Parts Of A Parachute

The Story Of What Happened To A Man One Day When He Was Tricked By A Fairy

There she was, ahead of me in the forest and the more I tried to see her, to look at her, to even watch her the more the leaves and the trunks and the branches of the trees got in my way like bureaucratic red tape-and why it's called red tape is a mystery to me because as far as I'm concerned green tape or even fuchsia tape would be just as much a hurdle to jump over, or run into as the case may be, so I can get near her , and catch up to her as the trees seem to lean in more and more to try and slap me in the face or the back of the head, a "Dinozo slap!" for anyone who understands that, beyond the limited boundaries of my own family who watch the show so much that we have our own catch phrases, but I digress too far from my problem right now, which includes the fact that I have lost a shoe and it's really cold outside, in the woods, with wet leaves and sink holes and mud puddles as well as regular puddles filled with pointy sticks that try to cut my Achilles tendon-which is an oddly easy tendon to locate-even if you don't have any medical knowledge about feet all you have to do is know about the "Achilles Heel" myth that could be from the Greeks or the Romans-can't figure it out because they're so God damn similar-that talks about the hero Achilles and his only weakness was his heel, "one scratch and kapoom! He's history"-on my right foot; because in my life I tend to injure my left foot first and then sooner or later my right foot and my left already got run over by an empty horse trailer; "Dumbass" as my sister always says when we bring up the subject and she is right it was my own dumbass mistake that got me run over, but I have bones like rocks so only the muscle and maybe some tendons were damaged on my left foot and, as I said before, now that my left foot has finished being damaged it's my right foot's turn to get hurt like some cow lining up at the slaughter house thinking it won't happen to them as they watch their friends die on the conveyor belt; my right foot just keeps getting colder and I'm pretty sure it's going to get frostbite and fall off before I ever get past all the branches in my way, which would leave me hopping around like the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I keep hearing her voice echo through the forest, which is reassuring because if I can hear her then I can follow her but her voice acts more like an impetus to follow, like something I read in a book once which had this bell that, when rang, forced the victim to follow the one holding the bell no matter how far the holder went, even into the barren land of Oblivion, she is not trying to lead me into oblivion right now though, or so I hope.

She keeps calling out my name over and over, as if telling me to hurry up-like everyone else in my life that need me to do something, "Hurry! Go faster! Stop being so lazy!" they always say, as if I wasn't already going as fast as I can with one shoe missing, and the cold water soaking my sock, which only makes it worse because socks hold water but if I take off the sock then my foot would be just as cold. The trees are definitely against me because I don't feel or hear any wind but I can see them leaning in towards me. I have to keep picking my way around the roots because the trees must be lifting them, they weren't there yesterday and I know this whole forest like the back of my hand, even though there really isn't all that much to remember about the back of my hand because it's pretty plain and I don't really pay that much attention to the back of my own hand, but that's not the point in this instance because I know these roots and these branches were not in the same place they are today, yesterday. Even jumping over the roots, though, I am still able to pay attention to her, I can see parts of her here and there, the edge of her clothes, a hand, the back of a hand, sometimes even a heel-with hopefully the rest of the foot attached-and it seems that she only let's me see that much to reassure me that this is no dream, that I'm not doing this for no reason because, quite frankly, I don't think that I would keep going if I found out that all this was going to be in vain. Her beautiful voice, like a siren on the sea in a place known to some sailors as the graveyard-the name should be self explanatory-so beautiful that like Odysseus I must hear it but I know that she is real and I hope that she isn't just trying to lead me to my doom as I jump between the trees like a jackrabbit.

I can't feel my right foot anymore. It must have gotten frost bite and just not fallen off yet- maybe it'll never fall off and I'll just have to live with it, like in "Mr. Deeds" where he goes through his whole life with a frostbitten foot and it never falls off-but I will keep running and I do keep running because she keeps calling to me even though I know that I have gone well beyond my normal limitations for running. That doesn't matter. I will chase her to the edge of the earth, I might need a parachute to do that but hopefully my shirt can act as one for me when I leap off the edge like when Sinbad made the sails of his ship turn up like a huge hang glider and he just floated around off the edge. I know the world is round but I can't help thinking that if she can make me run farther than I should be able to then she might be able to make an edge to the world or just lead me into an entirely different one, like some fairy or wood nymph that leads unsuspecting humans into their own world and just force them to follow the fairy or nymph for the rest of eternity-eternal youth would be given but at the price of any semblance of freedom. The problem here is that I know where I am though, and this is the same path I take to get to a cave somewhere in the middle of nowhere-guess there's more than just an "H" there huh-and I wonder if she knows about the cave too, because I never told her about it, I had only met her for a few minutes this morning-and how long have I been running I wonder because I don't think I've paid any attention to the time at all, it could have been days and I wouldn't have noticed-and I didn't have any time to really get to know her.