Hikes 63 and 64: The Séance

Are you one of my ghosts?

Yellow Blue Red Brown. Colors and Curls, Lake-Eyes and Athena-Gray; these are the apparitions that haunted me. Perhaps it had something to do with the location of my trip or the dead things littering the trail. Blood and bones and lifeless limbs were scattered throughout the short hike to Bobby Lake.

Cerebrospinal fluid drought.

It would be unfair to say that not a single living thing inhabited the wasteland. The occasional flower found nourishment in the barren soil, but the rarity of such a sight made its appearance all the more unsettling. What do you live for, wilting one?

As the roots drained water from the ground, so too did the spiders drain life from their prey. They left behind only empty husks. From life to death to life to death to death to death from death comes life. Join the circle and slurp with the fervor of a thirsty arachnid. Soup will do just fine.

Drink up.

One welt, two welts, three welts, four welts. The mosquitos tapped my precious skin and drained along with the rest of the woods. One quart, two quarts, three quarts, four quarts. So parched were the frenzied flies that even the arboreal inhabitants weren’t safe. They sucked the sap from the trees until their skin mimicked my own irritated epidermis.

My veins ran dry and began to collapse. This once circulating blood of mine now inhabited hundreds thousands millions of buzzing insects that danced and glowed with an ethereal light. The life that had pumped through my very heart projected forms from the cloud of mosquitos and made me ache and pine. From these images came the colors.

Yellow Blue Red Brown. Colors Curls, Lake-Eyes and Athena-Gray; these are the apparitions that haunted me.

Again I ask, are you one of my ghosts?