The Day of the Kill

This story has been written in response to L.C. Schäfer's proposal to spend 2024 losing my mind...sorry, I mean, choosing to write a microfiction story every day, making 366 stories for every day of this lovely leap year. You can check her original story out here:

Prompt number four:

4th (World Braille Day) A story in the first person where your main character cannot see.

***

I have been standing for so long now that I have things living on me and in me. It is a role I have.

Danger is present today and I hear it in the thrum of the air and I feel it in the vibration of the earth. It reaches into the heart of me and makes me quake. Still I do not move.

I have been many things in my time here. I have felt and heard and twitched but I have seen nothing. But I sense much and what I sense is attuned to the land to which I am inextricably linked and to the air which provides, and pummels, and preens my existence.

Today, I have been a protector. Claws have penetrated my surface and have left their mark, like hieroglyphics or crampon divots on a glacier. I felt the warmth of the living being as it travelled along my arms in their lazy slumber. My extremities rippled with the rumble of the content. I was a shield, a comfort. I like this feeling. I am a friend. I am a support. I am needed for nurture. It felt more connected to me than the tickle of the others who use me as a gathering route.

But I have also been an accomplice in a dastardly crime. Like an acrobat in a pyramid, I have been a part of something. I have been complicit. I am ashamed. I am the launchpad from which a killer has been born. I heard the soft acceptance of the victim, I felt the power of the kill right down to my very roots. I have been sprayed with the lifeblood of another and today, I have been drenched in its innards from the disposal and tearing of the corpse. I am sticky with the remains of digestion.

It is not from this the danger comes although this reeks of peril. But not for me.

My threat is burgeoning away from me, roiling and blooming into moisture-filled blackness of rounded weight, ready to crackle and sheer and shake.

This is life on the savannah, where we all try to survive.

***

358 words

Writing as a tree is nothing new for me. Wait. That sounds like the opening line to a jaunty poem! Let's savour that a moment.

Now that that's been noted, let's discuss this story. For this prompt I wrote something but it wasn't in the first person and whilst I am not too pedantic with regard to this, I had wanted to do the prompts she's set and so, I felt compelled to write something else. I was watching David Attenborough and saw some sort of big cat, leopard maybe, launch itself out of a tree onto some unsuspecting fodder below. Trees can't see but it was very much a part of this stark kill and so I thought I'd write from its perspective.

And now, I have a story in hand for emergencies which is making me feel smug and, I have to say, arrogantly confident.

For more tree stories from me, read:

Or:

https://shopping-feedback.today/poets/the-gap-at-sycamore-gap-zaho0665%3C/strong%3E%3C/a%3E%3Cstrong class="css-1mrz9mz-Bold">

Or you could always read Enid Blyton, I suppose.

For the list of prompts that L.C. has provided for January to get you moving, if you want to partake, go here. It also provides links to everybody else who has joined in the challenge:

Thanks for stopping by. If you've read this story, please do leave a comment as I love to interact with my readers.

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