The leaves fell all day at the edge of the meadow, so quickly that Joel thought the trees would be bare within an hour. But each day for two weeks he watched the earth die its yearly death thusly, blanketing itself in a coat whose dry smell mingled with that of the smoke rising from the nearby chimneys. Gray clouds and the chilly air loaned an atmosphere of loneliness, and an emptiness prevailed in the meadow, interrupted only by the steam puffing out of his nose with each breath.
He came here to meditate, to escape from the zoo of punks, jocks, misanthropes, and humans in general at the college where he studied in the center of town. His dark brown wool coat was already not enough to prevent the sharp, cold edge of impending winter from penetrating through to his skin. Dragging his feet through the leaves, he noticed bright green shoots coming out of the dark earth.
He bent to caress one with his gloved finger. Some kind of winter flower, perhaps, like a crocus? He turned his head around this way and that, examining the edges of the meadow. The green shoots were coming out everywhere. Lifting himself from the ground and gathering himself from the cold, he started toward the trees and back to town. It was too cold now to spend his usual few hours here until the twilight pulled its periwinkle veil over the sky.
The meadow and the college town of Atheron were separated by a ten-minute walk within a dense collection of pine and aspen. He never encountered anyone else visiting the meadow, thus he easily claimed it for his own. Joel picked this town to study in because of its quiet dignity; the up-side was that he would not have to tolerate the grating raucousness of the citizens of his hometown, but the downside was that he was always alone.
This time, emerging from the forest and leaping across the empty ditch that bordered Atheron, a man stacking firewood in his back yard saw Joel.
"You!" he said, pulling his hat flaps down over his ears. "Where have you been?"
Joel looked around and behind him, thinking maybe the man was talking to someone else. Strangers from Atheron rarely spoke to him directly. "I was just strolling to the meadow there and back."
"You shouldn't go there," the man warned. "And whatever you do, don't disturb the flowers that grow there this time of year."
"Why?"
The man pulled his gloves off with a scowl, before heading back into his home, letting the screen door smack shut behind him.
That night in the dorm, while he curled onto his small bed and his roommate sat hunched over a book, lit only by a dim lamp, Joel fell into strange dreams, the kind of dream which left him feeling puzzled the entire next day, though for no clear reason. In the dream he was sitting in the meadow, snow all around, yet he was wrapped in a cocoon of warmth. He saw the same green shoots springing out of the ground. They grew before his eyes, ever so slowly. When they began to bud, something grotesque wriggled there, like a tiny, bloody fetus instead of a flower. It grew and grew into a full-sized human infant. He plucked the infant from the plant and held it against the warmth of his coat.
Before the sun rose in the morning he woke up, blinking at a shadow hovering above him. He wiped his eyes, clearing his vision. His roommate Bill, a tall, mellow hippy type with a monotone voice, grinned at him, shoulders shaking with laughter.
"That a dorm bed, or a tent?"
Joel glanced down. He had an erection poking clearly up in his blanket.
"What the fuck's your problem?" Joel said, flipping over onto his stomach. "Do you always stare at other guys' cocks?"
"Hell no. Was kinda hard to ignore you, though, with all the noises you were making."
Joel buried his face in his pillow. "What do you mean, asshole? Lemme go back to sleep."
"Yeah, I'll bet you want to get back to sleep. Who's Mina anyway? Is that the sexy cunt in Biology? Sounded like you were pounding her brains out in your dream."
"Mina?"
"You kept moaning her name. Minaaa! MINAAA!" Bill mocked in orgasmic volume.
"Alright, alright. I'm awake now. Now shut the fuck up and let me go back to sleep."
Joel sighed in exasperation. Then relaxed on his side. His body was already limp, including his aching cock. Mina...with a flutter to his stomach, he remembered where his dream had left off. A beautiful woman, looking as though she came from another time, had been in his dream.
As soon as Bill had quieted down and went back to bed, Joel returned to his dreams. He saw the infant again, and black-red flowers, both of which had sprung from those little green shoots in the ground. The infant grew, or must have grown, but for the labyrinthine turns that a dream takes, he did not see her actually transition into womanhood. But he knew without a doubt that the gorgeous woman, Mina, was the infant who grew from a flower bud.
Her gown was the color of the flowers. So very dark red that it was hard to tell whether it was really red or just black with red highlights. Her long, black hair was slightly wavy, parted in the middle, her skin white like the snow, given color only by the slight blush of blood radiating through her.
Somehow her gown disappeared and they were naked together, toasty warm in the snow. She was only contented to have her breasts squeezed by his large hands, and when his hands fell away to find some other home, she guided them back to the firm mounds. She dotted hungry wet kisses onto his neck, stroked the hair at the base of his cock, nudged the head of it playfully with her knee as she threw her leg over to straddle him, making sure he was watching her cunt as she so expertly spread her legs.
The woman was both sad and playful, both goddess-like and sinister. He didn't know what to make of her. All he knew about her when he woke up was that he loved her but would never be able to find anything like that in any woman on earth. She was simply an ideal he had, a specter that existed only in his head. He was basically in love with an facet of his psyche.
His nerves were tangled like a ball of rubber bands all day after that dream. He couldn't concentrate in his classes, though he had read all the material and knew everything the professors lectured about. In lab he broke a thermometer, which he found slightly amusing because the gray liquid splashed out, and the lab instructor, reaching for his inhaler, exclaimed that the entire class was now doomed to die of mercury poisoning.
After his last class, he went back to the dorms and slipped into extra layers, pulled on the wool cap his mother sent him but that he never wore because it was too "dorky," and headed to the forest.
He was nervous, yet all the while he kept mumbling to himself how stupid he was being. What did he expect to find? A mystical sex partner springing out of the ground to fuck his cock raw? Ever since he had first visited that meadow two weeks ago, he had been feeling something strange looming around the corner. Perhaps he had finally reached his sanity's limit and it was time to stop stressing out so much over his studies. People expected so much of him. His parents were already telling everyone he was going to be a doctor someday, so what was there to do but just become one?
When he reached the edge of the forest, he saw the same man who had given him a stern warning the previous day. He was looking out his window at Joel with a concerned face. He motioned for someone, and an old woman soon appeared by his side. The woman went to the back door, called his attention, and waved for him to come to her; but Joel ignored her, and crossed the ditch.
There was something different about this forest than the other forests he had visited. This one seemed...stagnant, almost stale. Sure, things were alive, but there was a hush that made Joel feel as though everything had simply stopped breathing centuries ago. Yellow aspen leaves at least scattered some brightness onto the path.
He arrived at the meadow shortly. He immediately noticed the green shoots. They had grown about an inch since yesterday.
Joel walked around the meadow, leaves crunching under his boots, and he was careful not to step on those delicate yellow-green plants that grew remarkably in the season when things should have been dying. The breeze jostled the trees around a bit, whose leafless branches now sounded flat instead of lively.
To the north, the meadow met the side of the forest that stretched away from town and toward the mountains. There was something like a wind, or a distant creek, making a barely discernible noise like static.
Just then Joel saw a shadow move in the trees, which made him startle, and his ankles weaken. A lithe person was walking away from him deeper into the forest, and stopped, turning to look at him.
He could only see the face. Very pale. The clothes seemed to match the darkness of the forest.
The figure walked on, then stopped and looked back, as if beckoning him to follow.
Joel looked behind him, as was his habit whenever he thought someone was looking at him. Nothing there except the leaf-covered path that led back to town.
He stepped gingerly through the meadow and headed toward the figure in the dark.
As soon as he got close enough, something emerged from the person's clothes--something white--ah yes. A few more steps revealed that it was an arm, twisting in a gesture which commanded him to follow.
He hurried along after the person. Soon, he was ten feet away. The remaining light of the day suddenly shot through an opening in the forest canopy, and revealed the person's sex: a woman. Her black mane shifted against black robes. Or were they red? It was too dark to tell. He saw her curves moving underneath the thin clothing she wore. Strange, was she not cold?
She stopped only once to turn back and make sure he was there. Slowly she revealed her face. The snowy skin, the slightly blushed cheeks, smart nose; there was an air about her that said she was noble, intelligent. Her head lifted high, in full profile, she flicked her heavily-lashed eyes toward him. Her eyes were dark like the forest soil.
At the sight of her long, flawless neck, Joel felt the warmth in his pants. This--this was Mina!
As she started off again, he followed her, and with horror he remembered something his Psychology professor once said: schizophrenia normally begins when the person is college-aged. What was happening to him?
"Well," he muttered to himself, "if I'm a schizo, at least I'm being stalked by a sex goddess, and not the government."
