This story is for the 2012 Valentine’s Day contest, Twisted Freaks Need Love, Too. All stories and characters © Lia Habel 2012.
Elie’s original comment: “Lia, I wasn’t going to enter this, but for some reason my brain kept reeling through ideas all day long. So here it is…
a creature (man or something) that did something horrible ? to be cursed by the Earth. Here are his characteristics…
*hair of snakes or dead vines
*face/body formed by squirming insects like maggots or roaches
*fire raging inside him (like Earth core) that causes him to have breath of rotten Earth (compost) and frequently belch rot.
*To the touch he is cold as ice (poles)
*Eyes (only thing that shows his humanity or emotion) swirling blue like the oceans.
Maybe that could provide some inspiration… Happy Writing.”
Until that day, the only trees Emily had been familiar with had been the skinny, smog-choked saplings that were planted along the streets of Manhattan, their roots constrained by cages. Central Park always seemed a world away, a place she was unwelcome.
But now she was there.
And a tree was talking to her.
Mama Roach was right. The fumes would get to you after a while.
“Are you all right?” the thing demanded again, bending over her. Sparks exited his mouth alongside the words, as well as some foul, sickly sweet odor – an odor she was used to. Rot. Emily backed up, crab-style, but couldn’t get far – he’d wrapped something around her ankle, something that felt ice-cold through the thin material of her dirty socks. “Did they hurt you?”
“Hurt me?” Emily couldn’t tear her eyes from the thing long enough to spatially reconstruct what had just happened. “You mean the boys I was with?”
“Yes. One of them picked you up. Was wrestling you.”
“He’s my brother. They…” She tried to steady her trembling voice. “We were passing through. I had a Slim Jim…please, I have to go find them…”
The thing’s eyes seemed to widen in surprise – well, that’s what it looked like, at any rate. Emily tried to calm her racing mind, to take him in. She’d apparently been “rescued” by a confused tree man…boy…thing. He wasn’t terribly tall, but well-shaped, with a narrow torso and strong arms. But his skin was rough, dirt-brown, flaking – like bark. And it appeared to be lit from within, at least in the area of his stomach. Like a log kindling.
And then there was his face. Beneath a mane of twisted, dead vines, inside a vaguely knot-shaped area, sat a face that could’ve disappeared into the garbage-littered N-train tracks, because it looked for all the world like it was composed of insects. It glittered endlessly in the light from the nearby street lamp, glassy wings and chitinous bodies wriggling wherever his expressions dictated – raising the corners of his slit-like mouth, closing like eyelids over his eyes. And those eyes…they looked like miniature worlds. Like cold, blue oceans.
For a minute, Emily found herself staring. She didn’t return to herself until she felt her ankle being freed, and thought to glance down. A vine. It was retracting into his leg, like some kind of worm into its hole.
“What are you?” she whispered.
The thing didn’t respond. In fact, it turned and took off, leaving her alone beside the park pathway. For a second Emily sat there in wonder, unsure what had just happened.
The next moment she was up and giving chase, because she had to know.
Emily was a skilled hunter of track rabbit – rats. They formed a whole food group for her people, the homeless who lived miles below Manhattan, in the secret warrens alongside and below the subway system. She could see well in the dark, she was fleet and never stumbled, and so she put those skills to use aboveground for the first time, rushing after the thing. “Hey! Wait!”
He didn’t. He seemed determined to get away. Emily hopped rocks and ducked tree branches as he fled deeper into the undergrowth, away from the lights, away from her brother and his friend. Her lungs burned, her legs ached, her rotten sneakers and black pigtails flopped around annoyingly, but she wasn’t about to let the thing off so easily.
After a life of hardship, she’d just been presented with her very own goddamned fairytale, and she wasn’t about to let it slip away into the night like some kind of two-bit vampire.
As she took a massive, sucking breath, forcing herself to push on, she found herself flying through the air and smacking into the ground again. Gasping, she realized that the creature had sent out a snare of vines, and she’d run right into them. It stood beside her once more, growling. Honestly growling. “Why are you following me?!”
“I’ll leave…if you tell me…what you are,” she panted.
The thing withdrew the vines, all of them whipping angrily. “You little fool. You don’t know, that’s the point. I could kill you.”
“You saved me…before. Or thought you did. Sorry…for extrapolating.”
The thing blinked with a pair of roaches. “Extrapolating?”
“Inferr…forget it.” Mama Roach and her books were far away, now. Pushing herself to her feet, Emily shook her head to clear it. “Just tell me what you are. I’ll go. I won’t tell anyone. Trust me, even if I did, no one would believe me. I’d just be another rambling homeless person.”
“Homeless?” The thing held still for a moment, then stepped nearer. There was little light, and it was harder to make out his face. The smell was the same, though. “I don’t think your people have a word for me.”
“Then use ten.”
The thing growled low again. Emily couldn’t help but admit that the sound was oddly attractive – it sounded ancient, for some reason. Like the settling of the plates in the earth, like the roar of a volcano. “I was human once. I acted the fool, and was cursed. Now I guard this little plot of land, watch all the earth around it die. Satisfied?”
Emily, amazed, tried to piece this together. “You’re some kind of…spirit? Earth spirit?”
The thing stepped closer and reached out for her hand. His hand was harsh, rough – his bark-like covering not at all fleshy. And he was so cold. “Do I feel like a spirit?”
“No,” she admitted, looking into his eyes again. “When did this happen to you?”
“Centuries ago.” He let her go, and appeared to be thinking. The insects making up his face scurried about, fast as lightning, like calculations at the heart of a computer. “Then they called me Cage.”
“Cage?” Emily finally caught her breath. “I’m Emily.”
“I don’t care.” He turned his back to her. “You must go.”
“Why? I mean…”
Pain entering his voice, he declared, “Because I live alone. It was meant to be that way.” This simple reason given, Cage, the elemental, the spirit, the living compost pile, whatever he was, took off again.
Too tired to pursue, Emily sank down to the earth and stared after him, her face hot.
Her summer had suddenly gotten a whole lot more interesting.
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