CLEARING by Andrew Cardell
DAY 1
There was a clearing. A stream. A pond. A few boulders. An apple tree. A deer was eating grass a couple of feet away. I woke up here. There was a slab of granite below me in the shape of an oval. On it was an imprint of a body, like a natural chalk outline. My body. Where was I?
The weather was cool that day. A breeze was ruffling the trees. Beyond the clearing, I could only see trees for miles. As I was looking up, a raven flew by. It squawked and looked down at me. It kept flying on. This place didn't seem familiar, but I assumed I had just hiked too long the previous day and fell asleep here.
I went to get water at the stream, upstream from where the deer was now drinking. The water was crystal clear. Clear pebbles lined the whole stream like a swimming pool. This wasn't a forest. I looked around again. The grass was all one shade of green. It was so thick I couldn't see the dirt beneath. The sky was one shade of pale blue with white clouds. The clouds looked like cut out pieces of paper. The deer had white, perfectly clean, antlers. It was an edited reality. It felt as if in my sleep someone had simplified all of nature down to basic colors and textures.
I tried to walk out of the clearing to see if there was anything more beyond the dense trees. As I exited one side over by the twin rocks, I emerged back on the side with the berry bushes. I spent the rest of the day trying to find a way out.
Once dusk fell, I knew there was no escape. I was going to be here until something got me out, or I woke up somewhere else.
The sun was setting, and the clearing began to be devoid of light. Lightning bugs lit up small patches by the stream. I was sitting over by the twin rocks when the granite began to glow. The outline was glowing bright green. My eyes started to feel heavy and I was drawn to the rock. I laid down, my body fitting perfectly in the glowing green lines, and fell into a deep sleep.
DAY 2
I woke up and went to the stream. The water tasted bitter. I went over to the apple tree to wash the taste out. The apple tasted rotten. It looked completely ripe, but as soon as it entered my mouth I couldn't help but spit it right back out. Looking back to the stream, the water was still completely clear. The deer was drinking from it as if nothing was different. Maybe something was just in the stream and it passed. I went back to try the water but it tasted the same. I spit it back out just like the apple. I decided to go fishing in the pond and build a fire. In the pond, I could see three or four trout in the crystal clear water. I hated trout, but it was the only food I hadn't tried yet, and I was hoping it wouldn't taste as rotten as everything else. I made a makeshift fishing rod with the long grass and sticks that were strangely in a pile right next to the rock outside the pond. The pond too seemed to be lined with the same glass bubbles that lined the creek. Nothing made sense here.
I got a bite and pulled the line out. I then beat the fish until it stopped moving and set up a fire to cook it. Once it was done, I cut into it with a stick I had sharpened. The fish had no bones. Just pure white flesh. I tasted it. Tasted just like an apple. Same texture and everything. I couldn't understand it, but it was the only thing I had wanted to eat more of all day. I looked at the sky while chewing, and two ravens flew by encircling, the clearing once.
Once I finished it was nearing nightfall. The granite slab glowed green. I lost control of my body as it pulled me in. Sliding my limbs into place into their perfectly tailored imprint. I fell asleep.
DAY 3
I woke up slowly and went to the stream. As I cupped my hand to get water, There was a strange light reflecting off my hand, my hand was gold. I brought it into the shadow under the apple tree to see if I was going crazy, but I wasn't. My whole arm was gold. Had my arm been replaced? I used the arm to pick an apple. It worked just like it was my real arm. It was like I had complete functional control of an arm that wasn't mine.
I spent the rest of the day using my new arm to do things. It was the same exact shape as my other arm, just all gold metal with joints and springs to make it work. Originally I had felt weird about it, but it felt cool at that moment, like a fun game I was playing where the pieces of my body were traded out at my own will. But, of course, it was not my will that was controlling anything here.
Later when I laid down in a patch of grass at dusk, my arm felt cold as it rested on my stomach. It didn't feel like my arm was resting there, but a foreign object. I started to breathe heavier. I felt trapped here under this bubble of sky. My breathing got faster. Three ravens flew over the clearing. Each sounded off, one after the other. My breathing got faster. Was this replacement done in my sleep? Were people watching? Was I just an experiment to them? Would this arm be here tomorrow? This was my first day here and I already felt myself slipping. I took a deep breath and my heart slowed down. There was nothing to do but survive in this hellish Garden of Eden.
As nightfall came, I distracted myself by trying to find a screw or a seam of where my new arm had been put on. There was nothing. While the joints were all separate plates of gold, I had no idea how they stayed together, they seemingly had no connection. I wanted to know if this arm was really part of me. Was it now me, or was I just connected to it? Would I ever have that sense of awe back that I had originally felt about it? Or was I just stuck with something I didn't ask for in the first place?
I went over to the rock to lie down and decided to watch the sunset over the trees surrounding me. I wanted a distraction. The sky was pink and yellow, and the sun was half gone behind the trees next to the berry bushes. As the last piece of the sun was setting, the outline I was already in glowed green. It enveloped me like I was drowning, but It didn't frighten me, I just fell asleep.
DAY 4
I woke up and I couldn't move. Four ravens flew down to me and stood pecking beside me on the granite. I could move my eyes but every other muscle in me was frozen. It was seemingly very early morning as I felt the dew on my skin from the nighttime. My mind was slowly trying to take it in. Why was I paralyzed everywhere but my eyes? My sense of touch was fine; I felt the cold beneath me and the wind blowing over my face, but my eyes were the only thing that could provide me with information. I was not chained down as there was nothing over me.... the crows began to peck at the granite louder. I felt so overwhelmed by my senses yet I wasn't able to control them. I had no choice as to what sounds I was hearing, what textures I was feeling. Nothing was in my control anymore but my thoughts. Those were slipping too, I wasn't able to focus because I kept trying to move hoping something would change. I thought of my bed, where I had been before I woke up here. I had started to lose track of what I had done. I kept repeating the memory since I had woke up, and each hour the memory got foggier.
It was already nightfall. The crows left and I was alone with the glowing green light. It enveloped me like a cocoon. I felt my arm begin to twitch before I passed out.
LAST
I did not wake up here. I was driving down the freeway and suddenly I was here. I ended up on a large granite slab, in a clearing that looked like a real-life video game. In front of me was worn brown paper in a loose stack. I opened the book. It was stories of everyone that had been trapped here. I was not trapped. On the front piece of paper, it clearly said that I was tasked with understanding what everything meant. What was the common factor? If a piece of them was stripped away every day, what was the one thing that remained? There was nothing I saw. I sat there for the rest of the day trying to understand what the people all had that connected them. Everything I thought of had an exception, at least one minute option that invalidated my point.
Eventually, it was nightfall. And the green light I had read about enveloped me too.