The Invisible Forest - by intrepod traveler intrepod’s NewsletterSubscribeSign inShare this postThe Invisible Forestintrepod.substack.comCopy linkTwitterFacebookEmailDiscover more from intrepod’s Newsletterideas for this strange time. fiction. мёртвый мир.SubscribeContinue readingSign in The Invisible Forestmore fictionintrepod travelerJan 17, 2021Share this postThe Invisible Forestintrepod.substack.comCopy linkTwitterFacebookEmail Full brightness blared through the window as he rode the train home from the airport. Beyond it the world continued to hum along to its routine, but he had temporarily stepped out of his. He surveyed his companions. A clear, logical trajectory had led each one of them here. Most appeared to be returning from business trips,weary, lone or paired people toting a piece of luggage each. Others bore the worn out but satisfied afterglow of completing a family visit. And the stragglers, empty-handed and leaning back with ease, donned badges that marked them as airport employees. They were riding out at the end of their shifts. He had no reason for riding the train in the middle of an ordinary workday in the middle of an ordinary workweek. Wary glances scanned his thin, stylish messenger bag, the sole attaché accompanying his business casual dress. In this sampling, he was the oddball. What was his trajectory? Who was he among the crowd? He had been sitting at his desk, listening to the murmurs of people walking past him to heat up boxed lunches while laughing about something on TV, feeling very strongly that he was not in his world. He had simply gotten up and left. While riding home, on a whim he had disembarked at the airport and caught a shuttle to the terminals, from there had descended an escalator to the bar, and had sat down to watch the people walking by him. He stole glimpses into strangers' worlds that revealed the same exact setups as the one he'd just left. Most people fell neatly into place. They maintained their circles, their ties, their memberships in organizations that held them securely to the world. They gossiped excitedly about their plans and the innards of their lives, never lifting their heads out of the warm sand. What need did they have for that? Their lives, though undoubtedly filled with the spectrum of human drama, flowed smoothly, disturbing nothing and remaining undisturbed. Several jarred out like sores from the bright crowd, cracking the smooth painting and holding his gaze. The loners, the weirdos, the unexplainables. The rail bodied middle aged man at a table by himself with a stack of empty glasses and a newspaper he read with resolute tunnel vision. The Salvation Army-styled woman with thinning gray hair who muttered to herself on a bench beside several tearing bags. The twenty-something fidgeting awkwardly on his phone as he fought to escape association with the reject table, stealing uncomfortable glances around the scene until his friends joined him. He felt closer to those on the fringes. At some point in their lives they must have fallen from the swift train bounding toward a clamoring bright world and been left to forage for scraps along the tracks as it carried on without them. Those he put into this category he often remembered as being brighter in their youth, as people who harbored the disorderly grain he himself had been fighting his entire life to suppress. They were his mirrors. In the outcasts he saw his own future, for despite appearances of composure he stood very close to that ledge. He could take just a few steps forward and jump off. He came home when it was still midday and threw his messenger bag onto the couch, then sat down himself and stared at it with loathing. Casual yet sensible, his roommate had espoused when he'd exercised contemporary sensibility in picking it out. It lent him an edge of self-possessed youthfulness while remaining safe with its timeless design, and it earned him many – his only – compliments around the office. He had not had an appointment, nor an interview for a better job. He had not felt remotely ill. It was a mystery. On the surface he appeared to be going along as ordinarily as everyone around him – he was mild-mannered, calm, barely noticeable. One had to peer closely to glimpse the staccato hidden in the smooth pattern of his life. It was buried in the missed step, the skipped beat that threw off the whole song until hurried back into sync. It was in the weeks of steady work in perfect health followed by an unexpected sick day, or an afternoon of joking before an anticipated happy hour followed by an unexplained no show. These maneuvers were not grand enough to raise audible questions or brew long-lasting unease, but if one wanted to, one could glimpse behind them the infinitesimal space between his business casual attire and unremarkable life, and his own skin. It was in this gap, where they did not mesh, that his destructive tendency lay. He did not know why he could not simply carry on. It couldn't be easier. Put one foot in front of the other, follow the dress code, keep your head down, and don't fight your boss. For this, a peaceful night's sleep in a comfortable apartment with a slowly fattening bank account to sweeten your dreams. By all accounts he had a good life, many would even say a blessed life. In fact, this iteration of his life was the most acceptable one. He, too, scored email victories with the optimal appropriately polite but firm response, and he certainly had seen the weirdo lurking around the building that morning – but these daily trifles did not touch him beneath his most superficial layer of skin. “Of course it doesn't affect you. These little things shouldn't affect you. They're just fun,” his roommate laughed at this observation. He clapped him on the back and assured him he was fine. But the fact of how natural this was discomfited him more than anything. How could his roommate so readily accept not being touched by his own life? His panic grew with every step that this remained true, watching himself inexorably inch mile by mile toward a destination he had never intended to reach. And so once again he'd broken down his life. Once more he stood in a clearing facing all possible paths. For a long time he sat on the couch, immobile, his head in his hands, ruminating over this latest unraveling. His roommate came home that evening still wearing his buoyant smile with his button-down shirt still crisp. He spared no time launching into the unbelievably weird thing Jack did that afternoon which was all the better for him as now their boss hated Jack. His roommate had just applied for a promotion for which he was the obvious choice, but Jack was butting his way in. His roommate followed a steady upward trajectory from which he never seemed to waver. He was socially perfect, consuming the next trending TV show without second thought, going on a brain-dead vacation to a beach or a semi-exotic city every mid-April, and never taking a risk he didn't already know would pan out in his favor. Not one of his steps merited the slightest raise of an eyebrow. They were always perfectly logical, what a sensible person would do. As far as career prospects went, he was a star at happy hours, where he flaunted just enough personality to walk the fine line between interesting and office-appropriate, except that the line was imaginary: all of his interesting parts were one hundred percent approved by the prevailing culture. His roommate surveyed him while washing his thermos in the sink and waiting for Stacey to come over before heading out for the night. A classic beauty, Stacey was a prize whose merits were recognized the world over. She worked for a respectable company, knew how to live her life, took care of herself, but most importantly, had been born on a solid platform that gave her a healthy leg up among her peers and a peculiarly low threshold for suffering. His roommate went for no other kind. They had been a couple for years, poised to move in together any day. It only made sense. A photo of them sat framed on the mantle, matching the sleek minimalist design of their apartment, inspiration his roommate received from an unfiltered composite of today's most popular interior design blogs and shows. Two years from now it would look completely different. He hated its stylistic interior. It was designed purely with the head and resembled neither his roommate's tastes nor his. It resembled nobody's tastes, yet his roommate received endless compliments on it. “What happened today? Did you get sick?” his roommate asked at the end of his soliloquy. “No. I feel fine.” “Then why'd you leave? Interview?” his roommate got hopeful. “No. I don't know why. Nothing unusual was going on. I just couldn't sit there anymore,” he said. “You just left? Who does that?” his roommate asked, doubling back. “I did,” he shrugged. “What about your Friday deadline?” “There's plenty of time.” “Yeah, but you don't want to be the guy taking personal time during a project. That looks bad.” “It's all for the reputation, isn't it.” “Of course. Don't be an idiot,” his roommate said. “You just need a good night out. Got plans for tonight?” “No.” His roommate shook his head. “You've got to start dating again. What was wrong with Samantha? She was a good catch by all accounts.”By all accounts. She had ticked every box going down. He was an idiot to let her go. No sensible man would have cut loose a solid woman like Samantha. “We didn't have enough in common.” “And the one before her? And the one before her? Still not enough in common? What exactly are you looking for?” “I don't know. I just know it's not there,” he said. “You're always throwing perfectly good things away,” his roommate shook his head. He nodded. This was no epiphany. The particular restlessness that had broken down this life had been leading him to veer off the path for as long as he could remember. Every time it struck he scrambled to correct himself before allwas lost and resumed walking on the road, but a mile behind everyone else, struggling to catch up. “I just can't play into the game. Gratitude for the few hours bestowed to pick away at a hobby just long enough to scratch its surface? The cheap company rewards one-step-ahead dangles at us like we're animals? Tell me you don't find it laughable! These professionals nearly kill each other over who wins a day off, and then they straighten their ties and make off to happy hour to tear into whoever's not there.” “Everyone deals with the same bullshit. You have to enjoy the little things,” his roommate said, as he always did. But he could not be placated by trivialities. He did not care about the latest office intrigues, the hot new brunch spot, that new TV show made specifically to comfort people like him, or finding a new person to love to raise neurological highs back up to appeasing levels and adequately distract – how could he be distracted when he had his finger on the problem!? The more trivialities life threw at him, the more he encountered his own restlessness! “How do you do it?” he asked his roommate. “How do you play along and keep going straight?” “I just put on a mask every morning,” his roommate shrugged. Indeed, his roommate donned it expertly, but some evenings he forgot to take it off, leaving it on for days, weeks, even months, through his promotions and relationships, and even before him. “Well I can't,” he said. He had known his roommate since he was seven. He remembered his favorite games, his imaginary friend, and the words he confidently mispronounced until someone corrected him with mirthful laughter. He remembered sharply their first day of middle school when his roommate was teased to tears for wearing his favorite t-shirt, a neon green one he never saw again. He knew that his roommate's first favorite color was lavender, that he used to sing alone to himself when he was a little boy in his high, pretty voice, and that he had once auditioned for the school's honors choir and been rejected. None of that shone through his roommate anymore. Now he saw only the crisp white shirt and the exaggerated concern over Jack's small but significant blunder, the elements of a life that was strikingly analogous to their apartment: an entire kingdom devoid of the very things that defined him. His roommate seemed utterly unperturbed by and even unaware of any of this. From his perspective, he was on the right path and he, who sat on the couch with no girlfriend and dwindling career prospects, deserved nothing but pity as he inexplicably climbed the ladder downward. “I don't understand. You have a good life! Better than average job, a nice apartment, you're normal, smart, respectable, decent looking. Why are you going backwards?” his roommate remarked in bafflement. “I don't want any of this. This isn't my life!” he pulled at his shirt in frustration, gesturing to the photograph, the stylish furniture, around every inch of their apartment. “Everybody around us is rushing to hit the checkpoints. They've all secured an acceptable, vetted spouse and if they haven't they're on their way to locking down that second place trophy while they're still young. Or they're climbing into management positions and upgrading to nicer apartments, maybe a house, a better car, maybe even a boat. Those are the only ends of this trajectory!” “Well, I don't know what to tell you because that's pretty much the extent of what can be had,” his roommate replied. The next morning, he stood at his front door. He could not take another step down this road. While his roommate went to work, he split off and walked in the opposite direction. He walked for a long time. He did not know where he was going. The life he had called his own for years unraveled behind him as he replayed the long string of failures that had brought every iteration back to square one, where he stood now naked and nameless. Soon he reached the highway. Cars sped by as he walked alongside it. He walked under the dusky blue sky until he reached a quiet stretch where nothing drove past and only an empty road stretched on ahead and behind him. It was here that he abandoned the highway and plunged into the forest at his side as it beckoned him with its dim interior, fulfilling with giddy abandon an act he had always dreamed of doing as a child during car rides when he'd stared out the window and imagined losing himself in the trees. The deeper he wandered through the twilit woods the more pronounced the silence became. It punctured his tight, netted thoughts and let him taste patches of simple freedom. He savored both the freedom and loneliness here. Even if I have no place in the world, I am free of what is not mine. Not even a animal appeared among the trees. There was no path to follow, and he made haphazard, unguided turns. Meanwhile the sky grew dimmer above him, the forest hazier around him. At last, where the trees became sparse and wintry, he reached the forest's edge. He stopped. He stood at the border. He was a hundred miles from even the highway. Behind him lay the vast lifeless forest littered with stones and broken things. Before him began another, invisible. A dense forest of invisible trees whose unknown fathoms stood plainly before him. He took a step inside. A melody floated through the air, piercing a spot in him nothing had ever touched. He had not even known of it until this moment. He walked through the unmarked trees, moving by no outside sense or guidance, but in the full, without doubt. This forest was inexpressibly beautiful. Every step filled him with awe and he wondered how he had never before heard of this entire world existing beside them. It wasn't guarded, it wasn't hidden. It was there in plainness, open to all. Yet no one had ever mentioned it. Nobody had known of it. The thick, lush green canopy changed kaleidoscopically with his slightest movement as the light danced through the leaves and played upon their patterns, creating a sublime ever-changing static. The ground was fertile and soft, a rich, dark tone that caught white light and sprung back its pieces in irreplicable, partial mosaics. Peace and silence pervaded the forest, along with a sense of safety. Here he was as if held. “How strangely you walk. You must have stumbled in here backwards,” said a voice behind him. He turned around to a plain looking man in a featureless robe whose eyes burned bright and alive in an otherwise calm, even face. “That would only be fitting. I've spent my life fighting the tendency to walk backwards,” he said. “Why is that?” the stranger asked. ”Because by its bidding I break down every life I build up. It's left me a failure who has no place in the world, but fighting it has been so futile there was nothing left to do but to follow my tendency.” “Well, there is no measure of success or failure here, so you can stumble backwards as freely as you please.” “Where is here?” he asked, looking around. “This is the Invisible Forest.” “And who are you?” “I am the Phantom,” the Phantom said. He seemed to have no identity. A sense of thoughtlessness emanated from him, but it was not that of a simpleton; rather, it was a blissful, clear emptiness. “Do you live here?” he asked. The Phantom nodded. “But you are asking the wrong questions.” “Why have I never seen this place before? It's so beautiful!” he drank in the forest insatiably, wondering of all that lay in its depths. “I suppose if one good thing came out of my unraveling it was chancing to stumble here.” “It is because you walked backwards that you've reached the forest. Logic could not bring you here,” the Phantom said. They strolled among the trees at leisure. The Phantom moved at an unhurried pace that let him savor their surroundings, and with each passing step his curiosity grew. The more he saw the more there became to see. The forest contained a million beginnings, popping out from behind every nook and filling the view with unending shapes. “If only people knew about it! They would drop everything and run here. It's an endless wellspring of all the beautiful,” he said. “Not merely beauty. The Invisible Forest holds the truth of things. There are many things in here that have never left it and sit and stir in the cauldron of its depths.” “Left? Where would they go?” he asked. “Where did you come from?” the Phantom posed. “It doesn't matter. I'm never going back. For the first time I have touched something that is mine. There is no turning away. Now I'm burning to plunge in and discover this world.” “Great joy will come to you from that. It is the easiest thing. All you need to do is wander as freely as you please,” said the Phantom, who echoed his own mantra as he wandered free and empty-handed. “You're the first one I've met in ages who speaks to something in my core. You're a true friend,” he turned to tell the Phantom, but the Phantom was gone. He had disappeared as silently as he had appeared. For a moment he wondered if he hadn't imagined him, but he couldn't have, with the mark their encounter left on him. He had come to a clear, wide road that cut through the forest, plunging into its heart. He walked easily down the broad path, alone, searching for the Phantom, whose absence sharpened the gaps between the trees. His aloneness was fullness here. He saw the Phantom in the sway of every leaf, at the edge of every bend, praying that the forest's whims would deign to reunite them and quench his thirst. His anticipation of their reunion colored the surroundings, making them sing with a poignant, pulling melody. But he met no one for miles until at last he saw an apparition, a person, coming toward him down the road. He hurried forward excitedly, praying to see his friend. It was a stooped old peddler, rattling slowly with a junky wooden cart that clanked obnoxiously over the pebbles. Unlike the Phantom's silent appearance, the peddler's coming was impossible to miss. His racket shattered the… truncated (45,149 more characters in archive)