Amelia Newton: 1rst place short story.
Amelia Newton won first place for her short story “Deserving.”
Grumbling to himself, David stomped up the steep, wooden steps to his attic. “I don’t know why Seanna couldn’t’ve cleaned the attic,” he muttered. “But noooo, she’s too busy with med school. Stupid Seann-” David coughed, as he inhaled the thick cloud of dust disturbed by the door he had flung open. When the dust settled, he took in the small attic illuminated by the sunlight shining through the single small window on one end of the almost-cramped space. The window which David had given no thought to earlier, when he was outside carving a hole in a tree that was meant to be a crude birdhouse.
Even at 17, David still loved to be outside. He liked to break branches off of trees and build things. He would use the stripped parts of young trees as rope to hold his creations together. He would make little boats made from green leaves and new, pliable branches. Then he would watch his cousins race the boats down the little creek a few minutes walk away from his house. On hot, sunny days, David would sit underneath an old oak tree and watch the squirrels and birds go about their lives. On more than one occasion, he carved the thick roots protruding from the ground into crude sculptures. There were some tiny bears, round fish, and various other forest critters, all carved with his hunting knife. When David was really bored, he practiced throwing his knife at makeshift targets drawn on a few trees. He got better and better at this skill as summertime droned on, and the trees bore the gouges to prove it. Lost in those memories, David walked toward the window and stubbed his toe on one of the boxes, which jarred him back to reality. He cursed as his toe began to throb, then cursed again when he surveyed the cluttered attic.
David looked with dismay at the multiple cardboard boxes covered in gray dust and stacked precariously on top of each other. The feather duster in one hand and the Swiffer mop in the other seemed weak weapons against the grime. David groaned, inhaling more dust which made him cough again. Trying not to breathe too deeply, he stepped cautiously onto the once hardwood and now packed dust floor. Holding the Swiffer mop like a lance, he walked to the most cobwebby corner of the attic, opposite of the window. He leaned the mop against the wall, pulled his earbuds and his phone out of his pocket, put the earbuds in his ears, put his favorite playlist on shuffle, and skipped through a bunch of songs until he got to the one he wanted to listen to. Then he started cleaning.
It was midday before he stopped to take a break. Looking around, he admired his handiwork with a small smile. Then he turned around and realized he had cleaned merely a quarter of the attic. The smile slid from David’s face. That was impossible. He had been cleaning for so long! He thought he deserved a break, so when a dusty (of course) bookshelf caught his eye he started toward it. He narrowed his eyes as he realized the sun shining in through the window was making the bookshelf glow, like this was a fairy tale and David was supposed to pick a book and have it transport him into a magical land of sugar plums and singing animals. Ew. Instead, David grabbed the nearest book not on the glowing shelf. It was plainly laying on a plain box in plain view. The cover was a faded gray, and the lettering had been long gone, but David could sort of make out the title, The Screaming Trees. “Nice.” He grinned. A horror story. He sat down, opened the book and started reading; Let’s forget once upon a time. They always end in happiness, and happiness is never guaranteed. Unlike failure. If failure is expected, we make it guaranteed. Failures cannot be overcome in the Forest of Screaming Trees. It all started with a wizard…
David blinked. He had been so absorbed in the book, he failed to realize that it was almost sundown. And that he was not in the attic anymore. And his shoes were gone. “What the hell?” he whispered. He slowly closed the book and looked around. He was surrounded by a forest so green, he would be seeing pink for weeks. The red, dying light filtered through the leaves, casting funny shadows on the ground. The mossy ground. The moving mossy ground. “Oh my God!” David yelled. He jumped up and scrambled to the nearest place that was not the super weird ground. David ended up standing on the roots of a tree, the scratchy bark shredded the delicate undersides of his feet but it was better than the undulating, mossy forest floor. Waiting for the ground to stop moving, David examined his surroundings more carefully, and the closer he looked, the weirder things became.
The tree he was standing on was tall and had leaves that you could see through, almost like glass. The branches seemed to sway and the leaves rustled, but there was no wind. The ground that had once been moving, was now still, showing no signs of the disturbing dance it had been doing before. The sun seemed too bright for a sunset, and the light it cast was too red. The ferns blanketing the parts of the ground not covered in moss looked like the ones in his backyard, that he liked to roll into swirls when he was bored. But when he tried to bend it, it didn’t move. It was as if someone had poured glue over it, but the glue seeped into the plant and dried way too stiffly. It still felt like a fern, but it didn’t move like one. David was starting to get creeped out. Everything was too… something it shouldn’t be. He decided to walk along the forest floor until he found something he recognized. Water. Until he found water. He hopped down off the tree, and the moss beneath his feet felt squishy and damp. Like a damp carpet. Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew.
David picked up The Screaming Trees, which he had thrown away in his scramble to get off the ground a few minutes earlier. He tucked it underneath his arm and began walking. The spongy moss felt like he was walking on a mattress; the ground sank a little with every step he took. It was starting to feel nicer. David grinned down at his feet. Maybe he could get used to this.
After trudging through the forest for what seemed like hours, David stopped. He had reached a river of crystal clear water. He could hear it warbling along the rocks as it rushed past him, but that wasn’t his primary focus at the moment. He was more interested in the sun, which hadn’t moved at all since he had started walking. Its blood red light reflected off the stream and cast the trees surrounding him in an eerie red glow. The concept of time didn’t tend to exist here, in this perfectly weird world. Tearing his eyes away from the glowing trees, he bent down on his knees and set the book aside to take a sip of the crisp water. Then he whipped his head back around. David looked around wildly, water seeping through his cupped hands. He could’ve sworn he saw one of the trees reaching for him. But that was impossible, right? He glanced back towards the book. Didn’t the trees move like humans in the story? But that would be ridiculous. Shaking his head at himself, David returned his attention to the water. He drank deeply and relished the cool feel of the water as it slid down his throat. It had been ages since he last had a drink. He was so focused on drinking, that he failed to realize how right he was to be wary.
The branches of the trees were reaching towards him, like they were stalking a fly that they wanted to swat. Before he could react, they twisted tightly around his chest and stomach forcing a gasp out of his lungs. More branches wound their way around his arms and legs, their rough bark scraping his skin and making him bleed. His arms were painfully stretched out beside his head and his feet were forced to cross at the ankles. Through the haze of agony, David thought he looked like a disjointed Jesus on the cross. Only then did he start to really panic, because he knew what was going to happen next. His breaths became shallow, and his heart raced. He could hear it pound against his chest. He could feel the rough slide of bark against his neck, tightening slowly, but consistently enough that he knew this was how he would die.
Suddenly, a terrible sound ripped through the woods. It sounded like the call of summertime cicadas, only if they were all being tortured to death. The noise forced its way through David’s skull, making him writhe in agony. It seemed to come from all around him, and focused on him alone. Through the ear-splitting noise and the pounding of his head, David realized it was the trees. The trees were screaming. The screams were not sad screams. Or angry screams. They were happy screams. The trees were screaming in celebration of his death. Trying to stay conscious, David became increasingly aware of the branch around his neck tightening quicker. He was fighting, but it was doing him no good. Choking for air, he felt his life slipping away. With his vision becoming blacker by the second, he looked towards the sun. As his life left his body, his last thought, seen through a haze of inky blackness, was that the crimson sun seemed to glow a little bit brighter than before.