Breaking The Surface

 There is an odor to the forest you know?  There is a hot summer resinous odor.  A special kind of warm that goes with the insect noises and the drowsiness.

There is also a late fall drippy odor, and a kind of special heavy silence.  A pregnant silence.  Almost you can feel the weight. Its fungal.  If you've ever gone into an abandoned building in the northern forests, where no one has lit a fire in many years, or indeed one year, there is an unforgettable scent of ruin and decay.  

Taking a moment to glance around, you will see signs of a life that was lived there before.  The habitations of man don't suspend their destruction in the damp forest.  Magazines, books, fabrics, the very wood of the structure have begun their dissolution.  You can smell it.  Fungal.  A kind of deadening of sound ensues.

Glass and metal and crockery maintain themselves as before.

I know a man who makes a bit of a living mining these old broken houses.  Some of them are way up old driveways into the forest, some of them sit in farm fields.  If you see a stand of overgrown trees out in a field, there is very likely a forgotten house centered among them.

Now, I know this man, for a truth.  But I also have heard of a sort of being who also mines the leavings of mankind.  He has several names.  None of them names he has given himself or his children.  A lock, a door, a window are no hindrance to this one.  We wonder what he finds of interest there.  Perhaps a tool would be of use to him.  Maybe some dried food, if its not too far gone to mold and mildew.  

Perhaps, were you near, you would hear his husky voice.  Maybe he knows humor.  You might hear a kind of sardonic scoffing as he rifles the broken bits.

His photo is naturally hard to procure.   Maybe a bit like this?

Or maybe not!