It is Spring

   I frowned at my clock. It would have been frowning back, I'm sure, if it hadn't been digital and had a real face. Daylight savings. Spring forward. The bane of my existence. I loved spring, I really did, with all the plants and warmer days, but I loathed setting my clock forward. But forward I did set it, and rested the little black box on my nightstand, the red numbers mocking me even as I climbed beneath the covers and turned off my lamp.

   When I woke it was to the sound of my alarm clock's perpetual whining. Slapping my hand down on it with little more then a disgruntled huff, I burrowed further into my warm blankets only to groan and flip them back as I remembered I had to get up, that my work wouldn't complete itself. I stumbled from my bed, scratching my head and hitting the doorframe with my elbow on my way out of the room. The kitchen was my destination, tea my reward for joining the land of the risen. While it steeped, I dressed with my eyes half closed and then caught up my thermos and went out the door. Only to stop short. There were dozens of people outside my apartment. Why? Squinting hard to make them out, I recognized not a one in the crowd. A cry of alarm went up and suddenly someone in the crowd was pointing at me. Panicked, I stepped back.

   More shouts of alarm.

   I lived on the fourth floor of the building but it seemed like in mere seconds there were people approaching me from either stairwell. I bolted back inside my apartment and slammed the door, engaging the lock and in a terrified guesture, shoved my little couch up against it. It turned out to be a fuitle gesture, the people from the stairwells kicked the door with enough force to destroy the lock, splinter the frame, and shove the couch back a couple feet, nearly taking me out at the knees. If I shrieked like a cat that had it's tail stepped on, well that was my business. The people from the stairwell, four of them, surged foward and my mind went blank. They were not people.

   At least not how I knew people to look. These...these machinations were a startling conglomeration of human parts and plant life and metal. Their features were diverse, none of the four could be said to have been the same in any aspect but their bipedal, humanoid frame. In my stupor I was unprepared for the rough tackle that took me to the floor, or the prickly, cold something that slithered around my wrists after they were yanked behind my back. Hauled to my feet by hard, bruising hands I felt I knew how every bad guy felt in the multiple crime series I had filled my down time with. Only I hadn't done anything wrong. At least not that I was aware of. Practically frog marched out the door, I glanced backward to see my thermos leaking on the floor and a quiet rage began to overtake my fear. I wasn't strong, I wasn't overly smart, and I didn't look like it which was perhaps why I got away so easily when I resisted.

   I ran, which was very awkward with my arms trapped behind my back, down all four flights of stairs and the crowd scattered before me, yelling and shouting as they went. My destination this time was the forest across from the building. I knew it well, but after the first few steps I realised that was no longer the case. The trees were different. Bigger, older. The air was heavy and oppressive. It smelled like green and damp, and something I couldn't identify. My feet hadn't stopped moving despite my abrupt reservations, kicking up more of the smell, and the further I went, the more I was becoming convinced this was not my forest. I heard nothing over the sound of the blood rushing in my ears and, again, was unprepared for the ground to come up to meet me, nor the hard body that pinned me down. The air was pushed forcibly from my lungs, I had trouble dragging any back in, making a ghastly wheezing sound. The body on top of mine shifted and I coughed into the loamy topsoil as air found it's way back in. A cold hand clapped over my mouth, stifling my coughs and a low hiss caught my ear. Following that were several low gutteral sounds, raspy and quiet. Sinister. Slowly I was pulled to my feet by my upper arm and I was forced to walk backward. Such a position allowed me to finally seeing the creatures that had been converging on us. Grim and twisted versions of what may have once been squirrels, or chipmunks. Deer and some sort of canine that I was too frightened to examine too closely. The hand over my mouth left and supported my other arm before my captor increased the pace. The encroaching army of once woodland animals brought forth a fear the likes I had never known a person could feel. There was a shrieking bellow and my captor and I were thrown to the side. Piercing pain in my ankles made me cry out. A similar bellow of pain came from behind me. Rolling onto my back I beheld what may have been a cougar once, a long time ago, now looking like a mash up of branches, bones and tan fur interspersed with metal rods and wires. It had it's paw on my feet, claws out, puncturing my skin. But it's attention wasn't on me, it was on my captor and as it lifted the paw on me, I kicked out, scrunched up to get my hands in front of me and tried to scramble to my feet.

   It was no good. I hadn't even made it to my feet before I was slammed bodily into the ground to eat dirt. Squirming and thrashing only got me onto my back and nowhere else as the once-animal bit down on my ankle and began to drag me off. Over roots and rocks, through the dark forest I went. Besides my pants of pain and fear there was little other noise until I was suddenly blinded by sunlight and the damp dirt smell was replaced with green and flowers. As the white left my vision I could make out tall stone slabs growing vines around what looked like white wood and mounds a ways off from those in a clearing twice as big as my living room. As the creature took me closer I realised with choking horror that what I thought was wood on the slabs was actually bones, wrapped in the vines. The mounds were more skeletal and metal remains. I was released but before I could have a moment to be relieved, another creature, tall, frightening, and gnarled as an oak tree stood over me. It tangled a hand around the bonds on my wrists and lifted me off the ground to swing me to a slab, the stone warm against my damp back. Movement out of the corner of my eye caught my attention. It was the person from before, I could only assume, as it was oozing a muddied colour from puncture wounds. It's eyes met mine and it shook it's head.

How had I gone from loathing daylights saving time to being tied to a rock in a place that I couldn't recognize? The massive creature leaned in close to my face. "It's been many years since the last of the parasites." It pressed closer. "Too many years." It moved away with a creak. "It is Spring. It is the time of rebirth. You will be reborn again. It is Spring."