A Leafy Dream.

I had a strange dream last night. A woman was frantically running with a group of children along a fence. Her breathing was labored, and she told the children not to look back. I then saw bushes shaking. Not a normal shaking. They were shaking like they were in pain. Then the woman looked back at the children to make sure they were following. They stared at her. She stared back. Then, a leaf sprouted from her nose. She screamed.

Then I saw what she was running from. A whole town was thrashing and convulsing on the ground, throwing themselves from the tops of buildings, screaming, clawing at their skin, tearing out their eyes, but I couldn’t see why. I could hear the sounds of a thousand branches snapping, the sounds of twigs breaking, the sounds of leaves blowing in the wind. Then I saw the people.

Shoots of wood shot forth them the bottoms of their feet, roots burst out of their chests, they coughed up vines, thorns ripped up from their skin. The screaming had ended, and been replaced by a strange moaning, like their lungs were becoming crowded by something foreign. They began to sound like trees. I couldn’t tell if the plants were sprouting from within them or if they were becoming the plants themselves. I saw bits and pieces. A man holding his leg as it snaps back and forth, the bone within contorting to angles impossible by humans, a woman sawing her arm off as her skin begins to crack open to reveal bark, a little girl pleading with her father as the roots tear them away and replace their mouths with branches. I saw a woman kneel and vomit up roots until she looked as if she’d been turned inside out, the final bits of the transformation were shrouded by the leaves and branches.

And just as suddenly as it all was shown to me, it was over, and the bushes and trees were silent, as if man had never even be there. I don’t know what happened to the woman and the children she was leading, but I have a feeling they escaped. I think it must have been some sort of curse. The trees have vaguely human postures and features, but if you hadn’t know what had happened there, you wouldn’t notice.