Fallen

(For an newer draft of this story, click here.)

The trees stood proudly about Roger Frost like soldiers presenting for inspection. If not for the light shooting through the little holes in the canopy, the glow of green emanating from the leaves would have made the time of day obvious. The scenery was tinted like light shined through an emerald. He deftly maneuvered between the trees without taking notice of their stances. It was nearly noon and Roger had already traversed ten brisk miles that day. He felt happy hiking with his home on his back.

Being in the wilderness pleased Roger. It tapped into the wellspring of contentment he had in being a simple man. Simplicity for Roger meant detachment from the frivolous trappings of life. He had become accustomed to owning little and learned to like it. When at home by himself, he often imagined what life would be like should a sudden catastrophe force humanity to live without the aid of technology. He fancied himself a survivor, someone who could adapt quickly and preserve himself even in dire situations. While everyone else would be running around crying and pulling their hair out, Roger would be rubbing sticks together with a smirk on his face. He would offer a neighbor a piece of cooked game and go on to be the one to organize a communal farm. He would humbly put human affairs back on their proper track.

Though it was early spring, the ground beneath Roger's feet had the familiar mush of ever-decomposing leaves. After absorbing a light morning sprinkle, the trail was slick. Roger used his worn walking stick to maintain equilibrium when the wet earth tried to induce him to do otherwise. All was silent except for swishing of his persistent pace and the huffs of his rhythmic breathing. Occasionally, he heard the crackle of a squirrel bounding through vines and saplings. The only sensation that interrupted his thoughts was the sporadic tug of undone spiderwebs draped upon his neck and face. A pinprick of guilt dripped within him for ruining the labor the tiny spinsters.

Nature had not always been his element. As a child, Roger was a homebody. He spent much of his adolescence under the watchful eye of his mother. Such a thorough hypochondriac was she that she channeled her overflowing sickness onto her only child. He was kept in his room for fear of contracting a malady from his suspicious peers or harming himself in his thorny surroundings. From his bedroom window, Roger loved nature as a courtier loved his fair maiden.

Trailing behind him strands of silken nets, his gaze was fixed on the ground shortly in front of his feet. He was preoccupied by the hazards along the trail. Although less nimble than he was in his youth, Roger knew well the ways of stable movements. Without remaining alert and compensating for the scattered rocks and roots, he would crash to the ground. The added weight of his supplies ensured he would be torn open by a fall. He appreciated how in nature nothing laughed when a person tripped. The sound in the forest before and after a tumble was the same. The natural world took no notice.

For all of its thorns and inhumanity, the natural world seemed preferable to the constructed one. The constructed one always seemed to fall short of its aspirations, while the natural one never publicized aspirations and thus never failed. Roger's childhood home was depressing for all of its disrepair. The shabbiness was a drain on its inhabitants. The doors always squeaked. The paint peeled. Drafts were common in the winter and leaks in the spring. One could not help but feel dilapidated by association to the ragged lodging. From inside the Frost house, the outdoors seemed glorious. He spent his youth daydreaming. Roger frequently pictured himself exploring the woods from behind his sweating bedroom window.

Roger took notice of the natural world. There was a subtle acrid smell in the air that always accompanied rain in the woods. Decomposition was being encouraged by the same water that was also nourishing roots. In the middle of observing how the odor reminded him of ones he had smelt in public restrooms, Roger recognized he did not feel well. Nausea had creepily begun to stir in his belly. Thinking he may be on his way to dehydration, he paused on a mossy stump to slake his thirst. He drank the tepid water in gulps and panted after holding his breath. He rifled into his pack for the bag of nuts he had brought. The salty crunch was disagreeable to his taste. He frowned and swallowed them down in haste. Roger ran his tongue around the interior of his mouth to clear away the remnants of almonds. He looked off into the distance and became enamored by the sight of doe. She was serenely grazing on sprouts--dropping her head down, lifting it to listen, and dropping it again. Roger lost himself in the vision of the animal. He was brought back to his affliction by the abrupt flicker of its tail.

Roger did not realize the exceptional decay of his surroundings until he went off to school. In kindergarten, he was taught of his impoverishment. He was ridiculed for his tattered clothes and belittled about his disreputable abode. Apparently, his family had developed a reputation in his all-too-small town. His plump, glowing teacher did what she could to mitigate the influence of his peers. She injected him with platitudes about the importance of invisible values--that it was what was on the inside that counted. Roger numbly wondered to whom it counted. He was immune to her kind encouragement and took heart from the plants outside his home instead. At times the trees and shrubs are bare, but they always revive. They grow and become more haughty. For all of the tenacious heckling he received, Roger refused to feel guilty for something that was to him as natural as autumn.

Shaken to attention, he resumed his task. With one last gulp swallowed, Roger grunted his way back to a walking stance. Feeling for the netted pocket and finding it, he slid the bottle into its place. His throbbing feet pushed against the interior of his tattered boots. The seams of faded thread began giving way years ago, but for all their use they never completely gave way. After succumbing to wrinkles and puckers on every step, they always sprang back to shape with every stride. He hiked onwards with a tighter calloused grip on his walking stick.

Inspired by nature, Roger embraced his condition. Instead of lamenting the relative poverty of his family, he took it as a season. He was going to prove to himself--not his classmates--that he could overcome his privations and thrive in an extended summer of vitality. Overcoming to Roger did not mean scrambling to fill the bare spots but embellishing further the areas in the self that were already adorned. If he was not wealthy, so be it. He was full of life. He had the power to alter his surroundings. As soon as his mother was distracted, he expended all of his energy as often as he could in spasms of revolt. He was fueled by spite towards the injustice of his situation. He lived to destroy barriers. He laughed at worldly trials and sought out difficulty. He thumbed his nose at suffering. So thoroughly had he treasured pain that he started to feel himself invincible.

His steps became less rapid than they were earlier in the day. He had difficulty blocking out the sensations bubbling in his abdomen. Roger's pain began to localize in the right side of his lower back. He tried to reassure himself that he was experiencing the usual cramping that occurred in the midst of backpacking. He pushed on and concentrated on his path. In most areas, it was only distinguishable by a thin ribbon of muddier soil. The leaves down the center of the trail were more trodden and thus less distinguishable than those on the periphery. The difference between being lost and on track was a preponderance of darker rather than lighter brown. He appreciated how singularly disinterested in humanity nature was. She offered no sign posts on her own. She showed no partiality; she did not play favorites. Trails had to be blazed or else one would wander aimlessly.

Roger aged from being an audacious teenager to a meek man in the span of a weekend. Roger's mother became more lethargic as wrinkles draped more heavily upon her face. As a consequence, her son was afforded greater liberty. He would escape his home whenever her guard was down. Roger set goals for his adventures of increasing extremity. First, he wanted to spend a night alone outdoors. Next, he wanted to hike to a river twenty miles away. He was intoxicated by his freedom. Roger was enraptured by action. He would push over rotting tree trunks and kick mushrooms. Chipmunks scurried at the sound of his cathartic grunts. The apex of his expeditions was a fifty mile trek with nothing but a knife, compass, map, blanket, and two pounds of deer jerky. He was seeking to find his limit. Roger wanted to be independent; he wanted to be sufficient unto himself. He wanted to be separate from the weights the hung on him--the truths about himself that were out of his control. He was intolerant of being boxed in. In preparation, Roger studied books on local vegetation and manuals on hunting. At the end of his greatest mission was a feat of immense daring. Old locals liked to tell stories in the town bar of a thirty-five foot plateau above a local lake that had since been cordoned off due to frequent injuries. Having a notion of the coordinates of the site, Roger struck out to conquer his part of the world early one Saturday morning.

The canopy shielded Roger from the afternoon sun. Nevertheless, he began sweating profusely. Steps were more laborious. He appeared like a wounded animal. His stride contained a noticeable limp that favored his right side. He paused to close his eyes and heard the rustle of a breeze. Mercifully cool wind tickled his neck. He let his head drop until his chin touched his sternum. He gulped air like water trying to calm himself. When the bouquet of decomposition reentered his nose, a geyser of vomit erupted upwards. The violence of his reaction surprised him. He hunched over dripping with his face to the ground in disbelief. He spat to cleanse his pallet and rubbed his right side with his right hand. Concern began to leak into him mind. Finding a nearby stump, Roger sat again. He fumbled for his water bottle. He noticed the disagreeable taste of the iodized water more acutely than before. He suppressed the desire to purge once more. He had no appetite and his energy levels were diminished. He focused on the glossy black ants milling between his boots. Some toted white granules of an unknown substance in their mandibles. They seemed directionless, walking and turning at random times. Where were their trails? Closing his eyes helped him suppress his mounting misery. He put all of his attention into his ears and listened to the leaves flicker. Roger lost track of time. Although it was barely dusk, Roger desperately wanted to sleep. He beckoned to unconsciousness as his saving grace. He held out hope that the next day would bring with it renewed health. He eased his oppressive backpack off his shoulders and let it tip over. His arms felt leaden. He thought of how he had forgotten old lessons and began to repent.

It took him fourteen hours of weaving between tree limbs and plodding through undergrowth to get to the makeshift fence that blocked the cliff. Roger slung his pack off his shoulder and let it tip over. He stamped down the chicken wire with his boot and approached the edge. Roger peered over it. His head spun with the sight of the chasm. The slope of the rock face was carved by skillful use of dynamite prior to the quarry being flooded. He retreated and scanned the periphery. The sky was billowing with clouds like smoke against the cobalt blue of dusk. The landscape looked surreal: dense forest butted up against a barren crater. A path that had been cleared for the transportation of minerals was in nature's reclamation process. The individual hickories and oaks looked melancholy in their singular insignificance. Roger felt his own insignificance complemented. He judged himself a wild thread woven into the tapestry of the wilderness. Before him was the gauntlet of death. Fear thrilled Roger. Adrenaline introduced a new lightness into his joints. He was primed to fling himself into the crater. After a deep inhalation, he rushed forward with the frenzy of youth and fell with the weight of pride.

The scent of pine filled Roger's nose as he entered a thicket of coniferous trees. His feet reveled in the relief the discarded needles offered in their carpet-like plushness. The increased comfort only made his nausea more distinct. A bead of sweat trickled into an eye, causing him to blink. Time had slowed to the pace of the sap trickling out of sores on the trunks about him. He wanted to be still. He fell to his knees, smashing scurrying insects in the process.

Just prior to Roger's leap, his right boot found a pocket of loose rock. The gravel shifted with his weight and absorbed a crucial part of his energy. As Roger flew forward and began to fall, he realized we would come up short. The queasiness that accompanies a great drop was multiplied by his terror. An embankment below was quickly approaching. He had time to regret his idiocy before the impact. After two futile kicks into the air, he struck the outcropping. The muffled sound hardly interrupted the quiet evening. He fell forward, breaking bones and losing consciousness. A crow flying overhead bore witness to Roger's misguided courageousness. He was ejected from the womb of his concussion onto the harsh bank of the lake. A sensation of coolness was the first memory Roger had after his plummet. So close was he to his target that his hair had draped into the cold, still water. It was thoroughly dark outside. At first he could discern nothing of the extent of his injuries. Pain reverberated throughout his body. He lay sobbing in a contorted heap. The chat he fell into kept the impact from being fatal, but lacerated his skin extensively. Roger could not manage to get to his feet. His legs were not working properly. Drowning in a pool of distress, his mind was not fully functional either.

Roger began to whimper aloud as he clutched his abdomen. The pressure building in his side was getting the best of him. For the first time, he began feeling anxious. He had not seen another man or woman for days. Death was before him again. Far from home and far from help, thoughts of helplessness began sparking into his mind. He snuffed them out as best he could, knowing he needed to remained focused at returning to the trail head. As he was thinking of how idiotic he had been to strike out alone and unknown into the woods, the pressure was released with a pop. Roger opened his eyes to see his denim-covered knees crumpling pine needles. Was he cured? He felt suspiciously relieved. Filled with gratitude, he released his concentration and allowed himself to rest.

Sprawled on the bank, he thought the thoughts of a dying man. Remorse welled within him. Roger previously was certain he was ready to battle with nothingness; he thought he could free himself by leaping into the abyss. Facing mortality would let him become more than human. Now, his fragility screamed through his nerves. He was neither alive nor dead but on his way from one to the other. Tears dropped onto the rocks of the bank as unanswered questions cascaded through his mind. What had happened to his strength? Why was he dying now? Was he to fade away and become absorbed unbeknownst to anyone? Where was he to file his complaints against reality? In his state of complete helplessness he was deserted with his dread. He could not bear the weight of life on his own and neither could nature. Roger had been alone too long. His solitary confinement was self-inflicted, brought on by hubris. He needed a companion. He knew now that there was no kinship with the universe; there was no brotherhood with impersonal matter.

The external world showed no sympathy with the internal world. Planets twinkled and stars lit up the clear night sky. He tipped over, exhausted. In a fetal position, Roger tried to sleep. Being immobile felt slightly better than moving, but his discomfort had returned in a new guise and kept him awake. He imagined what his insides looked like, what sort of mortal stew was brewing within him. With shaky fingers in the morning, Roger tried to shovel the last of his almonds into his mouth. Before he could bring his jaws together, his mouth rejected the intrusion. He convulsed in a fit of dry heaves. Roger suspected his organs were shutting down. The release he felt was merciful, but not indicative of recovery. He thought it strange that his biological defenses would lead to death's victory. Every individual function was suspending itself to prevent damage spreading to other functions. Taken together, the totality of his body was killing itself in an attempt to save itself. How was it that the body chose now to die after he had spent so long in trying to live?

There was nothing more to do. Life was leaving him as involuntarily as it entered him. Roger's blood mingled with the chalky white rocks. On the shore of an artificial lake, he awaited his end. There was only a choice to make: repent and resign to his limitations or refuse and revolt. He had attempted to spurn the world with singularity, but now knew he had gone too far. The wisdom imparted by suffering allowed him to discern between genuine and false freedom. If this was what it took to stop him from running, so be it. He passed out of consciousness hoping he would wake again. The whir of a motor jolted him. A retiree came noticed a motionless figure while he was trolling for bass that had been introduced to the lake years earlier. He pulled Roger into his boat, and later up the shore and into his truck. They sped to the nearest hospital, along fifty miles of painfully jostling country roads. Technology in the hands of doctors saved his life. Roger's body healed together with his spirit.

The natural world he adored as a boy was superseded by the God he called upon that desperate night. Both were wonderful for the way their superficial ambivalence masked a deep-seated, complex goodness. Rain falls on the just and unjust alike; a loving God allows the innocent to hurt. Neither forgot; both were always working to incorporate everything. Unlike nature, God did not operate by cycles. To live forever, one had to die twice; to die forever, one had to die once. Either way, a person never returned. Roger had been partially correct. The world ought to be spurned, but not completely and not by beating it at its own game. The human and inhuman world were irreparably heterogeneous, containing good and evil, life and death. Purity could not be had by immersing oneself in either world. Everyone has a sense of the fundamental ambiguities mixed throughout each. Roger was right not to succumb to the onslaught of his peers who were impoverished in a different way. He erred leaping for his own salvation. One drowns as surely in lakes as in tears. One needs to find other streams to be renewed in.

Roger, confronted by mortality again, refused to despair. His thoughts became focused with excitement. He prayed to God that He existed. He needed God to exist. He knew the only necessity in life was necessity itself. People need something fixed and changeless. It is why they were quick to look to laws and definitions. Roger wanted the law. He wanted to be held accountable. More than that, he simply wanted to be held together. He could not endure the thought of vanishing into nothingness. If he was to never exit the wilderness again, how could he ever be said to exist? Nature would not remember. She would devour him with her minions and bury him with her sediments. The memories of those he met in life would scarcely contain a note on him. Roger rejected the possibility. He was filled with hope at the possibility of an enduring record keeper. He prayed to God to give him faith as he lost his equilibrium.

Fallen, Roger terribly wanted to be warm. Turning his dizzy head and lifting his eyes, he could see an opening in the woods on the horizon. The golden glow of pure daylight enticed him. He dug his fingers into the moist soil and pulled himself through the remnants of his stomach. His writhing movements were awkward but effective. He crossed the terrain by inches rather than feet, but crossed it all the same. For the first time in hours, he forgot about how awful he felt. He thought only of the heated honey of sunlight being poured over him at the end of his toil. Strain was not a lamentable state to Roger. It was the state of living, and he was glad to feel alive. Twigs and the shells of nuts clawed at his skin and ripped his clothes as he forced himself over them.

After draining the last of his pool of energy, he reached the clearing. He splayed out enervated on the glade of igneous rocks that were impervious to plant life. As Roger lay dying, he wondered what his body looked like to an eagle. It seemed to be the perspective nature always took on humanity. He was a fleck of compressed carbon and water. He was imprisoned within the consuming forest. He swore he felt a compassionate warden comfort him with a blanket of light. He strained to see, but the muscles in Roger's neck refused to obey his will. His head dropped onto a pillow of lichen-covered granite. Orange-red seeped through his eyelids like light shone through amber. He no longer felt pain; he was done dying. He only felt tired. He released himself from his body.

Roger, who had closed his eyes moments before, exhaled and died again.