exhaustion starts to match my blindness, my pace slows. It feels like days have passed. The cold feels like needless on my skin. Every step is shorter than the last. Every breath is shorter than the last. My exposed arms start to go numb from the cold. I need to… I need to keep…

huh?

My legs.. I… I can’t… No… nonononono… I’m sinking to the ground… the cold leaves brush against my legs, my knees… My hands touch the ground, the slimy leaves between my fingers… even yet I can’t…

…

The ground… It’s so cold… I can feel my bodies heat sink into it. My mind would race had it the energy. All the damp crunchy leaves against it, barely making a noise now. Not even the moving of my torso through short inhales is enough to disturb the ground… or rather… It is not enough noise against the backdrop of the floor. With my ear to the ground I can hear through the leaves like I can through a table I rest on… I see more now than I could have ever wanted, than I would like to want. I… I wish I wouldn’t.

I feel like I can see every little creature crawling over every leave nearby. The leaves have become a part of me, I hear the leaves… no, I am the leaves, I hear what they hear, I feel what they feel. I feel the cold and I feel the little legs crawling over them. I fear the pinches sinking into them. My head fills with all of the noises and drowns out any rational thought. My body has stopped moving, it has given up without asking me if it could. The ground is part of it now, it does not move but it hears… it hears them all… and they move… they move towards… towards me.

Light has faded, darkness starts to consume. The moon is gone and the cold is ever present.

The first ants climb up my body, up my shoes and my legs, up my chest and my shoulders. Their skeletal legs are needles on the freezing skin. Feeling returns where they tread to deliver pain. More and more and more and more and more. They are everywhere. Everywhere.
The are just the first.
The ants can do little, they gather crumbs and leaf clippings.
But they are just the first.. and the others are coming.

Slowly more legs, different legs, weightier legs, are joining. Those creatures are different, they have large pinchers and they crawl over my skin with intend. They are attracted by the warmth. Contrasting with the freezing winter floor my body is warm, and they noticed. More of them crawl over my skin and tower over all the ants, scouting the lands… before the first finally ganders a taste. A pincher pierces into the skin, not enough to bleed but enough to nourish. It likes what it tasted. Pinch pinch pinch pinch pinch others do it as well now. Where the legs were needles these are now knives cutting into my skin. The pain is sharp and burning, but their blades are imprecise and cold. They gnarl at the legs, gnarl at the feet, they gnarl at the shoulder and gnarl at the belly. All skin is the same to them… an obstacle. It is in the way of them and a feast, a warmth… a new home.

Slowly but surely they dig deeper, deeper and deeper. The first smaller ones manage to dig deep enough to be covered by the meat, by the flesh. Their chitin bodies get entrapped by the warm and tasty harvest. They are not part of me, yet I now hear their every move like they were inside my ear. The hydraulic movements of their skeletal legs reverberate inside my skull and fight the sharp and constant pain my nerves desperately send in response to more and more of skin and flesh damaged. They cry for help, but there is nothing left that could. They dig deeper and deeper, blood starts flowing. Out of wounds or out of cavities. The warm liquid flows to the ground meeting the damp leaves, warming them in its nourishing glow. Just as the leaves will become nutrient to whatever will come after on this piece of the forest, so will now the liquid of my hopefully fleeting life. The smell of it attracts more of them, more join.

While the ants take advantage of the cavities carved by their larger brethren slower moving creatures have arrived. They touch the skin, but they do not have skinny legs, they have thick and soft bodies slimly slithering. They move up the legs and the chest and the feet and the shoulders and the hips and the throat. They posses biting power of their own. Their bites are slower and feel methodical, yet their approach is as that of their predecessors who are already carving out paths. They are larger and slower and their bites sting even more. They take still small but significant chunks with each bite. Their soft and squishy bodies slide into the crevices they create and almost give as much disgusting warmth as they take. Their jelly bodies against my burning flesh feels like it could pop itself any moment. The slowly slide in more, segment by segment, like snakes over the forest floor. The pain starts to mask the details of the damage. By now most of the skin is penetrated, and the critters carve tunnels like they did through the earth previously, nourishing themselves on the flesh and the blood. Every inch of my skin hurts.

There is no sunshine left, there is no moon, there is no light, there never was.

Many of them dig tunnels near the surface, wanting to make their home not too far from the outside air. But some… some start to dig deeper. They make their way through every layer of skin and flesh. The gnarl through beans and eventually through muscles. The muscle fibers snap like strings on a violin. I can feel every single cut, I can feel every single one of them digging in. I don’t know which is worse, the ones who dig the tunnels or the countless ants trumping them by the dozen traversing them. The ants can only gather flesh clippings but there is enough for them to take home. Where the predecessors made the way, the ants now plunder, they carry away. More and more and more of me gets extracted and carried off, to distant ant hills I will never see, to feed larva I will never have laid eyes on. My fingers barely had any meat on them, they are harvested to completion. My bones can’t move on their own.

Normally they would feed on corpses, corpses are abundant on the forest floor. Dead leaves, dead trees, dead animals. But a corpse is cold, a corpse can nourish for a week… I… I am warm, and fresh, I can feed for a month, and they are determined not to waste a single crump. Some of the big and gooey ones have dug deeper and deeper… I stopped feeling the pain they produced. They have gone past muscles now, I can’t feel them anymore. They went deeper, I can’t tell where. There is plenty to find where they have gone though. More and more blood flows through the channels they carved. Not even the ants walk there, the flow is too much for them to risk it, they will just wait until it stops. The cold of the wet leaves underneath fades… now a warm liquid restores some senses in the punctured skin… The pain grows much more intense there. I can feel every single line through my flesh they created. Some of it fills with blood now even, but it will not save it. The pain grew so much more intense it became numbing again. I can still feel them, feel their legs crawl, see their bodies slide. All of my body is becoming their home, I can tell each of them apart, each pincher munching through me. Their gnarls echo through my flesh and my bones, I can hear them like if they were in my skull. The drowning noises fight the suffocating pain for who gets to overwhelm me more.

Light is no more, light has never been, warmth fades, sound deafens.

The noises grow more silent, the pain more distant. The invaders have come, they plunder the lands, they take the harvest they had not worked for and burn the villages. They take the woman and the children and leave in their wake destruction. What is pain… what is pain… I forgot… I forgot what is… what is what… I hear chirping and sliding, I hear munching and feasting… it’s so far away… I… do I… do I hear something? Did I… did I hear? I… I am alone… there were more… where have they gone… I was not alone… where… where did… this death is meaningless. Nobody will see the smoke rising over this burned village.

Shock! A sharp jolt throws me awake.

The room is dark and quiet. I can barely make out the edges of my bed or the walls protecting them. I intently move my hand towards the night stand and turn on the light. The bright reading light fills the room. I can see my fan sitting silently staring. I can see the bedsheets drenched in liquid… in sweat. I get up, towards the light switch. I turn on the light, the whole room is now lit. Barely a place left for a shadow to hide. I can see all of my bed, all of the walls, all of the night stand and all of the dresser.

I stand, I pause. It’s three in the morning.

I stand, I wait.

I can’t hear anything, I can’t see anything. The room is lit and there is no shadows hiding besides the fringe edges at the sides of my bed. The bed is drenched. I take the blanket that had been wrestled to the floor and put it on the mattress. It isn’t very wet, the soft fabric on it is soothing. I slide my hand over the mattress, it’s wet texture disgusts me. I put the blanket over all of it, before sitting down. My hand slides over the blanket, it is cool and soothing, but when I rest I can feel it not just taking my warmth, but giving it back.

I lay down on the blanket, I rest. I wait. I can’t hear anything, the fabric on my skin starts to heat and to protect. The light illuminates every corner and every crevice. My head sinks into the blanket, the pillow is too wet for me to approach.

Shock! I jolt up. I heard something.

A fly has entered the room. It zooms around and crashes into things with no care for its safety. It’s skeletal body protects it from each impact. It suddenly lands on my arm and I jump. I quickly get up from the bed and towards the door. I jolt it open and close it behind me. I trap the beast inside the room. I turn on the light in the living room. The window is open, I quickly close it.

I stand, I wait.

No noises, the light illuminates the room, all the corners and all the walls. All of the couch is lit up. I lay down on the couch.

I listen for a few more minutes, but I don’t hear a thing.

I leave the light on, as my exhaustion makes me drift off.

[CW07] The Inescapable Forest