A Single Blade of Grass

ON THE MORNING OF AUGUST 1ST, LOCAL POLICE WERE DISPATCHED TO A SMALL APARTMENT COMPLEX IN HARRIS COUNTY DUE TO A CALL REPORTING A SINGULAR GUNSHOT IN THE AN UNDISCLOSED APARTMENT ON THE SECOND FLOOR AT OR AROUND 5AM.
THE OFFICER SENT TO THE APARTMENT FOUND THE DOOR UNLOCKED, AND THE TENANT DEAD WITHIN. THE MAN INSIDE DIED SOON BEFORE THE OFFICER ENTERED DUE TO A SELF-INFLICTED GUNSHOT WOUND TO THE HEAD.
LOCATED ON A LAPTOP COMPUTER NEXT TO THE CORPSE WAS AN UNSENT EMAIL TO AN INDIVIDUAL KNOWN AS “DERIAN”.
THE FOLLOWING IS A MOSTLY UNALTERED TRANSCRIPT OF SAID EMAIL, WITH CONTEXT WHERE NECESSARY.
To: derianbarb99@______.com
From: LeviDevi@______.com
Subject: i think i know what happened
Last edit made on July 31st, 4:39 AM CST
Hey there man. It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?
Okay, before I say anything about anything, I really want you to know I'm sorry for what happened. I was scared, you were scared, we both had no idea what was happening. I shouldn’t have acted like a fucking coward and I truly am really sorry for not going back for you. I was gonna say something to the effect of  “I hope you enjoyed adding my camping gear to your collection” but I know you didn’t take it after we left. More on that in a second.
I think I have some answers as to just exactly what happened the last time we saw one another. 
I have no way of knowing what you think about it all, since I left my phone at the camp and never went back for it. I never had your number memorized, and if I had remembered I definitely would have sent something earlier. I did think I also could have just gone to your house to tell you, but I was scared that if I just showed up without explaining myself first I'd earn myself a swift kick in the ass and a door slammed in my face. Either way, I've got your email as our last real form of communication together and that’s what I’m going to use from now on.
While my actions aren’t exactly something to brush off, I don’t want to lose you as a friend. Hopefully you can find it in yourself to forgive and forget after you hear me out completely.
Alright, well, I hope you remember where we were when we last saw each other. Grass Shallow Camping Grounds, by that one old statue of that lumberjack fucker and the visitor center? I doubt you’d forgotten, but it’s been a year and all so whatever.
NOTE: “GRASS SHALLOW CAMPING GROUNDS” DOES NOT EXIST. THE LOCATION REFERRED TO AS GRASS SHALLOW IS IN FACT AN ABANDONED CAMP GROUND NOT USED SINCE THE LATE 2000S. AT SOME POINT IT MAY HAVE BEEN REFERRED TO AS GRASS SHALLOW, BUT MORE INVESTIGATION IS REQUIRED.
Well a very long time after we last saw one another, actually just the other day, I went back. I just had to. I couldn't just forget the bullshit and move on. I needed some kind of closure.
Me and my girlfriend (you wouldn’t know her, we’ve only been dating a few months) went camping out in that same campground. I never told her what happened between you and I or the camp, I just kinda asked her if she enjoyed camping, suggested Grass Shallow, and the date was set. We didn’t go to the same ground you and I went to though, we got the lot on the complete opposite side of the forest pretty much. They’re all the same though. Just some picnic tables, a charcoal grill or two, an outhouse shared between yourselves and the lot next to yours, and a big dirt field to unload your shit onto.
NOTE: UPON INVESTIGATION AND INTERROGATION OF FAMILY MEMBERS, NO KNOWLEDGE COULD BE RECOVERED REGARDING THE GIRLFRIEND SPOKEN ABOUT IN THIS EMAIL. MORE INVESTIGATION IS REQUIRED.
After my girlfriend and I set up our tents, we both realized that if we wanted to eat dinner we’d have to go out and get something to eat. It’d been a while since I had camped last and she hadn’t camped in her adult life, so neither of us were itching to roast hotdogs over the fire or some shit. Not to mention we had no hotdogs to roast in the first place. My girlfriend offered to go grab something, I agreed, and she left to go pick up a pizza from a place about 20 minutes away from the campgrounds.
NOTE: THE TENT SPOKEN ABOUT IN THIS SECTION HAS BEEN RECOVERED. THERE WAS NO SECONDARY TENT FOUND, NOR HAS EVIDENCE BEEN DISCOVERED HINTING TOWARDS ITS WHEREABOUTS OR EVEN EXISTENCE. INVESTIGATORS BELIEVE THE GIRLFRIEND WRITTEN ABOUT EITHER DID NOT GO ON THIS SPECIFIC TRIP OR DID NOT EXIST.
At this point, I had started to think about you again. I missed you a lot in that moment, remembering and speculating about all the things I could have done but didn’t and all the things I did do but shouldn't have. Regret mounted in me like water in a bucket, but I knew that now was not the time to feel sorry for myself and for you. If I wanted those dumbass answers I came here for, I’d have to actually look for them despite my self pity. 
Taking initiative while my girlfriend was out, I snuck out of our designated camp ground and walked towards where we last camped.
I didn’t remember exactly where we last were, but I feel like I would recognize it once I saw it. It was somewhat ingrained in my mind from when I had looked back right before I slammed my foot down on the gas and sped away in my car. As clear as the day I had seen it, I knew it wouldn’t slip my vision if I came across it.
Walking past all of the other lots on the way there, It was extremely eerie how little people were there with us. It was a warm night in the middle of the summer, in the middle of July actually, and there didn’t seem to be a single soul with us in the whole campsite. Actually, It didn’t look like anybody had been there in a while. Grass started to poke out of the dirt fields in weird places, weeds peppered the grounds endlessly, and animals had obviously started to make themselves at home in the new brush. Weird.
For most of the walk It was just more of this barren wasteland-esc shit. Empty, overgrown campsite next to empty, overgrown campsite. Not at all notable other than how unotable it was. I figured I would have at least seen something hinting at a sign of life out there that was more or less human.
But eventually I did.
In one of the lots I walked by, something caught my eye. Or more specifically, the lack of something caught my eye.
The majority of the field was just as boring as the others. Just an overgrown patch of land with grass about knee high and untamed. Except for the very center.
In the middle there was a small clearing. Not like grass couldn’t grow there, but as if it was a different kind of grass that never got very tall in that one particular patch. Sprinkled around the clearing were a couple rough splotches of flowers, A few shrubs here, a little patch of clovers there, and nothing else extremely out of the ordinary. 
Except for a huge hole in the center.
Right smack-dab in the middle of the clearing, like the whole clearing was built around this hole, a grand pit stood. Like an inverted support colomb meant to hold up the sky, it shot straight down into the earth like someone had punctured it with a planetary bullet.
I walked over to inspect this hole because of course I did, but as I neared closer it looked less and less like a hole and more and more like a removed tree stump. Which it seemed to be.
I stood over it and looked directly into the chasm only to realize it wasn’t a chasm. It only extended about a foot down where it abruptly ended and turned to dirt. You could see numerous holes in the soil that appeared like they once held tree’s roots in them that the tree burrowed into the ground themselves. Like if you took a helicopter and used it to just yank a tree out of the ground and toss it somewhere else. But there was no fallen tree anywhere nearby. The clearing was perfectly untouched except for this hole, and it looked as if it were man made. But how does a person just rip a tree out of the ground like that? Not to mention the size the tree must have been, it would have weighed thousands of pounds. Was somebody trying to make it look like the tree just got up and walked away?
NOTE: THE HOLE MENTIONED HERE WAS INDEED UNCOVERED, BUT NOT AS DESCRIBED HERE. IN THE MIDDLE OF AN UNDERDEVELOPED AND OVERGROWN CAMPSITE WAS A HOLE SCRAPED INTO THE GROUND SLOPPILY, WITH REMNANTS OF VOMIT AND TEARS SURROUNDING AND INSIDE OF THE HOLE. DNA TESTS ARE CURRENTLY ONGOING AS TO WHO THEY BELONG TO.
Still confused as shit, I backed up a bit and turned to face where I had come. I didn’t know what this was all about, not even a little bit, but I was sure that whatever did this also threw that log at us two in camp.
You remember the log, right? Directly after we had lit the campfire and had finally got it going to a sizable degree, we heard some really audible rustling from the bushes. It’s not like I need to remind you as I'm sure there’s no way you had forgotten, but there was just something about that rustling. The woods were dark and the fire didn’t illuminate nearly enough land to see things lurking behind the tree line. I remember you said you thought you saw a bear, but we both knew you didn’t see anything other than maybe something your eyes made up.
NOTE: AT THIS POINT IN THE WRITING, IT IS WORTH NOTING THAT NO SORT OF HALLUCINOGENS, ILLEGAL SUBSTANCES, OR EVEN OVER THE COUNTER DRUGS HAD BEEN FOUND AT THE APARTMENT WHERE LEVI LIVED. NOTHING SUSPECT WAS FOUND IN HIS SYSTEM EITHER, OTHER THEN TRACE AMOUNTS OF BLACK MOLD-ESC SPORES FOUND WITHIN HIS LUNGS. MORE ON THAT LATER IN THE REPORT.
Suddenly, there was a short silence, before there was a sudden and violent rustle of leaves being jerked about just out of view. Before either of us could react, from the darkness emerged a large log, and it was being thrown directly at us. You saw it before I did and got out of the way in time but I remember it almost ripping my shirt clean off my body as it flew inches away from me and landed directly on the fire, putting it out instantaneously. I’ve played that scenario over and over in my head, and I still can’t believe I was spared just by what seems to be dumb fucking luck.
I shouldn’t have been. But I was. 
But I’m getting off track.
If something could rip a tree from its foundation like that, then It could have definitely thrown that log with the ease we saw it thrown at us before. The hole could be explained away if I thought about it hard enough, but no rationality could explain the log. These two had to be related to one another. They must be.
Walking a little faster now, I paced down the dirt road past the camps. I found a new sense of urgency in my mind with that discovery, and I needed to find a probable cause to everything that was happening and that has happened. It had to have been some construction crew, or some kind of normal woodland animal, but nothing I could come up with made any fucking sense. Nothing added up. Nothing was reasonable.
I speed-walked aimlessly for a bit, knowing where I had to be but no real method to get there. I just had to keep going. Eventually I’d find something. I had to, these roads looped around in a huge circle, I'd have to find our campsite eventually.
But eventually came, and I had gone around so far that I didn’t have anywhere else to race to. I went around the entire loop so far that I had circled back to the original camp, the one where me and my girlfriend’s tents were set up. Dumbfounded at this, I went around the circle again. And again. And again. Every time, making certain I looked twice as hard and paid twice as much attention then I did the last time around. My only lead, my only method of being able to figure this shit out, and I couldn’t even remember which campsite it was.
No. No way in hell I was going to give up that easily. Fuck that, I was going to get there even if I had to flatten the entire forest to get there.
Out of desperation, I took one of the side trails that lead off of the main path. I didn’t think there was any possibility that the site was down there, I just hoped maybe there was a map I could look at or a shortcut I could take.
At this point it was starting to get a little darker than I presumed it would have been able to get, and I was finding it harder and harder to see as the sun set. I grabbed my phone out of my pocket and flipped on the flashlight and that seemed to keep the darkness at bay well enough for me to continue. Checking the battery life on my phone, I noticed it wasn’t very high. Only 30%. But it didn’t matter. I shouldn’t be out here long enough to drain all the life on it anywho.
As I went further and further down the side trail, the more and more the woods seemed alien and strangely foreign to me. There was no way I had been down here before. If I had been, then it was completely erased from my memory. This wasn’t the right way.
I was about to turn around and start back to camp, but just as I turned around I realized the forest had suddenly grown very quiet. Dead quiet. Like the entire forest had been switched off suddenly. I had nothing to listen to but the sound of my heartbeat and the rustle of trees in the wind.
But there was absolutely no wind.
The more I paid attention to the woods around me, the more I noticed that there wasn’t a single stir in the forest made by anything. Including the wind. I heard the rustle of the trees, but there wasn’t anything out there to shake them.
Until I realized it was only one tree shaking.
My brain must have tuned it out or something, but only one of the trees was making the noise. Something in one of the trees was imitating the sound of a tree shaking in the wind. Something big must be in that tree that was just 15 yards away from me, and I couldn’t see it at all. I quickly turned my light to inspect it, but my light did little to expose the horrors hidden within the trees.
Now that I had shown my light at it, it most certainly could tell where I was simply because I was waving a beacon at it. If it didn’t see me before, it sure as hell saw me now.
Just as that previous wave of fear hit my mind, like a punch to the gut, the rustling had abruptly stopped.
It knew.
Without thinking, I broke my eyes away from the trees and fucking sprinted as fast as I could back towards where I had came. Faster and with more urgency than I had ever run in my entire life. I didn’t give a shit how loud I was being, or how foolish I might be acting, or how little I could realistically do to the horror in the treeline but running from it, I needed to get out of there.
Turns out my lack of forethought would be my downfall again. Just as I let my actions of panic rip me of a friendship all that time ago, I let my body do the thinking for me while my brain sat in anguish.
Somewhere along the line while running, I turned my head to look behind myself. I’m not sure what I expected to see, but nothing was there. I don’t even think whatever was in the tree had even thought about following me. But just as I was slowing down, my foot hit something on the ground. I didn’t know what it was and I still don’t know what it was today, because as soon as I turned to look the ground had risen up and my body had flung downward until my skull made deep impact with the dirt and I was knocked out.
NOTE: OFF ONE OF THE SIDE PATHS, A PHONE WAS RECOVERED. IT LOOKED AS IF IT HAD BEEN SMASHED BY A BLUNT OBJECT AND WOULD NOT POWER ON. NO DATA COULD BE RECOVERED DUE TO THE IMMENSE DAMAGE THE PHONE WENT UNDER. THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO POSSIBILITY THIS DAMAGE WAS DONE ON ACCIDENT.
I woke up hours later to the taste of blood pooling in my mouth. I Immediately turned on my side and spat the blood out, but some of it had already entered my lungs and I choked on it. My gums were bleeding immensely and I had a gash in my forehead, but it was the least of my concerns at that moment.
Still sputtering and hacking on my own blood, I looked around in a daze at my surroundings. I must have been out for at least a few hours then, because the sky had completely turned dark and I had only the light of the moon and the stars to guide me.
I looked around on the ground for my phone, but it was nowhere to be seen. I checked my pockets, my waistband, the ground around me and everywhere my arms could reach without getting up and crawling. My phone just wasn’t there. Great. Now I lost another phone. My girlfriend was probably worried sick about me and I have absolutely no way of contacting her. Great.
But, honestly, I didn’t really care about her as I did just this morning. Our love seemed like a little splash in the big pan of my life, and I felt as if I could have never seen her again and it wouldn’t have mattered to me. All that mattered was myself, was you, and was the fucker in the woods. Though I was still bleeding from multiple places and couldn’t even stand upright yet, I felt I deserved it to you to finish this. You deserve to know. If I do nothing else with my life, I want to be given your forgiveness so we can be together once more. 
But first I needed to earn it.
With this new hole in my chest and a renewed sense of strength to progress in my search for answers, I steadied my breathing and forced myself onto my feet. Suddenly, I felt thousands of little pricks cover my legs as I tried to stand up. Rolling up and down both of my legs were sharp and darkened pine needles, stabbing themselves into my skin and sticking like darts to a dart board. They didn’t hurt much on their own, but hundreds of them peppering my legs sent an uncoordinated choir of itchy stinging right to my head, and they hurt like hell.
I brushed the needles off as best as I could and tried to set my mind on other things. I didn’t have the patience to tend to myself right now. I had work to do.
Turning my attention from my body to that surrounding it, I realized that I wasn’t where I once was. I expected to see a trail somewhere nearby or even underneath my feet, but there wasn’t anything there at all. The trail was nowhere in sight, and while I couldn’t see much in the dark I definitely could have seen the trail if it was there. But it wasn’t.
Not stopping to ponder on that, I scanned the woods for anything that could have been a sign of humanity. A car, a sign, a trail marker, anything that would drive me closer to getting back on course. The first thing I noticed was how different this section of the woods was from where I was before. While all of the trees in the earlier sections seemed to have a wide variety of different species of trees populating the forest, This neck of the woods seemed to exclusively be evergreens. With hundreds of trees made up of pointy needles not unlike the ones in my legs, that must be where that came from.
These woods did not seem very alien to me however. I recognized them somewhat, like I’d dreamt about them and I was waking up. At first I couldn’t pin-point what it was, but eventually my eyes laid upon something very familiar off in the distance. 
I saw an orange, rounded bump with a nub at the top, sliding down towards the ground until it touched like a disheveled gumdrop.
It was a tent.
Wasting no time at all, I hobbled over to what I saw in a mad dash for salvation. Forcing my legs to work against their best wishes and almost dragging them behind me, I brought my body closer and closer to this ray of hope in a forest of bleak sorrow.
As I neared the tent, my eyes grew wider and wider as realization set in.
I recognized that tent.
I’ve seen it before. Hundreds of times before.
In fact, I was the one who set it up.
It was my tent.
The one from all that time ago. The one from when you and I fucking camped together. The steaks in the ground kept it from blowing away Derian, It was still there. It was ragged as shit and was filled with holes, but the fucker stood though the entire fucking year we left it there.
As I noticed this, A huge grin crawled across my bloodied face. I didn’t want to question how it was there, or how nobody else had seen it, or how I even got into a place where I could find it, but I got there and that was all that mattered.
NOTE: THIS TENT SPOKEN ABOUT HERE WAS RECOVERED. EVERYTHING MENTIONED ABOUT IT HERE WAS CORRECT, AND THIS SEEMS TO BE A MOMENT OF CLARITY IN THE WRITING WITH LITTLE DEVIATIONS FROM REALITY.
The first thing I did when I came to was to look inside. The zipper was left open and the bottom of the tent was filled with rainwater, but it looked almost as good as the day I set it up. On the floor sat my sleeping bag, my lantern, a few books of mine, and even my phone, water-logged and unusable. Nothing of use to help me, but a glad sight to see nonetheless.
I turned around to observe the rest of the camp as we left it, and I was not surprised as to what the passage of time had done to it. The firepit was still smashed as we left it, but there was no evidence left that it even was a firepit. The charcoal had all blown away, the rocks had burrowed into the dirt, it was nothing more than just a pile.
As for the log, there was no log. I don’t mean like it was dragged away and you could see the marks in the ground, or it had rotted away into nothing over the years, It was just gone. Without a trace. Just missing.
Finally, the main event of everything I had to look at, your tent. I’m sorry to say, but your tent looked like the weather had gotten to it much more than mine. It had collapsed down the middle and caved in, almost like something had stepped on it and stomped it down. I couldn’t make out what was inside of your tent, but it was dark and wet. Smelled like absolute shit too, like rot and maggots. Your clothes seemed to be intermixed with the pile of compost, almost like the sludge was wearing it. It was too dark to make out anything else, but I felt bad that nature seemed to give you the middle finger like that by putting a bunch of rotting garbage in your tent. But if you wondered if anything survived, good news! Your backpack with all your essential equipment was still intact next to the side of the tent!
NOTE: ACCORDING TO WHAT INVESTIGATORS HAVE BEEN REPORTING, THE ROT DESCRIBED IN THIS TENT SEEMS TO BE AN UNRECOGNIZABLE MIX OF SEVERAL DIFFERENT PLANTS AND ANIMALS MIXED TOGETHER IN CHUNKS TO CREATE A BREEDING GROUND FOR MAGOTS, MOLD, AND FUNGI. THERE ARE NO LEADS AS TO HOW THIS APPEARED, BUT HOPES ARE UP THAT FURTHER DNA TESTING WILL SHED LIGHT ON THIS SECTION OF THE CASE.
It seemed mostly like it was just old clothes, but I dug through the entire pack and found a couple other things you brought with you. A flashlight that had long since run out of juice, a water bottle full of mold, and one nicely sealed package of waterproof matches. I was very excited to find those, as it reminded me of the campfire again. Sad, I know, but I had gotten over losing you and I was ecstatic to just get you back soon! I could show you your matches, and your tent, and everything else we left behind!
But as I thought about the fire, I thought about my body again. The shock was wearing off and the wounds started to clot, and I realized that I was really cold. Extremely cold. For a day in the middle of the summer, it was freezing outside.
I’m sorry for doing what I did. I needed to get warm, and you brought matches, so I thought there wouldn’t be much harm in lighting your old clothes up for warmth. I’m sorry, but I’m sure you also understand why.
I grabbed your backpack and emptied it into the remains of the fire pit, then used a match of yours to light the whole thing up. It took a minute to find a match that wasn’t a dud, but once it was going it was going extremely well! I was sad I couldn’t bring these back to you, but I think it was necessary for the moment.
Just as I had sat down to completely enjoy the fire, I realized that there was still something that I had to do. That thing in the woods, I never discovered what it was. Oh well, I still had the rest of the night to figure it all out. And the day that followed. And the night after that, and the day after that, and the night after that and the day after that and the nightafterhtbajdhsj
NOTE: THIS SECTION HERE HAS BEEN CUT FOR CONVENIENCE, BUT IN THIS SECTION OF THE EMAIL THERE IS NOTHING BUT NONSENSICAL GARBLE FOR ABOUT A PAGE AND A HALF. NO MEANING HAS BEEN FOUND IN THIS.
I’M GETTING OFF TRACK. Point being, that I wasn’t going to leave until I understood everything the forest was keeping from me. I imagined seeing that thing in a tree, with messy brown fur or bat wings or bug eyes or whatever it had, and climbing up into the tree to strangle it with my bare hands. I was going to capture it, kill it, and bring it home to show you! Oh, I couldn’t WAIT to see the look on your face when you saw it!
But as I had to stop myself from giggling out loud, I was snapped back to reality by the forest around me. It was dead. Just as before, all of the noise had just ceased to emerge from the forest and it was quiet from all angles. Just the fire, my heartbeat, and the rustling tree in the woods.
NOTE: NOTHING IN THIS NEXT SECTION OF THE REPORT IS TO BE SPOKEN ABOUT OUTSIDE OF THIS REPORT. NO USEFUL INFORMATION IS PRESENT, AND IS STRICTLY A SYMPTOM OF DELUSION.
In the same place it stood last time we faced it together, I saw the tree silhouette shifting back and forth in the woods. Rocking to itself, waiting for something to happen.
I stood up and wailed at it. I screamed at the top of my lungs at the beast to come out from the woods and face me. Man or beast, god or devil, I was here and I wanted it dead.
But instead of the beast removing itself from the tree, the tree stopped moving again.
I bellowed even louder at the beast now, telling it that I needed to see it right then and there or I was going to run into the woods and see it myself. I wasn’t scared. I couldn’t be scared. I needed to get home to show you everything.
The beast made no noise at this, but something else entirely happened.
I saw the tree itself begin to rise from the earth.
I couldn’t make out anything but a shadow in the night, but I watched the tree rise further and further into the air, taller than it ever should have been, and then I watched It’s trunk split in half down the middle and stand up on two freakishly large stilts as it stared me down with the face it didn’t have. It looked like it had been kneeling down before, but now It was standing at its full height and it easily dwarfed all of the trees around it.
I watched in astonishment as the sides of the tree also separated into two parts, one on each side. Not like branches, but as arms that stretched down from the evergreen leaves it dawned and made it look almost humanoid. It stretched them outward slightly to rip them from where they had grown into their normal tree disguise, and then placed them back where they once laid at its side.
With agonizingly slow movements, it lifted one of its trunk legs into the air, and then placed it back down with a boom that shook the ground around me. Then it moved the other, placing it in front of the other and shifting balance onto it. It began to walk towards me.
Adrenaline and fear blinding my thoughts, I screamed again at the beast. I beat my chest at it, my eyes welled up with tears, I paced around while yelling your name. There was no way I could beat this thing on my own, but I couldn’t allow myself to run away again. I was not going to repeat history. I was going to fight and I was going to win. For you.
The tree seemed completely unphased by my attempts at intimidation however. It marched forward uncaringly, now stretching one leafy arm straight upward towards me.
Just then, without considering any alternatives, I had an idea of pure primality. The only thing I could reasonably use to defend myself from the beast.
The Fire.
I shoved my hand into the burning mass and my entire arm up to the shoulder crackled with pain, and I grabbed a fistfull of burning clothes in my grasp. With every muscle in my body and with every shred of humanity within my being, I hurled the heap of burning clothes towards the thing. The fire illuminated the bottom of the tree’s bark exterior as it landed directly at the base of its foot as it took a step forward. 
NOTE: SECOND DEGREE BURN MARKS WERE FOUND ON LEVI’S BODY, WHICH HAD STARTED TO HEAL BY THE TIME HE HAD TAKEN HIS LIFE. WHETHER OR NOT THEY WERE ACTUALLY CREATED BY A FIRE IS UNKNOWN.
The bark around the tree was warped and twisted in a way that made it look like it was both full of life yet also as dead as can be. The extremely dark brown bark twisted and contorted in swirls of which I'd never seen before. There were holes dotting its entire body that made it look like the bark was detailed with hundreds of screaming faces, all crying out in unison. It was horrific.
The beast stopped at the sight of the burning clothes and straightened itself out. It swayed to a stop and just stared at the heap with the eyes it didn’t have. Then, I could feel its attention turn to me. I gave the rest of my energy away to it, sobbing as loudly as I could at the creature with tears streaming down my face. I fell onto my knees, agitating my already ruined legs, and wept for the beast to see.
I had nothing left to do.
My arm throbbed with a burning scorch. My head ached with the power of a jackhammer. My gums were cut open in more places then I could count, and my legs were just barely being held together.
I was defeated. I had done nothing to it and it had done nothing to me, but I was defeated.
And so we stared at one another for a bit. Two beings locked in a standoff.
One unmoving mass of unknowable life, and another of agonized and idiotic flesh.
Suddenly, without any more indication of hostile behavior, It raised the leaves that made up its hand and held it over the fire for a moment. The creature hesitated, before allowing something microscopically small to fall from its arm.
A single blade of grass.
It danced for a moment in the air, flipping and frolicing as it fell before falling onto the mass of clothes and flame. The moment the grass touched the flame, it was extinguished with a loud sizzle and a puff of smoke. The fire was no more.
Then, as soon as it had appeared, the creature that resembled a tree stiffened themselves out and walked backwards into the woods from where they came. Without ever turning around, it walked backward with thudding footsteps as far back as it could go. I watched it leave as my tears dried, waiting for the thumps of its footsteps to completely disappear before I made any sudden moves.
It was gone.
And I had won.
And now im home
I don’t really have much to say after that, as I don’t really remember what else happened. I don’t even remember how i really got home after that night. When was it, a few days ago? Oh I don’t really know, I haven’t really been keeping trac.
BUT now thats over with, We can see eachother again!
oh , I hope this message finds you well. When you get it, could you please send me a follow up? I really wanna see you again, but i can’t do that unless i get your address!
Would yuo do me a favor and fo thatd for me? pleasw/
That’d be raeaaa;ly cool of youe man n
Annd im gonna find you Derian
We’ve gotta talk i have so manythings to tell you and have you hlistent to and to tolda about toa nd to,snjab ahdnd ka anf uodyne aand tank about and to talkto you and to talk you and you to and you to to sunkajd
We’/l abe the bests of fgrendds againt!11
HERE IS WHERE THE EMAIL ENDS.
EXACTLY 1 HOUR AFTER THE LAST EDIT WAS MADE TO THIS EMAIL, LEVI KILLED HIMSELF IN HIS APARTMENT. THIS EMAIL WAS LEFT OPEN ON HIS COMPUTER.
WHEN HIS COMPUTER WAS SEARCHED FOR ANY OTHER EVIDENCE THAT COULD BE USED INTO UNDERSTANDING WHY LEVI DID WHAT HE DID, AN ADDRESS IN HIS UNCLEARED HISTORY WAS FOUND TYPED INTO GOOGLE MAPS, LEADING TO A PLACE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WOODS. THAT LOCATION WAS ABOUT A MILE INTO THE WOODS, NEAREST TO THE OLD CAMPSITE THAT WAS REFERED TO AS “GRASS SHALLOW CAMPING GROUNDS”
IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WOODS WAS A CHARRED CORPSE.
IT HAD BEEN OUT IN THE WOODS FOR ABOUT 4 DAYS BEFORE IT HAD BEEN FOUND BY INVESTIGATORS
THE IDENTITY OF THE CORPSE HAS NOT YET BEEN IDENTIFIED, BUT ONE “DERIAN REEVES” HAS GONE MISSING FROM A NEIBORING TOWN ABOUT A WEEK AGO.
MORE INVESTIGATION IS REQUIRED.
Category:Nature
Category:Disappearances
Category:RTWC23