The Ascension of Man Part Three

With the third installment of my 'short' story The Ascension of Man we begin to understand that I have given up all hope of thematic unity. Are we doomed (you as reader, I as writer) to continue on tangent after tangent without reaching any climax or conclusion? None can tell...

Arden sat against a tree. He fell asleep. Dark thoughts pierced the the boundaries of the forest, unchecked by the rangers on patrol. They struck at Arden and carried him down into nightmare.

He saw the forest at dusk. As often happens in dreams he believed he was seeing the forest in astonishing detail. Everything he observed was exactly as it had been before, but changed. The forest no longer felt open, he perceived the branches of the trees not as high, arching rooves that protected him and filtered in the light, but as intertwined claws that seemed to reach lower and lower and trap him against the leaves on the ground. These leaves were wet and sticky now, and the crunch-crunch of his feet made a noise like tearing skin. Indeed, every noise seemed menacing and foreign and yet through the darkness and the mists that had engulfed him he could see almost nothing. He was struck by fear in this dusk-wood, and he ran.

He felt the impact of the ground recoil up his weak, old legs with each leap and his heart pounded against the imprisoning cage of his chest. He ran but was stil cold and the howls of wolves, sudden and unsuspected, tore into his ears like cicles of ice. He fell, because the roots of the terrible trees willed it, and his face landed inches from a giant web. A spider turned to greet him and seem to charge, incited by the warmth of his flesh.

A sickening green glow surrounded Arden and pulled him back. He woke up flat on his stomach with his mouth shoved into a pile of moss. He rolled over and coughed up algae and blood and only slowly opened his eyes.

There was a cut across his check running to his lips and bleeding profusingly, but it was clean and not very deep. He tore a sleeve from his t-shirt and wrapped it around his head. He looked back at the tree that had summoned him to his torment and walked up to it to touch it.

Here, he thought, was not an evil wizard wishing to destroy him. The more Arden thought about his dream the more he convinced himself that the tree and forest were not the cause of it. In fact his own ignorance and fear had, in a last attempt to tie him to the modern world, to the false prophets of progress and society, tried to scare the forest out of him. But he would not be fooled by so mean* a trick. Even though it was, in actuality, getting on towards night, he saw for himself that the forest was the same as day. No mists entrapped him, no branches loomed down, and the leaves under his feet exploded with joy at each step.

No, this place would not kill him. That was the purpose of his job, and his government, and Starbucks. Perhaps he would no go back to that world that slowly drained his soul and killed his spirit. The forest invited him onward, and so for a while he walked.



*I use the word 'mean' here in its archaic sense of 'base'**


**I use the word 'base' here in its archaic sense.