Megafauna
Flash Fiction
This piece is something of an experiment. I wanted to write something without dialogue, something based purely around description and visuals. I like to think of it as a “found footage”-style short film in literary form. Enjoy!
When the video starts, the camera’s grainy eye doesn’t reveal much. Tall pines and thick bushes fill the frame, and only the orange light of sunset breaks through the dark green canopy. Faint birdsong echoes through the trees, distorted and somewhat robotic through the filter of the recording.
Then the birds stop. All sound stops, in fact, except for the uneasy breathing of the camera’s unseen operator.
In a gradual, trembling movement, the camera zooms in on a nearby tree. It must be a redwood—few other tree trunks can grow that wide, like a pillar holding up a great ceiling. The camera’s gaze lingers first on the bark of the trunk, thick and scorched and weathered with age. Deep scratches run up and down the wood, crusted over like old battle scars. Then the camera pans down to the base of the tree, to the mass of gnarled roots. As many old growths do, they have pushed their way to the surface, snaking through the soil in all directions. The massive tendrils grip the earth like talons, determined to stay put and keep their tree upright.
A tiny black and white woodpecker flies by. The camera watches as the bird alights on the tree trunk and begins to poke at the bark. The first round of hammering yields no result; the bark is untouched by the woodpecker’s beak. Undaunted, the woodpecker continues.
High above the forest floor, something growls. Not in pain, but in annoyance, growing towards anger.
The person behind the camera chokes down a frightened gasp.
The woodpecker, living in blissful ignorance, does not heed the warning.
What happens next takes a handful of seconds. The roots of the tree begin to twitch and loosen their grip on the earth. One of them lifts up out of the ground and, with alarming speed, slams against the bird on the tree trunk. There is a shriek and an explosion of feathers, and the bird is gone.
Now all the roots are pulling out of the ground, lifting the tree trunk with them. With creaking, steady movements, they brace themselves to support the weight they carry. The sight evokes thoughts of a crouching spider, or the bulbous body of an octopus above its writhing mass of tentacles.
The poor soul behind the camera bolts to the right as the tree which is not a tree lurches forward. The camera whips back and forth, capturing a few moments of a fevered dash through the woods, then drops into a bush and goes still. No more visual after that point, at least nothing worth looking at. But the microphone picks up the fading sound of cracking branches and the ever-present growl from above, echoing like peals of thunder.
The video has twenty-five views on YouTube.