There was a lone cigarette burning slowly like the star on a Christmas tree. There was a lonely man pulling on its treasured contents. It thirsted after his life and he thirsted for its smoky embrace. Yet, he hated the cigarette and it hated him too. The man whom the cigarette hated was named Rascal. Christmas was creeping up on Rascal. So was his fortieth birthday. But where was his heir? You know what they say about spinsters?

The cigarette was almost done burning. It was clove flavored like the ones that Fatima smoked. It came in an exotic sky blue, off white box imported from England. Bloody England… it was the colonizer of his native Jamaica. The nature trail he currently stood on was quite a lengthy walk away from his fancy Smyrna apartment. Water poured ravenously down his throat, tasting of aspartame and koala champagne syrup. As a child in Jamaica, this concoction was the only cure for his insomnia. Mother had generously provided it to relieve her guilt at abandoning him every Sunday.

“Bctjjuhazzxx,” said the forest. It was difficult to distinguish the sound’s origin as he sat on a decaying stump. It was even more difficult to decide whether he would follow it or not. There wasn't anything to lose. The forest is calm at night and he could hear the birds chirping over the torturous ringing of ears. After walking for long enough he began to fall into a trance.

He forget about his role in society. He forgot about the brain that made him into a man, in the first place. He forget how to mouth words. My, how the woods made a hominid of him. Burly and unrestricted. Flesh made of mud and bone. He strode through the wild grass like a slug riding a rhino's horn. He was running now.

He was riding towards death. The only thing promised was death. He was closing in on it. He was thirty nine years old and his father had been thirty six on the day of his death. His sneakers continued to stagger on, appearing bloody and bruised. He encountered a fallen tree with a hyper pigmented spot where the lightning struck.

Dreadlocks pulsed on both sides of his head. Loc after loc after dread bouncing on and around his face. Who knew matted hair would matter so much? Nothing mattered as much as finding the source of the sound. The sound that'd rocked his world and freed him of identity. It was a recitation in his ear like the prophet Muhammad’s holy Quran. It was the voice of God that declared I am yowe and shook the very ground Moses stood on.

Prickles and thorns obstructed the path, sticking through him on every side. It was a crater on the edge of the trail and appeared normal at first. The sight was stumbling. A man laid bound to the ground by the strength of several interwoven plant stems. The man yelled to no audience or avail.

The stems seemed to be operating together. They arose and all at once pierced the man's chest cavity. The man's body levitated several inches above the ground. With the drawing of his blood, suddenly the entire forest was overrun with bands of rainbow energy. It seemed as though the entire forest consumed the spoils. They emanated in circular patterns from where the man's body was.

Rascal tried to reach out a final hand as the man's body suddenly became a giant semblance of brown fungus. Rascal was tense and scrambled for another cigarette to calm himself down. After the first seven puffs of the second cigarette, he'd forgotten all about the scene moments earlier.