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 creates works of art. Bending and weaving limbs, she arranges branches and leaves in a beautiful way so that the trees themselves resemble angles of the deceased. Sometimes, complete with leafy wings or a halo of twigs.
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 red leaves. The ash was for Brent, the ginger-haired 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 friends and family, Kate had a small tattoo done in his memory - a crooked curved line, no longer than an inch, tucked under the nape of her neck and hidden by long, blond hair.
Weeks after Brent's funeral, Kate and I visited his tree in Living Dead Forest. As we approached the gates, I heard a distinct pop pop pop of 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 pop I felt an acute wave of unease. Bright splashes of red appeared on wood. It dripped down branches, painting leaves crimson. Kate felt similarly unnerved: beside me, 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 stung 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 whirled around, dropping her gun.
“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 as a meaningful -”
“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 squarely across Sarah’s dirt-streaked face.
Automatically I pulled Kate towards me, warily eying Sarah. But she was relatively calm. She held a hand to her (rapidly reddening) cheek, 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 sick in the head, how fucked up it was that she found joy in making trees replicate dead people, that shewas probably the one responsible for messing around with Brent's grave, it was too much that his tree had little knot that jutted out at the exact same place where his tooth would be, how disgusting it was she chose red paint to 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 woods 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.
***
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, skin rough and flaking. 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 to resemble Kate’s beautiful hair before she got sick. Like always, Sarah had managed to find a tree of the same height as Kate.
“Your work is wonderful,” I told Sarah, trailing my hand though a waterfall of grass. A piece of bark flaked off under my palm, and entirely against my will I thought of dry, cracked skin. 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. The woods were quiet. At the roots of Kate's tree, the dirt looked fresh and wet. And maybe tinged with a little red - but perhaps that was from the sunset fading over the horizon. I traced a finger up the trunk of the birch, leaning my cheek against it. I swear, this tree even smelled like 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 exact same spot as where the back of Kate's 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 the fuck 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 want to type more
but my fingers are getting stiff.
Submitted May 01, 2019 at 02:48PM by AlienRouge http://bit.ly/2UT2IIb
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