The Mallard God Complex (13)

Slowly but surely I will finish this story! Let me know how you like it so far? I've taken a turn for the weird and majestic (where I hope to spend most of my life).

13. Hunger of the Pine

            We get to the house just as the last light fades out of the sky. Quiet falls over the forest like a blanket. It is a period of transition. The animals who rule during the day crawl into their holes and hovels as the creatures of the night emerge to take their place. The long whine of an animal I am unfamiliar with cuts the calm, echoing mournfully through the trees. It’s not long before it is answered.

            Inside the house a fire has been stoked and the windows shuttered. Bob ushers me inside and bolts the door with a heavy wooden plank. “I brought you the finest saplings the woods had to offer, although I will say that with your plants carpeting the forest floor it was hard to find much of anything.”

            “I’m surprised to see you back. A good deal of my friends have wandered in and gotten lost for days. My plants have surpassed even me in their potency.” I can feel it lingering on me like a distant memory. The corners of the room are soft as if beveled and I am calm despite the upsets I have endured and the death crawling through the forest toward me.

            “What friends? You haven’t got any friends.”

            “Well not anymore, I’ve just told you, they all wander off. The woods are no place to be at night. They’re beautiful, but the creatures are dangerous. They’re docile with me, but some instincts just can’t be bred out.” He puts on a record and an unsettling voice sings about something confusing yet meaningful. Soft guitar plucks warm the cabin more than the fire, and he begins to weave together the branches we have brought him,

            “May this bow provide vision through the darkest of nights and brighter than the surface of the hottest summer sun.” He mutters under his breath, moving his hands erratically. Wrinkles line the fingers he splays out over his creation. The lights in the cabin flicker slightly with his movements.

            “You sure those lights are going to make it through the night?”

            “Quiet Michael. Let the man work.” My mind struggles to reconcile the scene before me. What the man is doing is clearly fiction, only in this setting it almost feels commonplace. Bob accepts it as if it is something of a norm. I cannot help but feel that a few paltry branches will not be enough to stave off what comes with the night. The man’s drug-addled eyes glaze over and a tiny pinch of light flashes in the bundle of sticks.  

            Beyond the door the forest has come alive. Cries of various animals have drawn together for an uproarious chorus. The man’s voice has reached a new low, thrumming in the floorboards below me. It might be the suggestibility of the situation, but I can feel the floorboards amplifying his words through the cabin. Hypnotism and snake oil, that’s all it is. You’ve seen this before, it’s nothing more than a parlor trick. Taking the man down a few pegs helps me keep calm in the unfamiliarity of the situation.

            The howling outside grows louder and the man falls silent. In his hands the wood remains the same as it was before, brown, lifeless, and uninteresting. Well that’s not exactly what I expected. Don’t magicians usually do a puff of smoke or something? What a jip. “Is that it then?” I ask with a tone that conveys more annoyance than I had originally intended. Negativity is a sort of default setting.  

            He doesn’t look up. White creeps from the edges of his eyes towards the center so slowly, that I can’t be sure if I’m imagining it, or if it is actually happening. The howling continues to grow, but he takes no notice. His world has shrunk to be the wooden creation lying between his palms.

            A flash of white fills the room, brighter than anything I have ever seen. The light pierces my skull, instantly giving me a splitting headache. I can feel as my head rips in two. Fire fills the spaces in between the cracks of my mind, burning me from the inside out. The pain is only there for a moment, and then is extinguished as quickly as it came. The lights in the cabin have gone out and in a rare shift, silence reigns supreme.

            I attempt to speak and get a bearing on the situation, but only pure silence comes out. The only comfort is the floorboards beneath me. I can still feel them, and therefore I cannot be dead. Pure nothingness brings with it an odd set of notions. For one I am completely disoriented, and it is impossible to tell if I am even in my same corporal form. It feels the same, but for all I know I could have been turned into a sentient piece of upholstery (magicians do that right?). There’s nothing to neither confirm nor deny this notion, other than the presence of my hands, which could be the result of my overactive imagination giving life to an awkward wool strand, straying away from the rest of my woven body.

While it seems ridiculous I do not entirely shelve the idea. I could do the job of being a carpet and there’s comfort in that. There are no responsibilities, plenty of third-party social interaction, and long days basking in the sun. That is of course until someone decides that I have lost my former luster and replaces me with a new carpet. How dare they? How long have I served them before they just decide to chuck me out? Was it because of some careless party guest who spilled wine and vomit all over my beautiful visage, or is it just simply time for a change around the house?

            Anger wells up inside me, dimwitted and irrational as ever and just as I am beginning to think that I have actually become a carpet light returns. Everything is a muted grey, and blobs move around slowly in the space before me. Then there is sound. A high pitched wine fills my ears and threatens to split open my head again. The whine grows into a muffled sound of someone trying to speak to me. After all, I have spent five minutes among the decoratively fibrous (not a talkative bunch), which I can imagine made me a dull conversation partner. The world gains focus and I can see Bob holding the bundle of sticks while the man grabs another from the pile.