[ Jalia ] Brief Interviews with Hideous Trees
“I know you said you wanted to spend the weekend in the woods but, ow, Julia this, ack, this isn’t really what I had in mind.”
Jake Leister trailed after his best friend, camera rolling as always, fighting his way through the trees one handed. Though, at this point, the trees seemed to be winning. Having lived most of his life through the tiny display screen of his digital camcorder, one would think he would be better at judging distances using it.
But no. He really wasn’t.
The footage was shaky as it captured Julia’s back, moving just before him as she made her way through the woods with far more precision. If they were animals, Julia would be the silent, stealthy cheetah, tailing her prey before, finally, attacking.
Jake would that one monkey who fell out of the tree, causing a stampede.
“If we could just, I don’t know, stop for a minute? Maybe regroup? We don’t even know where we’re going. Or I don’t know where we’re going. Do you know where we’re going?”
He paused for a moment to readjust the strap that had started to slip from his shoulder, threatening to send the folded tent crashing to the ground. “Also, this tent is really heavy. Just fyi.”
Let’s spend the weekend in the woods, she said. Let’s see if we can capture anything interesting, she said. It will be fun, she said.
Yeah. Right. Jake was feeling all the fun already.
It was at that precise moment that Jake tripped over a tree root and launched face first into a low hanging branch. As Jake grabbed it for support, the branch broke taking Jake all the way to the earthen floor, baggage and all.
A muffled “ow” was all he could manage as he lay prone on the forest floor, possibly never to move again. Well, maybe.