A Story I wrote this week

The Forest I came across it in the forest. Well actually we came across it, my friend Edward and I that is. We found it in the old stump, the one by the dried up brook or perhaps it was a drainage ditch. The object was not really in the stump, more on the stump, just sitting there sort of glowing. And that is how we claimed to have spotted it. The glow. It was green, sort of translucent green with little silvery specks through out and it was about two inches across and round. Made, it looked like, out of some kind of hard, glass like material, it looked very much like an over sized marble and in fact this is how I first described it. Look, look at that fucking big marble. Edward, from a strict Catholic family, his uncle was actually a chaplain in the army, and I, had recently discovered the joys of swearing. Everything was fucking this and pissing that,. We thought it made us sound very grown up. What the shit is it? I god damn saw it first.. No, fuck you, I did! No you asshole, I did. This would go on for a while but eventually we would agree that we had, more or less, seen it at the same time. We did not really know what to call it. We both agreed that we could not call it a marble as this lable seemed to cheapen it's existence. It was not a marble. Even the most exotic of marbles, the cat's eye, could not really be compared to this object. We soon settled into calling it the Thing, spoken as though there was a capital letter in front. With an imperceptible pause ..The Thing.. Where did it really come from? The woods there are damp, deep and dark. Low ground. The swampy-ness is never really very far away and it can be always smelled, even in the heat of summer when everything has dried up outside the woods. The skunk cabbage grows in the ditch and offers a constant musky, rotten smell to the air, as if something many months ago had died there and was not quite bare bones yet. The soil was black and full of tiny roots that made digging difficult when ever we tried to build something in there. In fact we, and all the neighborhood kids were just a little bit scared to go in very deep to the forest and avoided it. Unless boredom and familiarity with the rest of the surrounding woods caused us to forget our fear, or at least ignore it for a while, and to go past the big fallen tree that marked the boundary to the deep woods. On still summer days it was much more quiet in there. Much more muffled as if the sound had a hard time winding past the tangled branches and stayed back, hovering around the lighter wooded area near the baseball diamond. The cicada sound, buzzing, building and then stopping, only to be replaced by another zzzZZZZZT, was absent here. Though we did not really think like this, the deep forest was more the realm of death and decay. Snails and slugs were plentiful, sitting upon rotting logs we had to be careful where we put our hands lest we placed a few fingers directly upon one of the giant slimy slugs that lay about, a harem slowly, slovenly digesting the forest and anything that fell, unmoving to the forrest floor. The snails, more active and visible by their small stone like shells, leaving snail trail, a sort of silvery thready slime that was hard to remove from clothing and we were sure had something to do with sex The snails we would crunch under foot and sometimes pretend to eat them, as I had heard they did in France, and sometimes make juicy mixtures from them that we would then make plots and plans of how to get out math teacher to drink. But the ..Thing..This was today our mystery. Where had it come from? Who had put it there? What was it meant to do? Could we keep it, take it home? After we had both held it for a while we put it down. We put it down where we had found it, atop the stump in that little hollow that slightly hid it. We watched as it sat there and slightly glowed. For now our ideas of taking it home, who would get to keep it the first night, were forgotten. We could not keep it. Somehow both knew this. It had to stay where it was. Should we tell someone? No, I don't think so. Yeah, you're right. They might come and take it, try to use it or something. Do you think it has a name? Fuck off, don't be stupid. A thing has to be alive to have a name, asshole, But... I know... And I did know. Like Edward I knew that the thing..The Thing...was somehow alive. It knew we had found it and it knew who we were, where we lived, maybe even what we thought. And we knew nobody had put it here and we knew that it did not really glow and that we had to leave soon. But we both felt sad. I wanted to cry but knew I could not as Edward was there, as he knew I was there. The Thing pulsed. It grew. It shook slightly and then was gone. In my head I heard "Good bye Alex" And did not even wonder if Edward had also heard his name. We shared this contact and never spoke of it again. We told no one and even, had each other spoken of it with each other would have pretended to not remember what the other was speaking of. There was some kind of shame there, and a fear of bursting the bubble that seemed to shimmer around us that day, a soapy film that danced with the light, liquid pouring around itself, almost not there but seen when the light is just so. Now, all these years later, I barely remember this incident, it has the patina of fiction on it's surface yet I know that it did actually happen to us. I wonder who, and I know now it was a who, not a what, The Thing was. Why did he or she come to Edward and I that day in the forest. What was the lesson we were to learn? What did we need to take from that day? As life ever so slowly drains from me, as I return more and more each day to the death and decay of the deep wood, the slugs, the snails, the fungus-y dying smell ever present in my nostrils once again, mostly I remember the slightly glowing green color and how it felt to look at it. How it felt in my head and in my belly and balls at the same time. A warm honey like soft, safe feeling that spoke of pleasure that did not need to end to feel good. I remember that feeling, close my eyes and go directly home.