Diruktober Day 17: Dead Tree

  Diruktober is a DIR EN GREY themed inktober challenge by re_be_ka_f. I chose to use them as writing prompts to join in on the fun. 

“I brought something, Daddy,” she said as he lifted her into the trunk of an old, rotten tree. 

She pulled a golden ring from the pocket of her coat and handed it to him from her place nestled behind the bark. 

“Thank you, Sweetie,” he said, slipping it into his pocket and trying to hide the panic in his shaking voice. 

“We’re going to play a game, okay?” the sweat beaded on his brow was growing enough to start to slip down his face as he bundled sticks and leaves around the opening of the tree’s protective base. 

“You’re going to hide here. The game is to see how long you can hide, ok? So don’t let anyone find you.” 

“Okay, Daddy. I’m good at hiding.” 

“I know you are, Sweetie. You’re the best.” 

He kissed her forehead, part of what little peeked out among dried foliage. “I love you, Sweetie.” he said. 

“I love you too, Daddy.” 

She waited there. 

She heard footsteps and yelling. She heard distant trains every once in a while. Night fell, and she heard birds. Ruffles, slithers, crunching of leaves and crunching of bones surrounded her as nocturnal beasts of all kinds came forth to claim their feasts of birds and rodents. 

When she awoke, the morning air was still, her nostrils and throat burning and dry from sleeping among the pollutants of the dust of sparse forest floor.

She had no fear; she was playing the game with her father. 

She grew hungry and uncomfortable, shifting within the constrictive bark to no relief. 

Eventually, she peeked out to see the little birds on the ground, watching them peck for bugs and seeds. 

As the day wore on, she wondered when her father would come back for her, her father who had been taken away and thrown into a furnace for harboring a piece of gold. 

She tried to crawl out on her own only when the hunger grew overwhelming, but she had fallen down into the base of the rotten tree. Every step with which she tried to push herself up resulted in the crumbling of the wood remnants within. She sank lower, causing herself not only to be buried deeper into the trunk but to see even less around herself. To be less visible. 

It felt like years in which she could only try to sleep away the misery and pain of slowly withering away, stuck in a hole she couldn’t get out of, even when panic pushed her to expend as much energy as she could to kick and climb and claw and scream for anyone who might be able to hear. 

No one was there, all drawn away from her small forest-crowned camp by a rickety train to destruction. 

She had been spared of the pain of watching her family separated from her. She was spared from the pain of being allowed to live on, of witnessing a barrel of her neighbors fight and kill a man over crumbs of bread. 

She was not spared from death, who busily lingered among it all, coming for her as well and letting her body rot in the trunk of a dead tree.