a story about trees----at least a part of it

[Amnesiac]

Suddenly I found myself in the middle of the woods. I was lost and finally realized I had been for the last 30 minutes. Still, I kept on going, deeper I presumed, into the field of trees. The longer I kept running, the darker everything seemed to get. Maybe it was because the sun was going down or maybe because the trees were closer together here than earlier. I had no idea and of course it was the least of my concerns but it still stayed on my mind for the next few minutes. At this point I had been running so long I didn’t even hear my own footsteps trying to catch up with me anymore. I felt my face getting paler, energy leaving my body . It was only then I got a hold of myself and stopped running. I had been running for so long and I realized that if I wanted to stay ahead(and away) I would have to keep a steady pace and I wouldn’t be able to do so if I drained all my energy right away. I had managed to get away quite early and that gave me a lead on them.

 Slower but just as determined, I passed by countless of trees. I couldn’t make out what kind they were, but again, that was not something I could afford worrying about.  Still, I could not help studying them as I passed them by. They all looked so much alike and at first I had thought that was the case for every bunch of trees in every forest in the world. But after a while I started to spot more and more similarities. Every tree had the exact same number of branches. Seven long ones and two smaller ones on each of those. As I studied them more closely I realized they were all exactly the same size on every tree.  Of course I concluded this was nonsense and it made me worry about being dehydrated. I took a few looks around me, listened closely for any sound of life and when the coast was clear I sat down next to one of the trees.

  At first I tried looking for a place in the shade but then I realized there was no sunlight coming trough at all anymore . I wondered how I hadn’t noticed that earlier but I couldn’t find an answer. As I was resting for just a bit(I could not afford to linger for more than just a minute or two) I examined the tree next to me while drinking the last few drops of water from my plastic water bottle. The tree was large, wide and firm. As was every other tree I had seen since I entered the forest. I looked at it from top to bottom and then moved around it. In the middle of the backside of the tree, at exactly my height,  there was a shaky X carved into the thick bark. Somehow it seemed familiar. Very familiar. So familiar it made my mind go crazy. I ran to the next tree and saw the same X carved into that one too. Then I ran back two trees and also found the shaky X there. I looked at all the countless of trees around me and then it just hit me: all the trees had an X carved into them right in the middle! These trees were not just identical, they were all the exact same tree!
I almost went crazy. Was I actually losing my mind or was this forest just filled with this one tree? I tried convincing myself that would have been impossible but what other explanation was there? Had someone been carving the exact same shaky X into every goddamn tree in this forest at the exact same position? That would have taken ages! There were just too many trees for that to be doable.  Not even an army of bark carvers would have been able to pull that off. 

I still do not know why but the first thing that came into my mind next was to keep on running. Somehow I tried to run away from all of it, but I soon realized it was impossible:  every time I passed the tree, it was waiting for me just two feet away. It felt as if ‘they’ had finally caught up with me and now had me surrounded. But ‘they’ were nowhere to be seen, the only thing I could see was this fucking tree repeated all around me! I sat down again and covered my eyes. I tried to think but I could not think straight for more than a second. And I must have opened my eyes a thousand times hoping to see at least three different trees right away but every time I looked, the same tree stared at my from a thousand points around me. I closed my eyes yet again and wished for this nightmare to end.