Out of the Woods and Into the City

(Sensitive Content Warning: There is a little blood, restraint, and implied violence.)

I grew up in a clearing filled with wild blueberry bushes, surrounded by an ancient forest awash in a sea of bright green ferns. My bare feet grazed over rock and root, branch and moss, dirt and sand, vibrating where toes touched down. The trees enfolded me in their knotted arms and whispered secret affirmations when I was too exhausted to go on. The streams taught me how to spring eternal and to ripple past doubts and droughts and anything trying to take me out. Those woods were my classroom, my bedroom, and my temple.

Teenage years crashed into me and hormones flooded my unsuspecting system. I lost sight of my connection to nature and its gentle, calming energy. I was on the edge of my clearing, feeling the wind and smelling the leaves that soon faded to dark rooms and LED screens.

Life changed gear when I got my first car. The future seemed as open as the road. That metal box was my new sanctuary, complete with a place to bury all my secrets. Whatever I didn't want to think about fit neatly into the trunk. During one hazy night drive, a beautiful woman, whom I believed to be Love, appeared to me between my headlights.

"You want deep connection! You want someone who won't abandon you. You want to know who I am!" She sealed her spell with a kiss. I was distracted by the cedar scent of her hair. Quicksand is nice and warm, like the best hug in the world. How lovely it was to sink in deep with my fears yet to be unearthed.

Still searching for meaning, I sped into my twenties with eyes shut tight and hands covering my ears. My car steadily accumulated greasy napkins and metal bits. I swore I heard a strange thumping from the trunk if everything around was quiet. These years started a pattern of hurt after hurt. "Love" revealed herself to be Attention, and she became more annoying and way less soul fulfilling.

"The more people who choose you, the more you are truly loved. Make them turn their heads! That's where your power lies." Not a very healthy companion. Hurt after hurt continued with no ways to cope save smokes and screens.

Smokes and screens. How could I ever be seen? Beneath pale, yellow streetlights with my head in the clouds, bombarded by sounds of power lines, HVAC systems, and emergency vehicles. Isolation for a whole nation meant leaning into distractions, as I wasn't ready to deal with whatever was forming in the trunk of my car.

Next steps felt impossible until I took them, especially because I wasn't correctly armed for them. I lost years to terrible demons and purposely brainwashed myself to keep my feet moving forward.

It was during those years that I had the first glimpse of the monster forming in my trunk. I was in my new car, and I saw her dark form slip silently into her new home. She followed me through every new car, and I'm pretty sure that she stole my favorite CDs.

2024 chewed me up and spat me up onto the banks of a new life: somewhere I felt trepidatiously safe and ready to explore some parts of myself. Attention took a vacation. I learned to swim in the waters of reality with people that seemed to care about me and hopefully kept their eyes out for danger.

I expanded to fill the space I found, but soon, without the proper weapons of armor, I was driven to my knees. Rough pavement scraped and scratched my soft, exposed skin. Another streetlamp to exist under, this time in a rainstorm with no umbrella. In the deluge of fear and anger that ensued, something new washed over me. It was hope.

Somehow still alive, I started to think about the being in my trunk. I brought her all the way from the woods of upstate New York to the mean streets of Capital City, South Carolina, but I had only ever seen her in reflections. It was time for a peak.

I took a deep breath and slowly opened the trunk just to slam it shut again. It was worse than I thought: a body covered in blood, tied up, gagged, hooded, writhing in pain, and left to rot. The stench alone made me regret my decision. How did I let it get to that point? How could I even begin to clean up the mess? Did I even want to try?

Three weeks passed before I attempted another look. She was still there but no longer struggling. First, I took off the wrist restraints. She stayed still so I removed the ankle restraints. With shaking fingers I removed the sack from her head and the gag from her mouth. She was covered in dirt and mud, and I could see trails of tears on her ruddy cheeks.

"Can you walk?"

Her eyes shot open, and she just stared at me with the same eyes that I saw in the mirror every morning.

"I can run a bath for you."

Still no answer or movement, not even the flutter of eyelashes.

"Fine! Stay here for all I care," and I slammed the trunk closed. Why should I help someone who didn't want to be helped?

Three long months went by when I was unable to leave the house. I spiraled into defeat and hopelessness, and her body continued to rot in my trunk. Those walls were my self-imposed prison. I banned myself from my backyard and stopped watering the flowers, effectively removing myself from the little nature I had left. Every night I woke up screaming dreaming that I was the one in the trunk of my car, smelling the blood, tasting the moldy gag.

Forced upheaval was the only reason I got out of that space. I packed my life on top of my prisoner and began my pilgrimage to the proverbial home, only to find no quarter there. The girl in my trunk didn't move or complain. She just stared at me through suitcases and contractor bags.

On a soft, spring afternoon, I checked on her. When I opened the trunk, she jumped out and started screaming in my face. I covered my ears, but her shrill tone rang past my barrier. She wasn't saying anything, just screaming.

Instinctually, I wrapped my arms around her and squeezed. She froze and began to shake and soon my shoulder was drenched.

"I want to go home," she whispered.

"Me, too."

"Will we ever get to go back there? To the warm sunlight and the cool dirt and the chuckling stream?"

"I don't know. I've been looking for a long time."

"Please don't put me back in there."

"Never again. I promise."

She pulled back from the hug but remained in my arms. We looked at each other, jade eyes to jade eyes. I smoothed her hair down and wiped bloody tears from her face.

“Come inside. You can get cleaned up, and then we can look at pictures of home and remember together."

She smiled and nodded, and she was the most gorgeous person I had ever seen. We held hands and walked over the threshold into a new, fuller existence, hoping that one day we would get back to the woods of our childhood. Until then, that ethereal clearing only exists in our dreams.