Forest rot

The warmth of the day lingered like a dead stench. The air is still, and the land reaches for the clouds that only gave acidic tears in a desperate cry for rain. In a different time this day would be July. but the old world names no longer mattered, there are no animals left to care. The air is like soup, heavy and burning as it falls in the lungs of the grubs that litter the ground. In a forest that forgot its name lays the last of a fundamental part of the hunt. a lone predator and its final excuse for prey. In this nameless wilderness the trees twisted, hiding the stone and walls of what is no longer called a school. Its red bricks crumbling to time as nature seeked to return it all to the begging dirt. Metal cans crushed under the hateful grip of vines. Roaches and beetles swarmed under half crushed desks and gorged themselves on rotting food too stubborn to return to the forest detritus. Like a petty rivalry that nature had finally won, it now wished to completely erase its enemy. If the untamed earth had a throat to laugh with, it would chuckle. Who wouldn't? this forgotten garbage of a lost era is more resilient then beings who made it.

The trees and shrubs hid a predator on its floor, one nature loathed less then the animal it hunts. There are no canines or felines that could hunt, for this predator had consumed all such things and only left the smallest of rodents. This hunter had no camouflage to hide, but had no need for it. no claws and teeth to rip the flesh of its prey, its blunt bone was enough. it once had a mind but it now wanders like a wind into lands it cares not to understand. These wallowing beast had no heart or blood, they lived as rot and grotesque bile. These necrotic abominations came from the still blood of the once masters of this world. Whether it was natures cruelty that birthed them, or mans own design, is irrelevant. Nature cares only for the end of the disturbance, not its detailed cause. The ones nature had fought to erase from her face, Now growled as a reanimated, uncanny memory of themselves. In the thick forest grass crawls a beast that was once Michael. His golden yellow curls are gone, only leaving the flaking scalp that limply dangles on his skull. The hunter has no muscles worth speaking of, only the tight leather of dried skin on its dull ivory bone. The shrubs and vines wish to hold him, to tie him down and let time consume him. but like a worm, He inching himself forward with a single withered hand and weakens the thorn filled grip. But Natures is petty and unyielding. On this worm she had scarred it with wounds to slow it down. Lichen and roots rip through its taut skin and live like a terrarium inside its ribs. Every so often the thing that is not Michael stops for too long. And the seeds in him root to the ground and stop his long awaited ambush. But this rotting mass does not care. it only longs for a single purpose, a determined need to feed on its prey. And it uproots itself, drags itself onward for another day.

The animals that called themselves human are gone, eaten by the predators hands. And what they didn’t swallow, nature drowned them in disease and famine. The self proclaimed rulers are gone, all except a single mocking example. A women lives in this forest. Young and voiceless she survives on what little nature reluctantly gives her. She has no name and she can only think as an animal. She only knows this forest as home with no understanding of what she is or what history she can never learn. She hungers for food she doesn’t know of. Her stomach screams for the tendons of a lamb and the chest of a bird, but none exist. She barely lives off of berries smaller than her child like teeth, and off the ants and bugs who the woods send to eat her. She rest in the roots of a tree every night, plagued by the crawling swarm of insects that are the tree's owners. She has tried to rest other places, in the canopy or on a warm rock, but nature wishes her dead in either place. Rain and wind chill her, sunlight boils her, and flowers season her with pollen to weaken her senses. same as the hunter who stalks her, she moves for one continue purpose. She wishes to live, even for one more day.

Nature knows not to fear either ones determination. both their wishes or desires are minuscule when compared to her immense domain. She merely has to wait for when the time they cling to turns against them. For one to rest too long and get killed by the other. The last of two participants of this end are locked in a slow, meaningless battle. Both the wills of these animals are unimportant. The starving girl and the rotting worm both do this mindlessly. Nature gifted them this reason and drive. The drive of an animals that needs to consume and push themselves further. The thing that is no longer Michael is determined and hungry. Pulling itself day after day as it moves another centimeter closer to the last of a dying prey. The prey sleeps another day. Getting too big for her nest and too grown to live on natures smallest of termites. the predator stalks ever slower, impeded by grasping roots. By its bones that give way and turn into brittle dust. By the flowers blossoming from his sockets that once held his dark brown eyes. It slows down more by the year. Nature waits for them both. The claws of time raking their backs. The intense gaze of the sun cooking their skin. And the smallest of filthy soldiers march on and use there numbers to swarm down their throats and drown then in legs. Nature has no fear for there success. Nor does she have any sense of urgency. She has no need for a rushed execution. For she is inevitably and demands there end.