The Forest

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Saul

Blistering morning sunlight cut across my face, creeping in through the spiderweb cracks in the ceiling. The thin rays were burning hot and I was left groaning and turning over in my bed. Sitting up slowly, I felt my back peel away from the insubstantial poly fiber sheets. In the heat of midsummer, the sun was the Queen of beautiful banes. She, who provides us the energy for life- ultimately kills us with her deadly radiation- creating our humble organismal entities and then throwing a searing wrench into our delicate system. I love the light, but she is a truly fatal attraction, as are most things in life. I am only mortal.

Fed up with the heat, I managed to roll onto the floor and lay there panting for a minute. Cold fever had taken my body for the past few nights, and I've suspected that I have taken ill due to the broken filter in my mask. Not that it matters too much, I've been wearing the obnoxious thing less and less frequently. Hell, I probably wouldn't get sick so often if I just wore it, but that means replacing the filters more frequently, which by extension means I need to go on more 'excursions' to the East and that'll only happen when pigs fly.

I got up and stretched my aching muscles, and let my gaze wander down to the lush row of vegetables beside the windowsill. Ain't that a sight for sore eyes. The cute greens grew dense and low to the substrate, dark and fresh in their little haven I have been so kind to provide. They wouldn't last a minute out in the sun. But in here, I hoped they would last me my lifetime, I'm sure their patented genome guaranteed it. Beyond the wild cactus, mustard flowers, acorns and walnuts, they were all that I had to eat.

Carefully, I snipped off several leaves for my breakfast. I think this morning would be suiting for some pickled mustard stems and prickly pear pads. As I munched on the fresh leaves, I pried open a jar of preserved beans and plated the pickles. The caustic stench of pepper reminded me that I had gone a little overboard with the seasoning while canning a few months ago.

Smiling to myself I settled down over the worn drawing desk facing the only window in my home. But it is not as if there was much of a view out there, it was an Eastward facing panel of bullet-proof glass that revealed the desolate, terraformed flatlands that spread out for much of the dusty countryside.

The real view was on the concrete ceiling of my home. Cochineal, eucalyptus, lichen, cherry roots and other substances served as dye for the elaborate paintings that adorned the otherwise grey surface above me. The walls crawl with the long extinct life of the forest; fleshy, muscled animals with shining pelage, plumage, and scales. Luscious flowering plants, a rainbow running along with the fat animals' bodies. In the center of the ceiling was a great golden arrow pointing east, and scrawled within it, "To Paradise". The mass of colors and brushstrokes was an oasis in this depraved world, one of understanding, wonderment and content.

But I was not their maker, he was long gone, the fading ochres and dulled memories proved it. He was the one who took me in, who clothed me, who taught me, who truly cared for me. His name was John, and without him I would be little more than a scanty, crumbling skeleton bleaching under the sun.

Speaking of which, I miss the sound of human voice. Of course I could hear my own, but I doubt talking to myself was a worthy expenditure of energy. Everyday, I become less convinced that my own name is what I believe it to be. I feel as if I need some evidence in the form of another human's confirmation. I'm not even sure who I am anymore, there is nobody to tell me otherwise. Enough of the existential crises talk over breakfast, I've got work to do.

The musty stench of water mixing with dust reached my nose as I wiped my plate off with a cloth. Damn it. I looked to the ground and saw that one of my water jugs had sprung a leak, and was now proceeding to spill precious water over the concrete. Grumbling, I patched the leak with some hardening putty, then soaked up the remaining water in a rag and wrung it into the planters.

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