I
I am tall, and gaunt. My hair is quite long, as is my beard— as are my nails—as is my stare— as are the hesitant and confused motions of my limbs. I have fed upon grass and flowers for some time, longer than I can remember, and the bitter taste of dandelion sap is stuck to my palate; but suddenly, and only by mistake, I come out of the forest onto a busy street and, startled myself, cause several startled drivers to stop and ask some questions that I hear, yes, I hear them, and I remember their sounds, but what they signify I have forgotten, or I am too tired to recall. I smile at them, joyful to see them (of course I am joyful— I would not smile if I was not joyful— I am beyond all pretending now, though surely I must once have done very much pretending), and they try to keep me in one place, which is at a small distance from themselves. I understand, deep down, that I am naked, and that I do not look well, but I am conscious only of the desire to touch these dear, sympathetic creatures. Soon an ambulance arrives and takes me away, and though I don’t quite understand what is happening, the paramedics are so kind that I don’t care— their tender concern falls upon me like the warm sun of a windless day.
II
Perhaps the most natural thing to find at the center of a subterranean labyrinth is an enormous and mostly buried figure. Buried not intentionally, nor by any labor of the hands, but merely from sitting so still for so long, and the dirt sifting from the roof of that expanse over the course of centuries— with every oblivious paw that treads the surface, with every slight warp of the earth in frost and thaw— evenly covering that figure. Only several notches of the spine remain visible, each the size of a fist, and the taut skin about them, as well as some portion of the nape.
And likely the most natural place to find the stairway to such a labyrinth is in the forest, under a hatch, under earth as flush with grubs and flora as the rest of the forest floor. The hatch would be, of course, mostly rotted, so that the strange lettering it bears is indecipherable. And certainly the most natural way to find this place is by accident, on the third day of having been lost in the forest, while digging up root vegetables to eat.
And undoubtedly the most natural response to such a thing is to begin digging up the soft earth around this massive figure, to satisfy the urgent behest of curiosity. Digging more and more fiercely, one dreams: that it has the same noble, noble, piercing eyes as the David; and, wiping the sweat from one’s brow, leaving there in its place only a more inconvenient streak of dirt, that once exhumed it will be grateful to one. And after all, who knows? Who knows but it will be?
Charlie Dunn lived and died in Ypsilanti, and never succeeded in publishing his work. His father and friends are doing their best to get his writing into publication. He has been previously published in Detroit Lit Mag.
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