Gone to the Forest by Katie Kitamura

Author:Katie Kitamura
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Free Press

7

The room is dark. The old man lies in the bed and thinks about the things he needs to do. He can hear noises outside the wall and windows. The noises of the farm. He makes lists in his mind and they grow—down the page, grow in all directions. Run to the side and go off the edge and he is overcome. He cannot keep them from growing. On certain days he can feel the lists on his skin. Crawling across his chest, down his legs, into the interior of his body. This causes the twitching and the spasms.

There is some confusion in his mind. He does not understand what is happening to him. On a bad day he will understand that something new is taking place, that his body is sailing toward uncharted territory. But even on a bad day he does not understand what that means. His mind will not allow it. His mind is crumbling, it is eroding into sand, but it is still the strongest thing about him.

The old man grips handfuls of sand, he remembers that he has been growing old for a long time, that he grows old and grows stronger. He grows and around him people cave and it is almost like they want to. That is his secret. It has not always been like this. When he was young he had struggles and the world did not conform to his wishes. Then he grew old and the world started giving in to him and then it continued, it gave and it gave.

But now the world is defying him again. Shrinking, spiraling, and he does not understand why. The world is taking it back! First it was the country. The land changing, the property retreating, beyond his power, outside his jurisdiction. Then the girl, failing him as she did, her body occupied by another man’s seed. He tried to open the world, he tried to clamp it down so it would stay and instead he was compelled to come back. He—of all people—he had been forced to retreat into a corner, the girl stumbling behind him, and the corner not even safe.

His head twitches in a spasm that he cannot control. His body is defying him like the world is. The world being in his body as the world shrinks down. As it sits in his swollen belly like a ball. Apart from that there are his legs and his chest and his arms. That is all that is left. Even that is going, even that will be gone if he is not careful. He would like to put his body back together. He thinks about joining the bones and muscles and making them strong again.

He crouches on the edge of the bed. He is a collection of bones, a belly like a fruit pit and limbs like shards. His arms splintering at the touch. He cannot believe this body belongs to him. He is not sure that it does. He tries to do arm exercises.

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