The grass at my feet is yellow, the small twisted blades shriveled and flat from being trampled time and time again. When I brush a piece of grass with my fingers, it causes a stinging sensation, small barbs latching onto the grooves in my fingertips, but when I firmly hold a piece secured by my fingertips, it’s smooth, and any resistance presented before is reduced to a harmless tickle. All the grass here is like that, yellow and brittle, sharp when you first meet it. I’m standing at the center of a clearing in the woods, trying and failing to catch my breath. I don’t know how long it took me to get here - all I know is that I needed to. There’s a clock in my head, ticking faster and faster and faster until it starts to whir at impossible speeds, the hour and minute hands becoming one, time rushing by in a blur, decisions being made quicker than they ever should be. There’s nothing in this clearing. Nothing but the yellow grass, dead as a worm left on hot asphalt the day after a long storm. I don’t think that anything’s ever been here. It’s a perfect circle, a perfectly manicured circle of only yellow grass. On its perimeter, the forest continues, but within the circle, there’s nothing but the grass. I remember reading something about crop circles a while back, mysterious patterns that appeared in wheat fields, their sudden appearance unexplained. Maybe this is a crop circle. Maybe it was made by something that we’ve never known before. Maybe that’d explain the mysterious pull I feel to it. Maybe that’s why I keep returning. Maybe that’s why my clock has been ticking so fast recently. Or maybe it’s all in my head. Everything’s in my head these days.
I sit on the edge of the circle, the soles of my running shoes brushing against the dead grass. I hug my knees, trying to bring myself back to earth, trying to stay grounded. There are sticks cluttered around my hands and layers of leaves decomposing beneath me. I pick up a stick. It’s long and thin, the little knobs where small branches had planned to grow protruding from its slender shape. Its bark is soft to the touch but brittle at the same time, like sand on a beach where the sun is always setting. I run my finger down the bark, peeling it away sliver by sliver. Some pieces of the bark remain underneath my fingernail, leaving some of the forest with me. I examine the top of the stick. It’s pointy, and if it hadn’t broken off it could have one day grown into a sturdy branch for a crow to roost upon. Those are if’s, though. That’s not what happened. I have to accept reality.
The sound of the stick breaking is startling at first. Although the forest is probably home to countless woodland animals, it goes silent, letting the snap of an adolescent branch reverberate throughout the trees. The sound ripples through the clearing, followed by more, and more, and more. I keep snapping the stick, breaking it into halves and halves and halves until there are no more halves to make and until what remains of the stick is reunited with the bark underneath my fingernails. The clearing is silent.
My breathing is heavy still, even though it’s been several minutes since I stopped to catch my breath. My head throbs, and I can feel blood pulsing to my brain, making my vision blur at the edges so the only thing I see is the circle. The circle, the circle, the circle.
My clock is ticking faster than it ever has now, everything running at top speed, struggling to keep up with my mind, struggling to keep me going. My hands dig into the ground beside me, grabbing handfuls of leaves in various stages of decay, squeezing them into my palms, trying to make them as small as possible, trying to make them disappear. I squeeze and squeeze and squeeze, my fingernails breaking the skin on my sweaty palms. A small bead of blood, summoned by my shaking hands, makes its way onto my fingers in a thin line, pushing itself into the wrinkles of my knuckles. The leaves are compressed into small little balls in my palms, welded together with the moisture of the earth and my sheer will to make them disappear. I squeeze harder, harder.
The pop echoes throughout the clearing. I open my clenched fists, the balls of leaves unraveling. A pillbug falls from my bloody palms, its armor crushed and its body crumpled into an unnatural shape. I stare at its remains, the dark liquids from its shell seeping into the earth. I pick it up, cradling it in my palms for a tender moment. I can see the circle in the corner of my eye.
The pillbug lays on a throne of brittle, yellow grass now.
My clock has slowed down, for now. But at least the circle isn’t empty anymore.
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