Going Green

In the labyrinth of the woods, a girl got separated from her parents when she decided to run up ahead. She waited twenty minutes before she started back for them. Bushes became brushes and the ferns grew into a fen. Her Sesame Street fanny-pack containing a box of raisins and a half-empty water bottle got caught in the vines growing around her. She was able to save the half-full water bottle before the vines engulfed her pack and suffocated Elmo's smile. The day sunk into night and the girl saw a pale light in front of her. As she headed toward the illumination, the mush floor suckled at her left shoe. Next to go was her right shoe. The swamp rose to her knees as the light grew closer and a faded into a darker shade of blue. The trees around her loomed ominously as her feet bumped into roots growing in the undergrowth she waded through. And still the light grew larger. Something skimmed past her right leg and she shot her hand down to brush it away. It had no blood coursing through it's veins, but it was alive, a branch or a root. She continued to wade further, the muck up to her belly button. The light was almost within reach when something hit her left leg. Again, she shoved her leg into the brown mud below her only to feel another lifeless root. When she tried to bring her hand back up to bat the flies around her face, the root became a tentacle and pulled her further into the earth. Seeking nutrients it made its way between her fingers and up her wrist. The terror rendered too much and she was left voiceless. He eyes did the shouting for her. As the root embedded it's way further into her arm, her right ear was submerged. Roots began swarming around her legs, sliding under her toenails and up her dainty legs, piercing her hips, crawling into her belly button and entering through her ear. Her hair turned into vines and attached themselves to the branches above them, entangled. Mosquitoes birthed from her nostrils like a running faucet. Lily pads expelled from her mouth and the light rose. From her black pupils a stem drew closer, finally giving birth to flowers. Her skin became wet, brown, disintegrating into mud. Then she noticed the warmth coming from the light, it guided her limbs.

Sacrament of Penance

I have come from church. That squared-in religious cubicle they call a confession. Through those gothic, wooden-stuttered windows I sighted a gray bearded chin. Above that was a crooked nose and, above that, wire-framed glasses. I did no talking. I had nothing to say to that man. My sins were between me and God. Started three months ago, my sins did. I was to be a husband. Wedding was three months away. Over the next few weeks I heard that sick coming from him through the bathroom door. That kind of sick that sounds like a soul expelling evil to make room for more sins. His eyes sucked into his face and the valleys between his ribs grew deeper. He tells me he met someone else months ago. That time he said he was visiting his sister in Iowa, he was in Key West, Florida sucking his own death from an eighteen year old Puerto Rican. You know how brides-to-be are suppose to have that glow? Brides and mothers, they're suppose to have it. That glow left his body when his soul did too. He got rid of it. Took my glow with him.

Today would have been my wedding day. That voice inside my head telling me to commit those sins, I've pushed it out. Every now and again, on those nights I can't find my way, I hear that voice in the alleys next to me, behind that door. Begging for me to let in in. Up in that church, I had no strength left to say no. That beard in the boarded-up window turned black and fell away. The glasses shattered and pierced the man's eyes. Blood dripped upward from those empty sockets, a puddle grew on the ceiling. The man in the space next to me was no longer a priest. That man smiled at me. His teeth turned yellow and his tongue black. His nose retreated into his face, all that was left was two empty ovals in the center of his head. That musty, wooden divider between us broke apart, evaporated. That voice in my head was no longer in my head. I've come from church.