Aokigahara

Once upon a time I was going to make a video about this subject, and I wrote this as an opening story to give it a unique twist. It's a quick, haunting trip through Japan's infamous suicide forest.

Imagine, for a moment, that you want to go for a walk to clear your mind. You pull into the parking lot of a forest you heard about, and begin your approach. As you do, you pass a car covered in the dead plant life that has fallen from above, raining down dirt and bugs upon the vehicle. It looks as though it hasn’t moved in weeks. The white exterior has streaks of green running down the doors as the algae begins to make a home from the now wasted machine. You wonder who left it there, and how long ago. But you decide not to dwell upon it and persist, for before you lies a beautiful sea of green, where the trees look like they might walk away at any moment. Their roots twist wildly from the ground and spread across the soil. It is winter, and the air is chilled, but still you see the unending sea of emerald before you, giving you a sense of wonder as you take your first steps into this alien world before you.

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You notice signs along the way, but they are written in Kanji and your Japanese is limited. If you could read them, you’d notice just what you had stumbled upon. You see a path with a sign pointing you down a trail, but the path forks and to your right is a yellow rope with signs hanging from them. A white sign with a red slash urges you not to enter, but you are curious now and decide to go. You can just say you didn’t understand, though this warning is quite clear to you.

You continue your trek, but as you do you begin to notice things about the place that are foreign to you; The trees have bits of string tied to them which wander deep into the forest, laying limp, no sign of resistance from the other end. As you continue you see more of these, and you choose to follow one.

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As you stumble over rocks and roots, trying to keep your footing on the uneven terrain you find you are forcing yourself deeper and deeper into the woods. The trail is far from your line of sight and your only sense of direction is the rope before you which leads back to the trail. Travelling further you see a tree, and a figure beside it. You wonder to yourself what they are doing so deep into the forest on their own, but as you approach you realize that this companion is nothing more than bone and the remainder of flesh that still clings to the cartilage, dried and brittle from the elements. Panicked, you run screaming, but in the chaos you forgot to follow the rope that would lead you back to the path out. You stop, looking back over your shoulder as you expected the corpse to be chasing after you, but it doesn’t. It remains at its tree, tied to the branch as it lays wilting against the bark.

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You calm yourself down for a moment before returning to the trail, but it is only now that you remember that you had to follow the rope back. You search for your navigator, but it’s nowhere to be seen. You try to retrace your steps but the dense forest has skewed your sense of direction. You hike desperately, hoping that eventually you will find your escape, but instead you find another body, laying in the rocks with the remains of a small food supply scattered around it. This body doesn’t look like the other. It doesn’t hang from a tree in solemn resignment. He struggled to live. He fought for every day after he first set foot in the forest. But it was a losing battle, and he too was taken by the woods. Just as you will be.

Author's Note

I'd appreciate any feedback you have for me.

Reviews

[Anthony Wayne]

Hi Kersti,

I enjoyed your story. I usually avoid writing in the second person but you did it in a way that built up to a climax I wasn't expecting.

One thing I would suggest could be to elminate -ly words as much as possible

Good luck with your writing

[Kersti Elizabeth Pinzon]

thank you for the suggestion. we just finished reading On Writing in one of my creative writing courses and King recommends the same thing in the memoir.