No Questions Asked

[victorianflorist]

You tear up a smaller clump of grass, forcing it past your lips in an act that disgusts some part of you. You chew the grass in your mouth and you recall something. The tang brings a memory to mind. You push the clump of grass and saliva into your cheek and poke at the hole where one of your incisors used to be with your tongue.

You're at school, elementary school. Recess has just finished with a fierce cry from the aide who had a harsh voice. Her shriek sent children running inside all helter-skelter, a stampede of sneakers and mary-janes. Skirts flying and hair fluttering. You were one of them, scampering alongside the others, gangly legs trapezing across soil, turf, and cracked concrete. You slip, your legs no longer supporting you. You taste rushing air, dust, concrete, and grass, in quick secession as your body tumbles and you roll. Your mind fills with the sharp, earthy tang of grass as your mind goes black. 

A harsh, cutting cry brings you back to life, it is the same aid that ended your leisure. She hangs over you, supporting your head. She asks you if you can hear her, you nod, and she tucks a rolled-up t-shirt behind your head. She then placed something in your hand, curling your three fingers around it. She tells you not to lose it because a fairy will be by to collect it. You look into your palm and see the big kid tooth sitting in your palm, the first you had and now the first you've lost. 

You GIVE something to the clod you've been masticating in your mouth and lean over the statue's outstretched palm. You spit the green, goopy mess derisively into the cupped palm. You use your fingers to wipe the last vestiges of grass from your teeth, making sure to get the bits stuck between your teeth, of which you have a full set, none missing. 

The statue makes a motion as if sighing in relief, the stone cracking as her palm closes around the clod, around something you can't remember, wrapped up inside. 

The sapling cracks, wood writhing as it stretches, pushing and expanding. The statue shatters, her form falling to pieces as the rapidly growing tree explodes into motion. Its roots rip from the ground, whipping through the air, tossing soil and grass into the air. You get a face full of the rich, uniform soli and are thrown backward. You gasp, and crawl away, scrambling for purchase on the now rapidly shifting ground. You push yourself to your feet, your sneakers finding scarce purchase on the roiling ground. You scamper away, tumbling clear of the grove's treeline. You take gasping careful breaths and look back at the now beastly, gnarled tree. Its bark twists in sickening spirals, and as you look on, the tree groans. It buckles under its own weight, its rapid growth leaving no opportunity for the corrupted growth to have found purchase in the earth. The tree cracks and splits, splintering under its own horrifying weight. Massive shards of bark and tree flesh fall from the twisted form. Sawdust explodes into the air, caking the earth around the shattered tree.

You wipe your eyes, sawdust and dirt caking your face. You spit again, a filthy mixture of all the filth thrown up into the air by this violent act of ripening. You look upon the center of the clearing and in the center, carved of polished wood, is a statue of a woman, kneeling, an open tunnel before her.