A Man Finds Himself Asleep in a Forest

by John Nyman

Smith awoke from underneath a dying bush as the sun rose and shone through the leaves of the deep evergreens. He was lying on his back, with his hands clutching his sides awkwardly to avoid the spines. He wore a dress shirt, lightly tattered from a short time in the wilderness, and an expensive tie that was similarly damaged. Over his legs he bore a pair of creased brown slacks, on his feet two muddy dress shoes, and over his scalp a short, blocky cut of thin, light brown hair. His face was hard, bony yet smooth at the right parts, and seemed like the kind of face that would smile every time you walked by. It didn’t seem like the face of a man who had slept uncomfortably in a dank forest.

Smith began to manoeuvre his upper body and arms out of the clutch of the short branches and break free. His memory was gone in full, and he had awoken as a child in a strange land, reborn almost completely. He had no knowledge of his past, or his future, and had simply found himself asleep in a forest. As he got up, he noticed some insects crawling over his legs, and from the bush’s branches to his arms. The insects were tiny but moved quickly, scampering along like helicopters over a crime scene. Alarmed by the commotion, and frightened of the miniature beasts, he raised his dense arms and torso rapidly and without thinking, forcing them through the brittle branches of the bush.

Realizing his dire mistake, Smith looked at the undersides of the arms to determine the source of the pain that shot through them. Small blood stripes shining and bleeding through the openings of the tatters of his dress shirt indicated to Smith that the spines of the bush had torn him partly apart. Although he did not see them, pain told him that his chest, and fragile cheek and ear had also been affected by the escape artistry. Smith was quite badly cut up, his veins filling with splintered wood and being emptied gradually of blood, and so he cursed incoherently the forces that had cut him. It was not the bush he cursed, nor the forest, but the faintest memories of something that persisted in the recesses of his tortured mind.

Smith remembered something called society, a group of people, all people in fact, that he had once joined in life. Where was society? Smith wondered why they had left him, left him to fend off the sharp bush that scathed him, and why they had not come. He wondered if he had upset them, or if he had disagreed with them. Mostly though, he cursed them, cursed all social humanity to the end of his days with the shaking of his bloody, scarred arms, and the sleeves that clothed them.

While doing this, Smith eventually regained his logic and decided to treat his wounds, ironically, with the leaves of the bush that had betrayed him. He wrapped the dewy leaves around the broken flesh and the torn clothes, across all of the wounds he could find, and holding them in place while crying out in whispers of pain. He breathed heavily and tried to such the blood back into his veins while his head was swimming with the thought of the useless society, but despite his efforts, the leaves of the plant were able to suppress the bleeding until the pain subsided partially.

Once this had occurred, Smith began to trek through the forest, searching for some sign of salvation and condemning the cruel society. Eventually he came upon a smooth, flat rock lying across the mud, and upon lifting it found a swarm of crawling beetles and other insects, all rejoicing in the conditions within. The same insects that had frightened Smith earlier, these insects were tiny minions of the underworld. Yet, Smith was genuinely hungry from of society’s banishment, and the hand of humanity guided his to scoop a handful of the insects and insert them into his mouth. His tongue savoured the sick flavours as he chewed the shells of the wriggling creatures and crunched onto their juicy hides, eating only to appease the laws of life that had been laid upon him.

Such laws were truth to Smith, who had known them all his life. The place he grew up in had taught him about them, and they were engraved so deeply into Smith’s character that he could not deny the need to fulfil them. Again, he cursed the place he grew up in, the society that raised him, and the humanity that guided him for the sick interpretation. His mind was boiling with thoughts of hatred and revenge for the collection of humans, despite the naturally unbearable texture of the insects he was ingesting.

After his meal, Smith was strong and could only think of retribution. His wounds were healing over in crude skin patterns, his marching became a ferocious walk, and his curses became obsessive growls. His face glowed with hate, the hate for a system that had placed him in the forest, ripe for nature to toy with his feeble human brain. It was hate for the system that, in Smith’s mind, was the cause of all the world’s problems, and the one that must be destroyed. After walking a few hours Smith came upon the edges of the city, but it was too late, and the destructive thoughts had already taken hold of him. Smith grabbed a narrow branch and held it forward, ready to strike, and a stone ready to throw in retribution. In the meantime, the residents of the city, having done nothing to the poor man who had been degraded by the unforgiving elements of nature, went about their regular routine.