Moss
There exists a forest you can go to if you want to make sure nobody can find you. A place to remove yourself from society for awhile when your insecurities become overwhelming, when you feel like you don't belong anywhere, when you can tell your feelings are too big and too much. To be alone and at peace.
The weather is always perfect in the forest, and you can always hear bird calls and a distant stream. You can walk for as long as you want, until you find a perfect, giant, moss-covered log. Then you'll strip off your clothes, put them on a nearby stump, and lie atop the moss carpeting of the log. It'll be the softest thing you've ever felt.
You're welcome to stay as long as you need. Stay until you feel that you're okay to be around others again. As long as you're touching the moss, you won't get hungry or thirsty. You won't get sunburned or rained on, and the biting bugs will stay away. You can sleep as much or as little as you want. You're safe here.
Do some deep breathing. Listen to the sounds around you. Notice how the light shines on the trees. Enter a state of total relaxation. Nothing is expected of you here.
Perhaps you'll feel ready to go home in a few days. Or maybe you'll decide to stay longer.
A peculiar thing happens when you lie on this log for long enough. Eventually, the moss will realize that you're friendly and begin to grow on the surface of your skin.
It'll probably show up on your hands first. You'll welcome the soft green covering on your skin, growing in just tiny patches at first. You'll hold each finger up to the sunlight and observe exactly where the little spots of moss are coming in. You'll observe over a period of weeks as the patches grow and eventually merge together. When you look at your veins, they'll seem to gradually turn a darker and darker shade of green.
You'll realize it's in your bloodstream now, and you'll accept this with an absolute sense of calm. This place is beautiful, and it's transforming you. Over a period of months, maybe even years, the moss will slowly envelop you. It'll cover your arms, then your shoulders and chest, then your torso and legs and feet, and finally your head.
At some point, your heart will stop beating, and you'll stop needing to breathe. You'll never need anything again.
As your skin turns to bark and begins fusing with the log, you'll realize you can no longer leave. But you won't want to. You know this is where you belong now. Soon you'll be nothing but an odd, moss-covered, vaguely human shaped lump protruding from the log.
Here in the forest you can never be too much. You'll never be overwhelmed by emotion. You'll never again feel like a burden on your partner(s), your friends, your family.
Hmm.
Your partner(s), your friends, your family.
"What were their names again?" you'll wonder.
It'll be the last thought you ever have.
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Author's note
This wasn't meant to be a horror story.
When I first had the idea for this piece, I had pictured some sort of calm, dreamy fable. Things were overwhelming, and I kept imagining a forest I could escape to, where I could be alone and nap on a moss-covered log for awhile. Perhaps even long enough that the moss would start growing on me as well.
But as much as I tried, I couldn't write it without a sense of unease creeping into the prose. All of my attempts felt off somehow. If there's a pleasant way to write about moss growing on your skin, I don't think I'm the one who will be able to do it.
As I thought about it more, I realized it wasn't just the moss that was unsettling. The whole premise of the thing was sinister.
I go through periods of feeling like too much. Maybe I'll be lonely, maybe my trauma will be rearing its ugly head, maybe all the events of my life will be too much for me to handle. I'll find myself wanting to really cling onto my loved ones, and then I'll pull back dramatically, not wanting to overwhelm them. I tend to do my best to hole up, to disappear until I feel that I've sorted my shit out well enough to be around people again.
And I mean, that's bad. I have a lot of people in my life who care about me, and I'm sure they'd be happy to be there for me, to help me when I'm struggling. I don't feel like my loved ones are a burden when they need support from me, and I have to assume the feeling must be mutual.
I'm getting better at noticing when I'm starting to disappear into myself, at trying to make myself ask for help when I need it. But the urge to deal with it on my own, to disappear into the mossy forest, can sometimes still be really strong.
And so I leaned into that disquiet, and "Moss" slowly transformed into a horror story.
It's the first piece of fiction I've written in... 15 years maybe? I don't know if it's any good, but I do know that the words flowed out of me very, very quickly as soon as I decided to lean into the horror angle. It felt nice to write something like this, something very different from what I usually do!