>My stomach clenches and cold, orange acid splashes off the sidewalk. The smell of bad oranges fills my entire head and here we go again. I’m panting and I just have to walk past it, if I keep smelling it I’ll throw up again. Screwdrivers, why you do this? A karaoke work party was not the place to get this drunk. I hope I didn’t embarrass myself too much, it’s going to be so hard to show my face in the lab Monday.
>I hear the bus pulling away and I have mixed feelings about being left here – on one hand I don’t know where I am, but on the other, a moving bus would make me sick again. I walk past a bench and giggle to myself. Fucking bench. I loosen my tie and the fabric runs along the back of my neck and even this simple motor command gets tangled with walking. I’m horizontal now, face against the grass, but the world keeps turning over my head. A drop of rain hits me exactly on the eye and I pinch it shut. >Thunder cracks and the downpour begins.
>Drunk and hazy I slop my way towards a tree to get out of the rain.
>“Hisao…” I look around. A girl’s voice?
>“Yeah?” I feel butterflies and I move towards the sound.
>“Don’t you understand?” That voice again. A tinge of fear cuts through my drunken stupor for a moment and I take a step back. My foot slides through leaves over mud and I tumble down, colors spinning, water and ground alternating against my limbs before a sharp white crack.
>Curtains.
>I come to later. The mud has since dried to my arms up to mid bicep – at first glance I thought I’d lost them. Heh, still drunk, I guess. I try to wipe them off and the grit feels weird. Boy does my head hurt.
>“You’re angry with me too, right?” That voice – so close by, above me? I look up for the first time and my mouth goes dry.
 
 
>I’m sitting at the base of a white birch tree with a messy crown of dark red leaves. It sways, but no wind blows and the leaves rustle as if the tree was cold. All the branches are short and stubby except for the top crown. The roots are dark green and gnarly. I look around for the girl, but see only more and more of these same trees. The voice comes in again behind my left ear.
>“The kind that you think is too blue to really exist-“ she cuts off as I whirl around, seeing nothing.
>“Who’s there?” I yell, shakily. My stomach twists in fear and liquor and for the first time I notice the smell. Damp leaves and acrylic, tangy acid, ink. I look down at my hands again and realize they’re covered not in mud, but in dried black oil paint.
>“I like the other word better.” I feel a nudge against my lower back and I stumble away, turning again, the anorexic trees blurring together, swaying, closing in.
>“I can’t hug you.” I stand frozen in place, heart racing, very aware of the danger of that fact for me. I have to calm down, but – “Do you think I’m pitiful?” – stop it, I’m probably just passed out on that bench – “Just imagine harder” – shut up! My heart beats hard against my chest, I can feel my pulse at my temples. I reach up to rub them and my hands feel prickly. I look at them, covered in black paint that I can’t rub off, losing feeling before my eyes.
>I can’t feel my hands.
>“Ysae s’ti tub, drah smees.”
>“Shut up!” I shout, swinging my hand behind me at the voice. My hand hits a tree and it bursts into black dust. I scream, trying to cradle my stump, but my other hand crumbles with the effort. The trees walk closer, green roots slurping in and out of the black inky mud.
 
>“Ti tsujda ot evah uoy won.”
>“Ti tsujda ot evah uoy won.”
>“Ti tsujda ot evah uoy won.”
>“Ti tsujda ot evah uoy won.”
>Trees all around me are babbling and talking, pulled birch bark lips stretching and sputtering as my arms disintegrate. Everywhere the paint lands starts falling apart and I’m crying and laughing and running until my angle snaps off and blows away.
>Tears draw lines down my face as I stare at the rain clouds above the canopy, unable to even roll over, my body erasing itself out of the forest. A place I don’t belong. My jaw falls off like a broken hinge and blood mixes with black paint as I drown on rainwater and regrets. Her voice is the last thing that I hear.
>“See? Even watermelon doesn’t really taste bad if you have to eat it.”
>The trees hunch over him and feast on the feelings.