Trees

The stars are so bright it hurts to breathe, Gabriel thought, even as he knew it didn't make sense. He looked down and away, as if the act of doing so would keep the life in his body. The alien bandage on the top of his foot held his eyes and he stared at it for a long while, noted the slight difference between the color of his skin and that of the gauze bandage. Beneath it was a healing wound he had wished upon himself and paid for earlier that day: a tree whose trunk stemmed where foot met leg and whose branches angled themselves down his toes. It was a winter tree, a wretched ink skeleton etched into flesh.

From the roof he could see the ink tree's brother, a ghostly apparition with mist about its roots. The day had been hot but wet and patches of fog lurked in the roads and fields, haunting the cars and houses. And apparently the trees, he thought, staring still. The tree stood close to the road stoically and strong. Its roots had lazily stretched beneath the pavement, pulling it apart in a slow and determined rebellion. The cracks in the road mirrored the overlapping silhouette of the branches like a shadow. One of the largest lay solidly across the road, stretching so far that some in the town wondered if a tree on the opposite end of the street had also grown its root out across the road. Privately, Gabriel liked to think that it was simply the one root, radiating out from the tree he watched so closely. It's too strong, he thought, letting his gaze drift across the great gash in the road. A wound that refused to heal itself.

Or was the road the wound and the root the bandage?

The thoughts wound and tangled like a Mobius strip until Gabriel closed his eyes against them. When he chose to see again, he caught something different: a subtle black smear that veered crazily off the pavement and into the grasses, starting shortly before the gash. The memento of brakes squealing and tires buckling was not altogether apparent, only a muted difference between tar and lingering rubber. Still Gabriel glanced at his watch, ran a hand through his hair to brush out the remaining fragments of broken glass, and moved to reenter the house.