The Trail’s End
By: J.S. Lender
Tags: Fiction, Horror, Fantasy, Literally Literary, Short Story

Even the wretched have children, thought Jean, as she sauntered at a brisk pace past a pregnant hobo lying on the walking trail, adjacent to her glass tower high rise office building. Jean often wondered from where these faceless, anonymous members of society originated. It was easy to forget that the homeless were actually people, but Jean was too preoccupied with the vapid details of her own petty life to pay much attention to them. She liked to think of herself as a charitable person, but in truth Jean spent more time pondering which Netflix series she would binge-watch next than she did pondering the fate of the endless rows of homeless that ruined an otherwise beautiful walking trail.

There was a time when Jean made valiant efforts to convince herself that she braved the homeless each weekday at noon because daily exercise was an important part of a healthy lifestyle. But as Jean aged, she lost the energy necessary to convince herself of such fantasy. The truth was that Jean walked quickly with her elbows flailing every day at lunch time because if not, her ass would become fat. “Chair ass,” was what her coworker Tracy called it. And if her ass became fat, Jean would spend her remaining Saturday nights alone with her cat Velda. So Jean walked, and she walked hard. Every weekday at noon sharp. The trail wound through pine trees and oak trees. Plump squirrels darted back and forth. The lonely elderly were there too, feeding stale peanuts to random, bloated critters.

Jean had slipped off her flats and laced up her New Balance before leaving her desk each day for her two mile trek across the homeless-nature-suburban trail. She had learned to ditch her skirt suits in favor of pantsuits. Jean could get away with dark blue jeans on Thursdays and Fridays, if she wore a smart looking blazer with the right accessories. On this day, Jean wore dark blue jeans, her New Balance, and a thin red sweater, with stupid jingly bracelet accessories, earrings, and a necklace, to show that she was not a slob, and that she put some effort into looking presentable before she left the house.

Jean’s face was pretty but not beautiful. As a teenager, she had cute freckles adorning her nose and cheeks, which morphed into somewhat unruly sunspots as she skidded into 40. Jean once read a photojournalism article showing what aging rock stars looked like when they woke up first thing in the morning. The photographer showed up at the musicians’ houses at 5 AM, woke them up, and took their picture as they opened the front door. One of the old rocker dudes told the newspaper reporter, “When you’re born, you have the face God gave you. When you’re 40, you have the face you deserve.”

Jean was not so sure that she deserved the gobbler chin that had been gradually appearing in her horror-house bathroom mirror each morning, but at least God had allowed her to keep her gorgeous thick mane of blonde hair. Also, her body had not yet completely betrayed her. She still had just enough curves to catch men’s attention when walking in public. If she focused on her peripheral vision, Jean could spy quite a few older gentlemen checking out her ass when she wore her black yoga pants. Some women had the roving eye, too.

Jean could not help but sneer just a tad at the men she spotted roaming the halls in their work-a-daddy uniforms consisting of cheap polyester slacks, cheaper synthetic button-down collar plaid shirts, and comfy scuffed leather shoes. Half the time, the slobs didn’t even bother to shave before leaving the house. Jean figured that being a man must be like winning the lottery and not having to pay taxes on the loot.

Jean lurched onto the trail alone on this day because everyone else in her office had agreed to be good Samaritans and head over to the Red Cross “Bloodmobile” in the parking lot to donate blood. The sun was intensely bright and the sky was an obnoxious turquoise blue. Jean began at a snail’s pace, then picked up speed once her heart started kicking and her lungs came to life. It had been raining like a bastard all month long, and the plants and shrubs were thick and lush.

A radio played music in the distance, and the sounds encroached closer and closer to Jean. A hairy, muscular man sporting a shiny bald head and wearing a food stained tank top shot around the corner on the trail and headed straight toward Jean, riding a blue Huffy beach cruiser covered in old random bumper stickers. Where’s The Beef? read a sticker slapped across the handlebars. An old radio was held in place on top of the handlebars by green bungee cords with dead rusty hooks. The man rapidly pedaled the beach cruiser in a manner suggesting he was either running from an intimidating figure, or chasing someone weak. His face was weathered, with a grimace suggesting either physical pain or emotional misery. Maybe both. Jean heard Whitney Houston crooning from the old radio and IIIIIIIIIIIIIIII will always love youuuuuuu!! Whitney’s singing became louder and louder as the beach cruiser approached, then Whitney’s voice suddenly became warped and mangled as the smelly man on the bike whipped past her, causing wind to ruffle Jean’s hair a just bit.

As Jean hit her stride, she heard whispering coming from no particular direction. She kept walking, wondering if she was maybe hearing things. Sometimes when Jean drank too much coffee in the morning, she would hear things and see things that were not there. Her shrink had suspected early stage schizophrenia and advised Jean to avoid coffee, cannabis, and any other stimulant, but Jean had decided early on that her shrink was a quack because he had a beard that grew all the way down past his ugly Adam’s apple. Any diligent professional with an eye for detail would at least take the time in the morning to shave the hair from his pencil neck to make his beard look tidy and presentable.

But the whispering did not stop and the sounds became more intrusive with each step. The paved portion of the trail gave way to loose dirt covered with pine needles and dead leaves. Jean passed through a patch of shade under a massive oak tree, then into the open bright blue sky. The smell of the oak trees always reminded Jean of camping trips she took as a young teenager. The whispering turned into muttered words. A row of massive sunflowers perked up as Jean approached, staring directly into her eyes and following her movements, as if receiving an old friend for dinner. The dirt shuffled and vibrated below Jean’s feet and long green vines from the side of the trail took hold of her ankles. Jean looked down, only to notice that the long, dirty green vines had also taken hold of her wrists tightly enough to halt the flow of blood to her hands.

A tremendous force yanked Jean to the Earth. The back of Jean’s head was suctioned into the dirt, as the dirty green vines gently caressed her arms and legs. The massive sunflowers approached Jean with a vicious curiosity and leaned into her face. The sun became so bright, that the entire blue sky surrendered to a whiteness so belligerent that Jean could only yelp like a wounded dog in its presence. The flowers and the vines were eager to see Jean close up, but the sun was the most interested of all. The horrendous white orb maneuvered closer and closer to Jean, until she was screaming with madness as she went blind and the horrific brightness became the darkest of all dark.

As the sun asserted its dominion over Jean’s entire reality, the heat became so oppressive that sweat splashed from Jean’s torso and head, marrying chunks of dirt to her body and hair. The sound of sizzling sweat erupted from Jean’s forehead, and her eyeballs liquefied. Jean smelled burning hair, then burning leaves. The heat seemed to melt time away too, as the course of events not only slowed, but became unrecognizable. Jean’s own movements and shrieks of pain were deliberate, but seemed to be happening to someone else. The vines holding Jean to the earth made painstaking movements, as if they were covered in wet tar with an outer layer of thick carpet.

The ground opened beneath Jean. She hung suspended over the empty blackness for a lonely brief moment, breathless and carefree and paralyzed with hope. Blasts of steaming and frigid air shot into Jean’s back from the depths of the seamless pit. The dirty green vines released Jean’s arms and legs with a casual flick, and Jean descended alone into the Earth’s deep, hollow universe.

THE END