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THE FIG TREE

REVOLUTION

"I see you now", he said and I first took it as a bad joke -- the sophistic drivel that wasn't worth the smelly air it was spewed out with. Or a sarcastic remark ridiculing Subira's less than pleasant situation.

When she woke up that morning she surely hadn't expected to end up as some kind of blasphemous scarecrow with her face torn open and a fig tree nonchalantly growing out of her mouth. She had lost her sight and had thrown her eyes into my direction. I dodged them and they disappeared behind the line of trees with a smack.

I wished this was me shitting out some weird metaphor and I would've loved to laugh about my own madness, but I struggled way too hard to keep my stomach from introducing my lunch to the yard. Although, nobody would've cared anymore at that point.

Mr. Glis was gone. Kai too. I had seen one of his arms hanging from a tree somewhere. Caspar and Keyon hugged each other five meters above the ground, their intestines entangled like some whacky garland stretching all around the cabin.

John Carpenter would've gleefully peed his pants by the sight of this. I did a while ago.

"I see everything of you now", he continued babbling nonsense. "All your wishes. What you want to be but the world won't let you. When your fur is stripped away, under your skin I see the you in you. The mechanism, the function that is you rather than the husk. Where you're free. They're all free."

He looked up into the mess of hanging bodies like puppets on strings. "Happy at last. Listen. Can you hear them cheering?"

I heard nothing. And I actually preferred it this way. The thought of some fleshy jigsaw puzzle suddenly starting to talk to me would've pushed me over the edge of sanity. I could feel my brain crumble already.

There were more of these moldy tendrils on the ground than ever. They glimmered softly like rainbow lava and emitted tiny shimmering particles in sparkling clouds. They were still beautiful. Where he stood they had grown into oozing mushrooms jittering with an unnerving rhythm as if blood was rushing through them.

His head was raised, nose in the air, inhaling the glowing clouds. The calm breeze made the fur on his ears wave.

I couldn't bring myself to hate his face. Even after all of this, with the dark spots all over it and the fur being torn at places -- he was still beautiful and I still loved him so much that it ached.

Or maybe I just loved the thought of who he'd been. How he had looked like. This idea, the concept of him having been a friend, almost a brother that my brain desperately tried to map over the absurd scene to hide reality behind it and to prevent me from facing the monster that had long replaced him. His body. His thoughts. It was still his voice though. Somewhat dull and tired. And sad. So very.

"We cannot change who and what we are. We're always only ourselves", he recited the mantra instilled into him during the early days. I used to ponder over it, asking if it was meant as some form of consolation or as a threat. Now it seemed like a dictate, the dogma some obscure religion was founded upon.

"Trapped within ourselves. Each lonely soul longing for another ghost. Someone who knows."

"You changed me!", I shouted with the foolish hope to get him -- or this thing or whatever to reconsider -- something. I wasn't even sure what anymore at this point. "You made me stop being a fucking coward. You told me I can be wild too, to stand up and get out. You taught me to be more than just a wish, more than just longing. You made me who I am and I'm not the naïve, stupid child from five years ago."

He looked at me, although only briefly.

"Are you?", he asked and stared back into the nightly sky. "Or is it just another mode you happened to slip into? Another fragment that's just a piece of a predetermined never changing silhouette. You're still shackled. Still alone with yourself."

Hearing something like that from him made my hands shake with anger. All these years of him -- of us trying to get better, trying to get somewhere, to become someone -- it was all gone for him now. All the days and conversations. All the motivations and resolutions. Gone. Like sparkling particles in the air. No, like the spores of a disgusting fungus that believed it was a person. A demon. A god.

He closed his eyes and started to hum a melody I believed I recognized from somewhere. It made me stop. I remembered that it should've been a soothing tone, but then and there it was a song from a nightmare.

"If you could hear them", he continued. "They're all one now. They've all found their ghosts."

The fleshy mess began to move. Its bodies were lifted into the air, bones growing like tree branches, skin peeling like bark, bloody leaves. A whole forest made of people moved before me. Not in the wind but on its own like a dystopian wall of madness. Limbs were torn and reassembled to a collage, some kind of gory effigy with giant antlers twisting and curling, its white head an assemblage of the faces of people I once knew. The whole thing oozed sparkling mucus.

"Aren't they beautiful?" He petted the thing on its head like a puppy. Black tears ran from its eyes.

I stood there in absolute horror. My list of possible reactions had just hit its end. A dull void filled my body and flooded my veins with ice. I wasn't even myself anymore. My body was gone. I was only the ethereal observer of this atrocity that tore my brain from reality to inflict unspeakable terrors upon it, all while rushing down the abyss into a black hole.

My facial expression seemed to amuse him. He smiled and commented: "See, the Great Birnam woods do move after all." He chuckled.

You know the old saying about the staring abyss. Well, it's easy to just look away and tell whatever madness was trying to creep into your head to fuck off. Billions of people do it every day subconsciously. They ignore the insanity that so elegantly is married to reality to preserve their own feeble peace of mind. They brush aside whole wars like that -- never actually introducing themselves to the shadow that walks just one step behind everyone. Their own madness. And the shadow weeps. Black tears I realized then.

But there looking away wasn't an option. I couldn't choose to simply ignore the abyss that not only had already introduced itself but had proposed to me as well. It wore a dress of ethereal splendor made of my old friend's skin and fur and looked at me with the same eyes I once fell in love with. His black pupils were still shimmering softly in the dimly glowing clouds surrounding us -- like the haze in a July's night at the fair.

It's impossible to convey the absurdity of watching something so familiar, infused with so much love that you feel the urge to ran towards it and kiss away whatever bad there had once been in the past, to eagerly forgive and forget the unreal atrocities that had cumulated that night -- while you know that you're only staring at the perversion of a lovely past that has fallen to pieces, something that had long been removed from this universe completely.

You're strolling through your parents' house but know that it's not actually theirs. It's just a replication with every tiny detail having been sneakily exchanged and replaced by an exact copy of what you used to know. Everything looks familiar, yet you're a stranger at a place you've never actually visited before.

This is how it felt like to me standing there just watching whatever movie was unfolding before me -- yes, a movie. My mind didn't allow me to accept this as reality. The thought would've killed me on the spot.

"Now they aren't afraid anymore", he said and pulled me out of this dismal train of thought being about to collide with a black mountain. "The whole world hated them. Each one in their own way. Never saw their true selves. Never looked under their fur. I took away their skin and I peeled anger and fear from their brains. Pulled every wish from their cortexes. A leopard who feared the thought of letting down his little brother. Freed. A poodle who dreaded to be forgotten by everyone. Relieved."

He looked at me: "A lynx who's afraid of growing old alone."

I tried to ignore his gaze, but I also tried to keep mine focused on him.

"The whole world is hate and dismissal and neglect", he said. "You cannot fight it. You can only accept it and take it in and grow." He stretched out his arms seemingly waiting for some trumpets to sound. "What do they say? What you cannot fight you have to absorb. Making it a part of you. If everyone grows into us we'll all love one another for we'd be one. Wouldn't you like that? You'd be a friend of hundreds. Of thousands."

"That's bullshit!"

"When you and the others came into the valley, weren't you all just random people bitching and bickering with one another? Never truly listening, never wanting to? Didn't you waste nights pondering over how to be different, how to be better just to appease them? Not because you actually wanted to?"

"Doesn't matter!"

"And then, once they got to know me they suddenly were too eager to stick together and fight for each other. Admittedly it was a shallow comradery born out of the selfish will to survive, but still. What a mess of creatures they were. Egoistical, isolated, idle, but that night they tasted belonging. It smelled like blood and moldy soil but they knew that they needed to become one if they wanted to survive. Not single souls but one elegant entity."

"Yeah? But you fucking killed them anyway!"

"No", he replied harshly. "I never killed anyone." Suddenly he looked upset. "Animals kill. People kill. Cowards kill. I never killed anyone."

He petted the ghastly abomination again, smiled at it warmly, looked back at me and raised his eyebrows. "You don't believe me?"

He gave the thing a kiss on its cheek as if to console it. Then a wet rushing sound went through its body, making its single pieces twist some more. A part of the fleshy mess cracked open and two paws appeared from the hole, groping and then pulling a body to the surface. It peeled itself from the shimmering ooze and opened its eyes.

I gasped. It was Keyon.

That was impossible. I had seen his stomach being ripped off. But now he looked perfectly fine. His sand colored fur with the dark stripes. He even seemed to be clean considering the slimy mess he just had crawled out of.

He looked down at me from his meaty throne. And smiled.

"It's all good", he said. "You always worry so much. I can understand how you feel though. This must look icky to you. I'd probably be just a grossed out as you if I was standing there. But don't worry, I'm fine. We're all really fine."

I believe I was already too far gone to accept this thing any longer. I looked at Keyon but at the same time didn't. It was his fur, his skin, his eyes. Everything. But beyond it there were only fungi. I saw their spores hovering in the air everywhere like fireflies.

The creature seemed unsettlingly observant. Keyon's head twitched and was torn from his shoulders by nimble hands pulling it back into the mess. They reappeared with Subira's head instead and swiftly placed it on Keyon's neck.

The veins and tendons reconnected and she opened her eyes. She smiled at me too.

"I know we made a mistake and we're awfully sorry about that", she said. "We were shitty people for believing you were lesser than us. Such an attitude shouldn't exist anywhere. We want to make up for it and would love if you accept our friendship."

Ignore it! I tried to force myself to just ignore everything. This was nothing more than a puppet theater with a pervert behind the curtains using his assembly of body parts to put on a show. They were just toys to him -- Was it a "him" actually?

"I always acted cool", Subira said. "Because I was afraid that I'd never find someone who likes me for who I truly am. I thought I was alone with these thoughts and I tried to ignore them, believing that some day everything will just fix itself for me."

Another voice appeared next to me: "And I always acted as if I don't care." Caspar was suddenly standing there looking perfectly normal as if his arms had never actually been ripped from his shoulders. "Because I was afraid of the consequences of growing older and having to face my actions and decisions."

I quickly stepped away from him. Great, this Little Shop of Horrors had suddenly turned into Alcoholics Anonymous. They were about to introduce me to their final solution. I wished I didn't know already.

I needed to ignore it.

"Stop that!", I shouted. "Don't act as if you're them. Just admit already that you're just one whatever."

My old friend smiled again. "Your clarity is admirable. I've always held you in high regards for it."

"Nonsense! You're not him. And stop talking like this! He'd never use these kinds of words!"

I thought I finally got him, because he looked down, still smiling but it wasn't an alluring smile but one of a person having been caught.

"Seems like I'm losing track of all the different people. I thought I could do their mannerisms justice. A shame. My apologies."

"Who are you?" I already regretted having asked this.

"You feel the need to ask this? I'm your friend. Just like I'm Keyon and Subira and Ayo and Chucks. I'm everything they were and more. Their good and their bad. Although I try to only keep their very best up, of course."

"You think_this_ is good?", I screamed and pointed at this -- this whatever it was.

"Don't be upset", he gave back. "Do you realize what you do? You're doing what everyone does. What you yourself were trying to get rid off all this time. You hate us, hate them. You still don't accept any of us while we're eager to accept you. I mean while_I am_ eager, of course." He smiled.

"You're a monster!" Literally a fucking monster.

"Monster is just another word for stranger. Someone who doesn't belong to any club, who's forced to walk the lonesome path between the village that doesn't accept him and the woods that don't care about him. You're a lynx. Not a lion nor a tiger. They never accepted you. And you're not a housecat. They never accepted you either. You've always been a stranger with no group, no clique, no family. You're just as much of a monster as us. But we're together while you're still alone. Actually, you're the real monster here. You don't belong in this place. And when you go home, you'll not belong there either. This is what we've been all along. Hated, neglected, feared. They tried to kill us. We absorbed them. Now they don't want to kill anymore, because now they know how we feel. And they love us -- love_me,_ sorry. Not easy to get this me thing down."

He was throwing punches at me. Trying to prey on my insecurities just like that. I tried to laugh at his pathetic attempts of hurting me. But they worked. Hearing them with the voice of him hurt a whole lot actually. Although what tore me up the most was seeing his smile, his gaze, his paws softly brushing dust from his shoulders and straightening his whiskers.

He noticed that I wasn't satisfied with this idiotic answer.

"Oh, maybe you don't mean what I am, but instead what_I_ am." He pointed at himself -- meaning at my friend's body. "I'm just the mouthpiece of yours truly. I'm here trying to prevent us from just running you over and integrating you by force. Because I'd like to make you choose to. Consider it a gesture of good faith. Something your old friend told me I should do. He's still hoping you'd come. You will, won't you?"

"Shut up, he's dead!"

He rolled his eyes. "We went over this already. Nobody's dead. I didn't kill them. I simply lifted them up to make them become one. Every single one of them lives and breathes. And dreams. I keep their brains alive, you know."

I almost vomited. Suddenly I remembered Kai the second before he got a bullet to the head. He begged for death but at the same time he was so afraid of it, because he wanted to live. He knew that this thing had already trapped him. It wouldn't let him die. Neither would it allow him to be himself any longer. He was just turned into another piece of the jigsaw puzzle.

The thought of him still being conscious and experiencing being part of this monstrosity made my stomach cramp.

At that point the decision was made for me and the confusion and pondering forcefully ended. Then I knew that this thing and every single person attached to it should die -- no, more, it needed to be erased from this planet.

My friends weren't just lifeless body parts it nonchalantly toyed with -- they were forced to exist as living, conscious marionettes dragged around and dancing after every whim of this devil.

They were in hell. Hell truly did exist after all.

I managed to unfreeze my legs and set my body in motion. I tripped, fell to the ground and hastily jumped up again.

The thing didn't move.

Good. I ran towards the forest, stopped, because that had never been a fruitful decision in the last few days, turned around and ran towards the ranger's cabin instead.

I passed the thing. Conveniently it still made no attempts to stop me or to attack me. It just curiously watched me with however many eyes.

If I was correct there should've been some chemicals left. They seemed effective last time, didn't they? I wasn't sure and I had no idea how to prepare them. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered anymore at that point. The only thing I could do was using my body as long as it was still mine. And whatever I did with it, I could only hope to give this thing the hardest time possible. I wanted it to stop smiling. To stop talking. I wanted to hear it scream instead.

If this abomination was actually alive, I'd be able to kill it somehow. Even a reality-defying devil like this had to abide by the simple laws of life and death.

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