So I'm doing No Shave November, and I'm also attempting to do National Novel Writing Month at the same time. Basically, this means I'm gonna be fucking nuts by the end of this month.
Not actually, because my writing worth ethic is terrible and I'm gonna have nowhere near the huge amount of work that NaNaWriMo requires, but I decided to at least have some sort of writing piece ready every five days of this month along with a picture of the progress of my lack of shaving
Suffice it to say, the writing below is just a short story, but go ahead and take a look! I pretty much did it all last night from like 4-6am, but whatever.
So without any further ado or bullshittin', here's a picture of the minor facial growth so far and the first thing I've written all month.
So without any further ado or bullshittin', here's a picture of the minor facial growth so far and the first thing I've written all month.
It was the kind of day on which pleasant dreams would steal their settings; the chill breeze blowing through the bare branches on the dying trees—framed against the almost painfully bright blue sky. Wisps of stringy clouds whipped by unheeded in their speed, chased by autumn zephyrs, while below the leaves followed suit, rattling like carelessly-tossed soothsayers' bones and charms on the dirt floor.
The forest sounded far more alive than it ever had when the boughs overhead actually had life in them: the conductor moving each and every part of the forest in and out of time with each other, the branches creaking, the undergrowth whipped to-and-fro in eddies of wind.
An intruder appeared in the middle of the forest's concerto, however. A husky—its lithe body tirelessly tearing through the brown, crispy leaves, mouth agape with flecks of slobber flying carelessly from side to side in response to the universe of smells around it. Its companion soon followed, a woman who seemed ageless in the vigor of her small, quick motions as she strode along the rough path, boots clipping neatly off of rocks as she strode forward. The bright foliage-dappled pattern of sunlight and shadow made her red hair blaze forth whenever she was in a particularly open area of the wood.
She put her hand on the dog's mud-stained, leaf-stuck coat as it stopped to sniff at a large patch of red-flecked white mushroom, and took a swig from her canteen as she scanned her surroundings. They were atop a high ridge, with the pinnacles of huge trees rooted around a winding creek on the forest floor below forming the still far-unreachable ceiling overhead. She sighed, chest moving up and down contentedly.
Breaking her reverie, her nearby companion suddenly straightened its back, staring far out into the clifftop path ahead, looking past the trees and boulders at some point fixed far beyond them. Without warning or any polite goodbye of a kind, the animal tore down the path away from the woman.
She chuckled and shook her head at her friend. She stood for another moment longer before setting off at a leisurely pace down the path, taking another look around at the forest below, crying out in its last musical death throes before the bitter frost of the winter would claim it as its own in a deafening white blanket.
Her peaceful gait continued as the sun started to climb down from its zenith in the sky, eventually taking another break to lie down on a slanting rock face and enjoy the warmth of the sunlight despite the coolness of the cloistered woods.
However, as the day grew later and later, she started to wonder where her dog had gone, calling out his name a few times into the echoing breeze of the forest. The light began to take on a reddish glint as she climbed down from the ridgetop path, gradually becoming more worried despite her usual carefree manner.
“Toulouse!” she shouted, hopping down from a ledge and onto the streambed, frightening a small deer mouse that promptly shot back into its hole underneath a large stone nearby.
As she clopped along the pebbles and mud, ignoring the occasional ripped trash bags and old beer cans that had been washed downstream, the forest suddenly grew very quiet. The wind stopped blowing. The leaves fell silent upon the ground, breaking their usual swishing, swirling tempo. The woman looked around, puzzled, the only accompaniment to her travel now being the babbling of the water nearby.
Something extremely fast—a dark blur—rushed through the brush on the opposite side of stream. The woman, startled but still calm, started walking faster. She called out to her friend again, urgency starting to show in her voice “Toulouse? Come here right now!”
She was not one for needless fears and worries. She walked. She ignored the abnormally fast creature that had dashed past her, even though she knew that it could not have been Toulouse, or anything else in the forest for that matter.
With a quick leap and no indication of the sense of foreboding that was trapped in her mind, she crossed to the other side of the stream, heading to where she had entered the forest, keeping her ears strained and eyes scanning far ahead for anything else out of the ordinary. Darkness would be falling soon in the twilight realm of the forest, and she understood the dangers of being in any kind of wilderness, mysterious dark forms or no, when night falls.
As the sound of the stream fell away, she was accompanied not by the past musical flow of the autumnal forest, but the dry rustling of leaves in awkward patterns far off in the distance, often coming from every direction that she was not facing.
She picked up her pace. Fear punctured her spine with icy teeth, chilling her throughout her body. She stayed alert, though, always aware of the distance between her and her bike at the mouth of the woods.
The rustling grew closer to her, or at least, it seemed. Was that the padding of paws through the brush behind the fallen, rotten tree nearby?
Her panicked but purposeful stride was punctuated by more and more desperate calls for Toulouse.
“TOULOUSE!”
“TOULOUSE, WE NEED TO GO.”
Voluminous pile of leaves and loam surrounded what had once been a particularly magnificent oak tree in front of her, now choked by poisonous tendrils of vines. The piles of leaves began to shake and rattle like the dry timber of a rattlesnake.
They formed into animalistic shapes, low-to-the-ground, filling the air around the woman with the smell of rot, twigs clacking together like bones. The brown and orange decayed things emitted a growl that sounded like the creaking of ancient trees from deep within..
She dropped any semblance of calm that she had been keeping up and sprinted straight around the leaf-creatures as they charged at her, screaming out in the now-alive forest, things rustling and crashing through the undergrowth as the wind began to howl, shrieking through gnarled branches.
She leaped over the huge knotted root of a tree and tried to put as much distance between the creatures and her as possible, her lungs and heart pumping and ragged from fear and adrenaline.
A branch—whipped around from the gales that now roared through the forest as if alive—slammed into her belly and knocked her onto the ground, winding her.
Crashing sounds behind her.
Clutching her stomach, she stumbled to her feet and ran as fast as she could, though the growling and screaming of all of the things that had come alive in the forest seemed to close in on her.
From behind, a huge force slammed into the back of her body, knocking her to the ground once again. As she fell, another wild branch whipped over her head, missing her by inches. She turned around to face her assailant, a single tear caused by absolute panic and distress coursing down her mud-smudged face, spine paralyzed with fear and pain.
It was Toulouse. The dog turned around, mud and some other kind of viscous substance on his dark pelt as he growled at whatever was coming her way, hackles raised, powerful body tensed, muscles corded on his back. She put her arms around his neck, pushing herself up onto her feet, daring to look at the horrors that were charging towards their small forms, two souls alone in the forest with darkness now completely surrounding them. She screamed, white hot fear-inspired rage filling her body, her voice ripped from her throat by the baying of the wind.
The decayed monsters—now formed into a huge pack, leaving behind twigs and wet leaves in their wake—tore towards the two companions, but the woman and the dog would not move, even despite the crashing sounds of trees and the ripping of bushes all around them. As they closed in, Toulouse barked fiercely and pounced into the face of the entire group, the woman close behind him with her eyes flashing despite the fear in her heart.
Then, in the dog's mid-leap, the decayed leaf monsters dissipated and crumbled into layers of wet mold, dust and sticks onto the ground. The wind stopped its almighty roar. The forest quieted.
The woman stopped, and her dog looked around quizzically, still growling and slavering.
She sat down and clutched Toulouse to her, burying her face in his fur despite the mess that they both had all over them.
The stars shone above, a tiny sliver of the moon barely visible behind the obscuring clawed reach of a sycamore. The two stayed there for a while, in the calm of the forest. Then the woman stood up and left quietly, her friend trailing beside her.
Leaves swirled in a trail in their wake as they walked out, the quiet whisper of tiny zephyrs in the night telling calming tales to the now-sleeping forest
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