“Okay, like, hear me out. Going to the forest is like the ultimate form of getting in touch with your traditional manhood.”
It starts like this, very gently, delicately placed. I am a seed that will soon take root in his mind. Dave is talking to him over a beer, like they do and have done since the dawn of ages.
“What the fuck are you talking about, my guy?” Paul responds.
“No seriously, think about it. Like, the primal need for men to be in nature. Hunting and fucking gathering!” Dave says that last bit like it’s the final piece of evidence he was looking for.
“So what? Are the Lululemon bitches I see running through the park every morning getting in touch with their primal selves?”
“Yeah, I mean kinda. I think women actually like, understand this shit way more than men. That’s why more men commit suicide, because they can’t be like women,” Dave grins, his teeth are yellow and sharp. He’s eyeing me like meat, seeing if his words will provoke anything above a grunt. “But no, seriously, women who do yoga are so hot because they have what men want for, like, themselves. Like we all want to get off our phones and take care of ourselves, and like, they do it. That’s hot as fuck.”
“I think you just like their asses in tight yoga pants.”
“I mean, yeah, duh, but that’s all part of it.”
◊ ◊ ◊
Two hours later Paul is lying on the couch in his apartment. Outside, a tree shakes in a breeze heralding the edge of spring. One limb knocks against the glass of Paul’s window. The bare branches cast fingers of shadow across the ceiling.
Then, a shift. The seed cracks a little and roots dig in.
Paul decides he will go to the forest. He isn’t sure what has finally convinced him. He doubts that Dave has that amount of influence over him. Maybe touching grass will fix me. He opens his phone and starts scrolling through the big parks within driving distance of his place. There are less than half a dozen. He doesn’t want to just walk through a field with a couple trees, he wants genuine wilderness, a place untouched. Trees so wide he couldn’t hope to wrap his arms around them. As he eventually slips into unconsciousness he envisions a forest that stretches on for miles and miles. He imagines walking for days, years, and never seeing another human being. I am happy there.
◊ ◊ ◊
Paul wakes up early the next morning, his phone alarm blaring at him from his chest and his back aching with the consequences of sleeping on the couch. He stands, stretches, then runs through the motions of a morning schedule: eating, showering, brushing teeth, looking at self in mirror and imagining all the ways that he could be better. Through it all, a building sense of excitement pushes him forward.
He packs a light bag with energy bars and water. Then he’s in his car, heading out of the city. Around him everything is alive, Sunday morning no more sacred here than any other city. Nearby he can hear sirens.
At a red light Paul watches a woman in business casual running to catch a bus as it pulls away. Her hair is a mess. He wonders about her life. The light turns green. He pictures her naked, her body still coated in a sheen of sweat but she’s smiling and the face isn’t hers. And a tree pushes roots out through concrete and bursts free full of life and a need to live. The car behind him honks. Paul keeps driving, the woman and I slip from his mind.
Towering skyscrapers fall away behind him, fading into individual houses. Then he’s out. Just long stretches of road and farmland, and then even that collapses, becoming forest and trees.
Paul follows the route dictated by his Maps app off the highway and then down onto a dirt road leading to a small parking lot at the mouth of three trails. A half dozen other cars are scattered around the lot. He hops out of his car, grabs his bag and sets off down the first trail.
I take his hand and pull him forward, toward the edge of a black oblivion where he will stare, and learn to reflect. I make preparations for the floral tide that will soon flood his mind. There won’t be any paranatural force that finds him deep in the woods, when the shadows grow long and his breathing becomes shallow. There will be no spirit that reaches a sharp limb towards his lips. There will only be Paul. And then there won’t even be that.
The trail is pleasant enough. In places it is muddy from the previous week of rain and his boots stick and slide as he walks. He takes a break one hour into the trip. A couple spot him sitting on a rotted mossy log and give him waves and smiles as they walk past. He returns them but feels a nonspecific jealousy toward them that he quickly ignores and moves past.
This is the last known location of Paul Sterling.
◊ ◊ ◊
The seed cracks open, revealing a small green sprout. The sprout spirals, winding down fleshy tunnels, burrowing new pathways through the meat around it. Slowly it buds, cysts and pustules which soon burst, releasing pus and other fluids then revealing pretty pink blossoms gently tinged with the yellow and red of the body. The roots dig deeper. Spread further. Slim brown fingers that crawl under skin and through veins. Down, through chest and pelvis, pulling and pushing, reshaping until I am myself. I am reborn, naked and trembling, caked in the earth, the clay of our mother, she who has reshaped me in her image.
◊ ◊ ◊
Dave is in his apartment. It’s not much nicer than Paul’s. Rain rattles on the balcony outside. Dave is scrolling on his phone while listening to a podcast featuring two comedians laughing at their own jokes for an hour. This veneer of apathy is only occasionally broken as he swipes open various messaging apps, refreshing, and refreshing, his finger hanging over the call button for a few seconds then falling away, returning him to a dulling feed of social media posts. Paul wasn’t that kind of guy. He was stronger than that. Hell, Paul was one of his oldest friends—if he had been faltering, if something had been wrong, Dave would’ve been able to tell.
He’s taken to reassuring himself in this fashion with increasing frequency the longer Paul’s been gone. With this prolonged silence he has felt untethered, adrift under starless skies on a lake of immeasurable size. Each time he feels more and more empty, that little raft he lies adrift on in his mind, slowly taking on more and more water.
Dave’s phone rings, someone on the ground floor entrance buzzing him. He picks up.
“Hello?” he grunts.
On the other side he only hears a long, wet breath.
“Who is this?” His building is a slightly older one, his landlord is too cheap to update the system to let him see who’s at the door.
“Hi, sorry for turning up unannounced.” I say into the receiver. “It’s me. Can you let me up? I wasn’t sure where else I could really go.”
Dave waits for me in his apartment, staring, lost and confused out the window. Eventually I knock on his door and he jumps to his feet, rushing to greet me. He takes a moment to peer through the peephole at my tired dirty face, then slides the bolt back and opens the door. We stand there for a long moment, just taking each other in. In the time I’ve been gone his facial hair has grown out. He has deep bags under his eyes.
Neither of us are quite sure what to say. Then the tension reaches a breaking point, snaps. My arms wrap tight around him. His hands rise to meet my back and he holds me there. I squeeze him and he does the same. He’s warm. Comfortable. I pull away from him.
He clears his throat. Mumbles. Trips over his feet closing the door behind me. I just watch him.
“Where…? Where did—where the fuck you been, man?” he manages to get out as he locks the door.
I smile at him. “I don’t know.”
“Okay, okay. You want to call anyone?” He pauses. I can feel him scrutinizing my appearance, collating every detail into a whole story, or at least trying to. I realize that I don’t even know what I look like, that I’ve only seen a smudge of a face caught in brief reflections. “Do you remember stuff?”
“Most things. You’re Dave, you live here, we go drinking sometimes, we try to make it a regular thing.”
“And you are?”
“I don’t remember my name. I know there was a place I slept and a deli with sandwiches I liked. I know that there was a cat who sometimes came to my balcony so I kept a can of tuna stocked in my little pantry for it.”
“Alright, well, I can help with your name, it’s Paul.” Ew. No, that’s not right.
“I don’t think so.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. Do I seem like a Paul to you? Dave Skinner fits you perfectly, Paul just doesn’t for me.” I’m right, he realizes. Looking at me now he struggles to actually see a Paul.
“Why don’t you go take a shower… Paul?” I feel his last word like lemon juice on a picked scab.
“Yeah. Yeah, that would be good. Thank you. For letting me kinda crash here.”
“Yeah, of course.”
I’m on my way to the bathroom when I hear him ask, still standing where I’d left him: “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” I repeat.
◊ ◊ ◊
The water flows in unfamiliar lines down my naked body. Beneath me the drain chokes down the mud that had clogged my skin. I dig my fingers in, scraping away layers of brown and black. Eventually I reveal the red beneath, then it too is streaking through the dirt, swirling down into the drain.
Then I’m stepping out of the shower, my skin clear, my hair moderately cleaner than it had been. It drips onto my bare shoulders, longer than I remember, I’d never grown it out this much. I like it this length.
I hesitate a moment before wiping away the condensation on the mirror. I stare into my face. It’s hard to recognize it. Familiar eyes, unfamiliar expressions. I don’t look tired. Something moves through my cheekbone, tightening down the skin of my face.
There’s a towel folded on the sink next to a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt. Dave must have ducked in while I was showering to drop them off. I don’t know what to feel about him doing that. I wonder if he’d knocked before entering and if I just hadn’t noticed, as I rub the towel over my body. Whether Dave had stared briefly at me, just an impression, a shade made hazy by the opacity of the glass. He’d have to close his eyes to picture the rest.
It becomes impossible to avoid. Even lost deep in my thoughts, it surfaces. My body is thinner than it had been, muscles and fat having faded—or just moved elsewhere—revealing bones. It makes it hard to ignore the bumps and knots in unexpected places, big gnarls of something else trying to push up through my skin. I feel the pointed tips of a branch just under my ribcage.
◊ ◊ ◊
“Hey,” says Dave from the couch. He looks perfectly casual, as if my vanishing act hadn’t bothered him in the slightest. A performance of indifference carefully honed by years of practice. He moves to make room for me but I continue to stand. He looks up at me. Inhales.
“I’m sorry for turning up like this,” I say, partially because I mean it but also to break the silence forming between us.
“It’s all good.” He’s changed into clean clothes. When we drank he’d never bothered.
“Yeah, yeah I guess, but still, this isn’t like… a normal thing to do.” He notices the change in my syntax, I try to course correct. “I’m glad you’re chill though.” I finally move to sit next to him on the couch.
“I’m the most chill.”
I wait too long to respond. “Yeah,” I croak out.
He puts a hand on my shoulder. “Listen dude, it’s okay. I got ya. If I need to be dustin’ the motherfucker responsible just let me know.”
“Okay,” I mumble. His eyes bore into mine with utter earnestness. “I don’t know what to say. I really don’t remember anything.”
“That’s all good. We can call the police tomorrow and start figuring out what happened. You can sleep here tonight.” He’s not even trying anymore. He’s in pursuit mode, words ringing hollow, a smooth melody I’ve heard him sing in countless bars to countless girls. Sometimes it even worked.
“Okay,” I say again. His eyes dart over my face, pausing hungrily on my lips.
He leans closer to me. My heart lurches into my mouth, thudding against my teeth. I worry briefly about throwing up on him. Actually, that might be better than whatever’s about to happen. I realize that I almost definitely won’t be able to spew out much of anything, I haven’t eaten in a long time. My stomach gnaws at the inside of my chest. A pitiful growl.
“Oh dude,” he coughs. “You want something to eat?”
“Yeah, that’d be great.” I don’t feel hungry.
He stands and I relax into the cushions of the couch. Fuck. I hadn’t noticed it at first, but his eyes had been ogling my body since I’d come through his door. How long had that queasy tension been worming its way into our lives? Had I just been ignorant of it until now? Is this new?
“What do you want?” Dave hollers from the kitchen even though it was next to the living room.
“Just whatever you have is fine, thank you.”
“I’ve got some pizza from a couple nights ago, you want me to nuke that?”
“Sure, yeah, that sounds great,” I reply. My mind is elsewhere, staring out through the rain streaked doors of the balcony.
I hear Dave putting the food in the microwave as a far off echo. He approaches, sits down next to me. I feel him breathing against the back of my neck, feel my hair stand on end as he takes a long inhale. Taking in the scent of my body mingled with the musk of his body wash, his nose almost brushing against my neck. I turn to him. He’s sitting on the other side of the couch from me.
“What’s goin’ on up there?” he asks, his voice layered with an anticipatory tremor.
“Not much,” I hesitate, thinking about what Paul would have said. I draw a blank. “I guess I’m just trying to figure out what happens next. I don’t think I have a job anymore. So what do I do? Do I start reapplying to places? Do I beg to the fucking Walmart gods to let me come back? I could cut my losses, try a hard restart. I wanted to get away from it all, you know? But now I’m back and it’s just right back into everything as it was.” Something teases along my spine, a branch scrambling up. I’m different now, and though familiarity clings, the shudder reminds me that nothing will ever be the same.
He leans over and kisses me.
It’s bad. He catches me just as I was about to speak and our teeth grind together. I open my mouth to protest but he takes it as license to keep going, pressing his lips into my teeth, his tongue flitting in and out like a bloated worm. So I bite down. Pin that little worm in between my teeth. It’s enough for him to pull away.
“What the fuck?” he sputters, his hand flying to his mouth to see if I broke skin. I had. I can taste the lingering sweetness of his blood on my teeth. I can’t help laughing at his face. He’s scared.
I can smell it.
Then a long beep from the kitchen. My pizza’s done heating up. And he jumps to his feet and rushes into the other room. I grin. Now what?
I stand and meander into the kitchen. He jumps slightly when I place my hand on his shoulder.
“Um…Your pizza is ready, we can eat in the living room?”
“Okay,” I whisper, leaning towards him. His heart rattles inside him, ricocheting around. He doesn’t know what to make of me. I lay my fingers against the side of his throat and begin to push my way in. Letting my nails split and the growth within me push out. Thin twigs twitching through cracking skin, pushing hard into the slightly flabby flesh where his neck meets his head. He doesn’t say anything as the thin sprouts twist together and begin to burrow. They will not break, I have him caught. He’s in pain. He’s about to die and he knows it. Yet he just stares into my eyes, leans forward, and kisses me again. I let thorn laden limbs spring from somewhere behind my uvula, pushing through, scraping away the pink on the inside of my mouth then bursting through his lips, driving into his head. Past teeth which chip, break and fall away under pressure. Up through the hard palate, nasal cavity, further, deeper. There is a cracking splintering sound as it finishes its course, bursting through the back of his skull. It’s done.
I pull away, let him fall against the counter, hitting his head hard before he slumps to the kitchen floor. Behind him my steaming piece of pizza is flecked with his grey-pink brain and soaked in red. The small kitchen is sticky now, slick with blood.
I’d always found him disgusting, I realize, looking down at his mangled corpse. His lips ripped and peeled back exposing his yellow teeth coated in crimson, his dull eyes staring blankly up at me. Like even in death he was undressing me; eyefucking me from beyond the grave.
Slowly I walk over to his bedroom, letting mother’s gifts slip back under my skin, sliding back down my throat. I rifle through his wardrobe. I hate all of his clothes—ugly casual wear and stiff formal wear, nothing that looks good between them. What I’m wearing is fine.
I push out of his apartment. Onto the cold early morning street. Climb into the car, parked in a place I don’t remember leaving it. I leave the city again. Something has changed since I was last here. Not just that the streets are so empty now, but the buildings seem to lean ever so slightly in towards me, looking down at me with disgust. This body doesn’t belong to this space.
◊ ◊ ◊
When I arrive at the parking lot the sun has crested the horizon. I get out of the car and walk. I walk on no trail. I have no path to follow. No guide. I ensure that I become irrevocably, irreconcilably lost. I allow myself to be embraced by my one true love: the usnea and the ferns, the small animals and the larger ones, the trees and the mushrooms. They welcome me back. Tall cedars glistening in the morning, the sheen of last night’s rain. I am home.
I take deep breaths of sweet morning air. The smell of rot and of new growth flooding my lungs with new life. I gaze upon the bodies of my peers, small saplings, their foundations barely dug into the earth and yet they’ve emerged, spindly, trembling upward towards the light. I gently caress the leaf of one of the smaller trees, it is like no other feeling. An instant trust forms between us, the branches seem to whisper in the wind: Lay your head down here. Let me hold you, let our bodies intertwine and grow tall and thick against the wind. I very nearly do. I know that doing this would heal wounds in me I didn’t know existed, that by our connection we would become immense. But no, this is not yet the place for me. I kiss it goodbye, apologize, and continue deeper.
I find myself overlooking a small stream. A woman stares up at me from the water. She looks happy. I have found a place where I am content. Where I can lay down roots, dig deep into the soil. I can, at last, let the final shreds of my body fall away. Emerge from a cocoon. Glistening and newborn. Hatched fresh, still wet from the effluvia of birth. I will grow here.
Lyra Fenger is a trans woman born and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia. She is currently in her third year studying at Langara College with a focus on Creative Writing. She previously attended the professional training program for dance at Arts Umbrella.
