Forests

“Do we need to pay for Parking here?” Beverly asks while staring directly at parking tariff sign. I’m immediately irritated by this question, of course. I understand that my Corsa isn’t exactly kitted out for off-roading, hence her inability to read the sign as the gravel and dirt shakes our view out of focus, but this is a pre-meditated question. I Ignore her in favour of pretending like the abundance of vacant spaces requires my full concentration. I imitate my best Robert De Niro face as I consider which mud patch is the most appropriate for my aging car.

Unfortunately for the pair of us, I’ve successfully parked.

“Do we have enough change?” Beverly asks in a way she feels is necessary to create any kind of sound to fill in the shutdown of my car’s engine. Silently I rustle out a collection coppers, silvers, lint, tobacco, and ripped rolling paper. She’s really making a meal out of calculating the full amount in her head before needlessly asking, “Is that enough?”

“Yes,” I hiss, and I’m sat here just wishing she’d just accept that I know what I’m doing, that I have what is needed, that not every second of our time together is desperate for some kind sound between us. Instead, she undermined the peace of the drive up to Lorthen forest that was void of a working radio or any previous attempts at a conversation. It’s really starting to whittle down my nerves for reasons I’m unfamiliar with. I wish I could out why; it would totally justify what I’m building myself up for.

“It’s only a quid or two for a few hours,” I calmly mumble. “It’s the only bloody reason we’re here and not at Alton-fucking-Towers,” I remind her as I cram my keys into the less populated pocket of my coat.

She doesn’t utter a single word, but instead, glares through my eyes and works her way over to the little pile of pre-rolled joints laying in the front dip of the radio’s light display.

“What?” I ask, knowing fully well where this is about to go.

“Nothing Fletch”.

Here we go.

“I just think it’s funny”.

“The words of someone who would previously claim that nothing was wrong”.

“Fuck you,” She spits, and even her projected saliva is sharp. “It’s funny to me how you can keep banging on about having no money at me, when you always have some set aside to get a draw every other day. It’s like, getting ridiculous”.

“Absolutely. Too right, actually! You sit there and lecture me on what I’m spending my money on; YOU don’t even have a job! Maybe if YOU decided earn as well; I wouldn’t get pissy over our finances. But hey, you’ll still happily take a drag whenever I have some, won’t you?’

I’ve wounded her in some way. She looks at me in the same way a teenager looks at the smashed phoned screen they once admired to be perfect and indestructible.

“I smoke with you with because it’s all you ever want to do anymore” she explains and with each word she’s clenching her jaw in order to bat down the small lump in her throat threatening a shower of tears.

“I’m tired of trying to convince you to not do it, because there’s always some excuse for you to do it”.

“No?” I brush away poorly.

She un-buckles her belt and I dumbly watch it zip behind her into its slot. Beverly rotates her whole body towards me for full effect; I can feel the overdue knock-down I deserve prepping its sticky palms for a good slap.

“There is, Fletch. I’m fed up with the bullshit. So please, stop getting shitty with me because you’re addicted. You think I’m lazy, or whatever for not having a job? Oh sorry, we’re really gonna save for a deposit with your fantastic wages, aren’t we?

“Stop blaming me for whatever’s going on in that head of yours; like it or not, I’m the only person you have in your life anymore because you’re too selfish to pull your finger out your arse and sort something out”.

I flush with rage.

“Oh, piss off. You know I’m looking for a new job, and I told you I’m going to use the last of what we have before I quit. I told you this before’.

She doesn’t buy it. Beverly sees through my lack of commitment. I just don’t care enough. I really wish I could, but to what benefit? If I don’t have any remorse for my attitude, there is no reason being with her, or to stop smoking?

“I don’t like what you do and how much you’ve changed,” Beverly confesses to me plain, and incredibly cold. “I’m not happy and I haven’t been for like, ages now. Yet… I’m still here, aren’t I? Just think about that when you’re done being such a massive prick”.

Beverly hides her tears behind an angry and resentful exterior as she fixes her thermal matching scarf and glove set. All I do was stay motionless like it would help me in anyway.

“Are you getting out or not, Fletch?” She forces herself to query on her exit, not really showing interest for what my answer.

I fly out of my car, nose-diving my only reliable trainers in the thickest layer of mud (I pray is mud), and ungracefully jog to do what I absolutely have to. I have to end our relationship.

It comes as no surprise that Tension is still quite present. We’re sceptical of each other, like a couple of Tea enthusiasts, both individually being the connoisseur and the beverage for one another. We remain mutually unapproached as we’re still visibly steaming with heat from our previous debate in the car. We always find it hard to tell how much the other has cooled down enough to drink without excessively burning ourselves from lack of caution. I’d like to think we’ve mastered this tactic as a result of knowing our behaviours so well that we’ve developed a way of recognising potential triggers. I know realistically this is likely because Beverly believes I’m always negative and never have anything nice or relevant to talk about. I disagree with Beverly every time she points this out. goaded by my ‘ignorance’, it would typically lead her to saying something like, ‘You always have to have to be right and have the last say’. I often finish these debates by simply telling her she’s wrong. So, for the sake of keeping the peace and the wildlife from scattering in fear while I impatiently wait for the right moment to tell her it’s over. We quietly stroll alongside the arrow marked dirt roads puffing, passing, pondering… I remember gasping for a cup of tea for some reason.

“It’s so pretty here. I love the way how the tree’s look to be full of more colour when having a smoke. It’s like, better,” Beverly marvels in awe as she absorbs Lorthen Forest’s autumn appeal.

I can tell Beverly’s genuinely enjoying herself. There’s that whimsical look of bewildered intrigue. She’s being consumed by scenery the same way she obsessively reads those stories around forests and similar woodland locations. You know the type of book series based on medieval fantasy crap? Where all the people live in dingey huts, making weapons, casting spells, and developing questionably tense relationships with mystical animals? Grim stuff. Anyway, I gather by the distant look in her eyes and complete shut off towards myself; she’s fulfilling some imaginative fantasy of the best dragon love, war time of magic and borderline porn epic in her head. She was in her happy place, which provided the perfect opportunity for me to break it off.

“Uh, I,” was all I manage to slur just as Beverly interrupts me without realising.

“I feel like I’ve sort ‘a been here before? Like, I think I just had Déjà vu, you know? Like, I’ve seen this before somewhere”.

“Yeah,” I reply, too disappointed with being cut off to show any sign of listening. We’re both relatively higher than our own thresholds as an earlier argument in the day provoked me to really pack these rolls. Regrettably now, it’s making me lose track of why I’ve brought her here in the first place. It’s also making me feel a little on edge as I much prefer to smoke with the comfort of four secure walls around me.

Smoking, in public, especially weed for that matter, is an awkward activity to achieve without getting paranoid in the UK. Some will approach you, either to tell you that it is disgusting or worse; they want some portion of your stock, otherwise you’re in trouble regardless. There is always the dreaded fear that the police will come and not only arrest you, but embarrass you in front of everyone and you’ll lose your job and become homeless etc. proper paranoid stuff

Yeah right, I chuckle to myself.

wait. Is that person is looking at me? Have they got their phone out? Are they taking pictures of us? oh damn! Shut up, you’re paranoid. Talk to Beverly. That’ll my mind off things. But I’m meant to be dumping her, aren’t I? ugh.

“Yeah,” I rattle, “It’s alright. I mean, to be totally honest, I’m not a digging the amount of elderly people and families staring at us… but I suppose we are the ones doing the illegal stuff’”.

Despite my paranoia, I actually don’t mind the look of shame we may or may not be receiving from the public. I just want to convince Beverly that I’m paying attention to her. I certainly want to avoid popping her bubble and extracting moodiness I do not wish to deal with.

“Huh?” Beverly responds half consciously. “I haven’t really noticed at all”. She shrugs as she continues to inhale one of my poorly rolled joints while sauntering along, booting any pebble or stick silly enough to be in her path.

Does she know what I’m going to do if I eventually get around to doing it? Or maybe she does not care, and I mean truly little to her. That kind of sucks. Wait, why would that Suck if dumping her? What a mess.

The crunch of decaying leaves under our shoes fills in the only ambience between strong bouts of wind speed past us whispering about winter’s inevitable arrival with gusts of bitter blows against the last layers of orange, red and brown that the trees could cling to.

I think I still love her as an individual that comes with time and familiarity. I do not love her passionately however, which is devastating as I really want to for the sake of my own normality.

“It’s fucking side-burned thanks to your terrible rolling,” Beverly complains while attempting to start the next joint with one of those cheap disposable lighters. “Where’s your clipper?”

Like a robot set to one function, I automatically locate the clipper and hand it over to her. While Beverly balances the joint between flattened lips, flicking the mechanism with her tiny thumb, my hand acts as a shield from the wind and passers-by. For a brief moment, I didn’t want to be away from her ever again and tried looking into her eyes to see if we could spark more than what we were about to continue filling our lungs with. After the third unsuccessful flick, Beverly returns my curious gaze behind a single coating of transparent salmon gloss. Nothing.

Following her obvious rejection, my heart slips out of the window and skydives into oblivion until my brain decides that it would be quite a redundant emotion to feel. without consideration, I transfer my heartache into a numb and blank expression of indifference, which I hate myself for always resorting to. Maybe if I just express how I feel, rather than bottling it up, our present could be different. My stubbornness and drug fuelled narcissism would never allow such a thing.

Remember that you don’t need her I remind myself. You are better off without her as she is without you.

I cannot work out what I realistically want at this moment, or any other moment before and during this walk we’re committing ourselves through.

I believe that I will forever feel alone no matter who I surround myself with. In my head, there isn’t a single direction that looks alluring enough for me to want to venture down. Every possible outcome seems pointless and my lack of ability to decide my fate with Beverly out of all my dilemmas is killing me more as we walk on, perfectly parallel like two identical sides of magnets refusing to ever touch.

I can’t explain why I want to leave her, nor can I explain why I want to stay by her side.

My body begins jittering like a feverish sweat and ever so slightly and I found my hand subconsciously searching for hers, both of which are comfortably sat in the warmth of their respective pockets.

Probably for the best. I do not deserve such comfort. My thoughts rudely argue that she did not deserve me either.

My world is falling apart, despite nothing actually happening around me. Beverly doesn’t help at all as she continues to be unforgivingly happy with her own company next to whatever I’m trying to do and be.

We sit down on a broken, moss-blotted log for a little break to help our vision adjust to the constant spin our heads are rocking to.

“Fletch, what’s your thoughts?” she asks very sternly.

If there was ever a greater moment to tell her my intentions; this resting point is perfect. There is no way I can dart around her new tone. It’s a vague question with an extremely specific purpose behind it and I know now she is aware and that I have cottoned on to its connotation.

What’s your thoughts? = “What is your opinion on our relationship because something is clearly off?”

“I was just thinking about how,” I slowly start confessing, just before a car horn a few miles away distracts my confidence. “How… depressing the limitation of this small patch of nature really is”.

Beverly gives me a blank stare

“It’s unfulfilling?” I’m almost asking myself.

“Right, okay,” Beverly responds unimpressed.

“You see, forests are great for a couple of reasons and also disappoint me at the same time for the very same reasons too?”

Either I’m exceedingly high, or onto something great, but you’ve started talking now Fletch so commit to it, my head bullies forward.

“Forests… are beautiful. You know, because they are naturally coloured and structured only by like… nature itself and uh, nature itself has the creative rights and ability to shape it”.

“Yep,” Beverly simply sighs in order to show she was listening but is prepared to disagree or bully me once I’ve finished.

“Forests are like homes as such to like thousands of different creatures. That’s literally like endless rent-free housing with constant changes to adapt to with each season that goes by”. I dumb self makes a swishing motion through the air to emphasise this.

“True”.

“The forest keeps the animals and bugs ‘n’ stuff safe in the shade during the summer with strong green leaves. Then winter swings around and the leafy shade falls to the ground, then the animals have blankets with a new way to provide themselves with warmth from the memories of summer’s first love. The insulation the creatures formed together disintegrates to make way for summer to remind them of why they came to this forest in the first place. Thus, the cycle goes on until their death. That’s why I think the animals love to stay in the forests. It all seems to be right. it has all they believe they need.

For some animals, they can look in any direction when lost within the comfort of the Forest and spy so many opportunities of adventure and unknown possibility. Some animals realise the forests are only beautiful because we allow it to be and they become frustrated at how orchestrated their lives have become at the hands of those bigger and strong enough to re-shape what they thought was their own”.

“Um, yeah. I think I’m like, starting to see what you mean”.

“You do?” I ask enthusiastically.

“Do you like forests, or not?”.

I can tell I have been sugar coating my point beyond the original taste I was aiming for and tried again.

“So, as two individuals, we travel all this way to roam about this patch of land, which was once the majority of Earth. To me, it’s not that fantastic to think this forest has been cut down and shaped in a way that society wants it to be the ideal image of. They want us to enjoy it the way they intended and only that way alone. In my mind, forests are just pathetic and overwhelming reminders of how we’ve tore down our source of origin and manipulated our roots into something predictable and artificial. Pardon the pun”.

She doesn’t laugh anyway.

“I’ve realised that this forest isn’t for me because from my perspective; the endless opportunities of adventure and unknown possibilities seem laughable when you can see cars travelling from A to B on a motorway at the end of the forest’s outskirts. you know, you can even try to mix things up and create your own trail walk. But like the animals we are, conditioned to follow paths set out for us, we always end up finding ourselves falling back to the main trail someone else has made. We complete the arrow marked loop while ultimately achieving and feeling nothing”.

I gaze proudly and as soberly as I can muster into the distance attempting to look deep and meaningful behind burning red eyes.

“Fletch?”

“What’s up?” I ask.

“I’m breaking up you”.