I know what happened to her body.

It's happening to mine.

***

Living Dead Forest isn’t as terrifying as it sounds. On the contrary, it’s a beautiful, gated woodlot near the edge of town that serves as a memorial to loved ones we’ve lost. Over the years, we’ve lost plenty. And every time, a tree is transplanted in their honour.

I say “transplanted” because the trees themselves come nearly matured from a well-known arborist, a terminally cheerful young woman named Sarah. She created works of art. Bending and weaving braids of colour, or scarves, or other meaningful things of the deceased, she arranged branches and leaves in a beautiful way so that the trees themselves resembled angles, complete with leafy wings and the occasional halo (a nest or a wreathe, for example).

Sarah’s creations are always tasteful, apart from one incident that brings me to Reddit tonight. A few weeks ago, she revealed her latest memorial - a young ash decorated in varying shades of brown leaves. The ash was for Brent, the younger brother of my girlfriend Kate. He was a nice enough guy, if not a little stupid - known for paintballing around the woods with his buddies most evenings and weekends. He had a distinct, charmingly crooked smile - one of his front teeth stuck out ahead of the other. Unbeknownst to all, Kate got a small tattoo in his memory - a crooked curving line, no longer than an inch, tucked under the nape of neck and hidden by her long, blond hair.

Weeks after his funeral, Kate and I visited his tree. As we approached the gates of the forest, I heard the distinct pop pop popof paintballs exploding on wood. I assumed it was an old friend of Brent’s, out to commemorate his fallen teammate.

I was quite wrong. It was Sarah, standing about twenty paces back from Brent’s tree and levelling her own paintball gun at its trunk. She unloaded her ammo with military precision, unblinking as bits of bark flew off at all angles. With each popI felt an acute wave of unease. Bright splashes of red appeared on wood. It dripped down branches, painting leaves crimson. Kate felt similarly unnerved: she radiated tension. Brent had, a few days before his passing, accidentally clipped Sarah with a paintball while she was tending to another one of her projects. It wasn’t serious, but stingy enough, and left Sarah with a small bruise on her upper shoulder. She had had a minor freak-out, really tore into him at the time. Given that, shooting at Brent’s memorial seemed a little untasteful.

After about thirty seconds, I made our presence known with a forceful cough. Sarah immediately turned, dropping her gun down.

“Blowing off some steam?” I asked. Mildly.

“What the fuck?” Kate snarled. Aggressively.

To her credit, Sarah immediately read the situation. She was contrite.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” she exclaimed, moving towards us with her arms outstretched, “You must think I’m a MONSTER. No, no, no, not at all-” she had encircled Kate in an earthy, twig-covered embrace. “Look, I was only - I was trying - I thought it would be best, to, you know, paint his tree in a way that was fitting - I thought he would get a kick out of the idea, using paintballs -”

“Fuck OFF!” Kate exploded, pushing out of Sarah’s arms, “you INSENSITIVE fucking BITCH how could you even THINK-”

How could Sarah even think, I’ll never know. Because Kate then delivered the finest bitch slap in all of history, and it landed across Sarah’s dirt-streaked face.

Automatically I pulled Kate towards me, warily eying Sarah. But Sarah was relatively calm. She held a hand to her (rapidly reddening) cheek and I noticed her nails were blackened with dirt. With her other hand, she withdrew from her pocket a small pile of dirt. Threw it at Kate’s feet. And walked away.

It all went downhill from there.

***

Kate became obsessed with Sarah. For weeks, she ranted and raved about how Sarah was sickin the head, how fucked upit was that she found joy in making trees replicate dead people, that she was probably the one responsible for messing around with his burial site, it was too much she found a tree with a little knot that jutted out at the exact same place where Brent’s tooth would be, how disgusting it was she chose red paintto decorate his tree, that she must have known it would look like blood and was taking revenge for him shooting her accidentally-

I mumbled sympathetically, alternatively nodding along or rolling her another joint. Kate was grieving, after all, and clearly in the “anger” phase. I didn’t see much of Sarah during this period, and opted to avoid the forest until Kate’s rage subsided.

Kate’s rage did eventually subside, and I did eventually return to Living Dead Forest.

To visit her own memorial tree.

***

See, Kate became physically ill with grief and anger. In the days before her death, she complained to me of various aches and pains - stiffness in her limbs, cracking in her bones, etc. She seemed weak. Lost her appetite. At one point, her fingernails splintered. Bits of her hair fell out, floating to the ground like autumn leaves.

Doctors diagnosed it as stress, and the “physical manifestation” of grief. They say her heart simply gave out and she passed away in her sleep. I believed them until I visited the her tree.

***

Sarah outdid herself. She chose a lovely young birch, braiding strands of long yellow grass through its graceful limbs - Kate’s beautiful hair before she got sick. Sarah had even managed to find a tree that the same height a Kate. The dirt around the tree was fresh and wet. And maybe tinged with a little red - but perhaps that was from the sunset fading over the horizon.

“Your work is wonderful,” I told Sarah, trailing my hand though a waterfall of grass. It was the evening after Kate’s funeral. The two of us had trekked out to the woods, Sarah eager to show me her finished project. I traced a finger up the trunk of the birch, leaning my cheek against it. I swear, this tree even smelledlike Kate.

“It’s my pleasure,” Sarah replied. She smiled at me.

“How do you always manage to capture their...” I trailed off as I noticed a new detail on the tree. An absolutely perfect rendition of Kate’s secret tattoo. It was placed at the exactsame spot as where the back of her neck would have been - I know because I had been unconsciously resting my hand there.

Sarah’s eyes followed mine, falling on Kate’s tattoo. Her smile faded.

“Best be going,” she said abruptly, clapping me on the shoulder before heading off. Her gesture left a handprint of dirt on my jacket.

***

I now understand the madness that Kate suffered before she died. I can’t stop thinking about Sarah and her uncanny ability to capture the essence of a person in a tree. It’s fucked. And it’s too perfect. And how would she have known that Kate had a tattoo. Nobody knew. Kate never wore her hair up, and never told anyone. How did that tattoo end up on the back of that birch tree?

One night, I took a flashlight and a shovel to the town’s graveyard. The earth above Kate’s plot looked freshly churned, and it shouldn’t have. Against all reasoning, I dug that motherfucker down six feet. I cleared away the dirt from the top of her coffin, and I opened that fucking thing to put to rest for once and for all the persistent, unholy, lingering thought that I could not even bring myself to fully form-

Her coffin was empty.

***

I can’t sleep.

I’ve been awake for five days.

I feel like I’m losing my mind, and my body is slowly following.

My teeth feel loose.

My limbs don’t move like they used to.

My ring finger just lost its nail. Two more to go.

I want to type more

but my fingers are getting stiff now.

Submitted May 01, 2019 at 05:25AM by AlienRouge http://bit.ly/2IUnwgD