Mister Jones

by Patient X

Out Of The Jungle

Certain that his microphone is not on, Stan breathes in heavily...

"Jesus fucking Christ, Rochester, god dammit!" He shouts loudly as he punches at the air out of rage.

He reels over and catches his breath; the air smells of exotic plants...could he even smell a few fruits? Stan finally regains his inter-dimensional composure and sits down, removing the rucksack from his back and placing it in front of him. Opening up the bag, he does a quick inventory check: rations, clothes, a machete with sheath, a plastic zip-lock bag, a pair of tongs, a note, and one lone revolting sock that seemed to writhe with a foul stench.

Stan gags at the smell of the sock and uses the tongs to grab the horrendous thing and throw it far to his left. He closes the bag, leaving the tongs, note, machete, and zip-lock bag on his lap as he slips the rucksack back on. Placing the machete on his belt, he stands up, reading the note and keeping the bag and tongs in his other hand.

"IMPORTANT:

Mr. Jones, it is of vital importance that any uniquely unfamiliar species you may come across must have samples taken from them and stored in this bag. Failure to do so will result in immediate execution by military officials.

--Doctor Alman"

Stan sighs and crumples the note, leaving it in one of his pockets, and opens the zip-lock bag. He finally takes a good look around; he stands in a clearing with several boulders jutting from the ground, covered with a thin, green moss. Ferns of all kinds grow around him and burst through the dense, crunchy leaf floor covered by the canopy of thick branches and leaves overhead.

He sighs once more and starts walking forwards, in any odd direction, trying to find any "uniquely unfamiliar" species of plant...there's no way he's touching some wild animal from another fucking dimension. Plants will do just fine. Suddenly, he gets an idea.

"Here we...go!" Stan says to himself as he places the tongs and bag in a bag on his combat webbing, freeing his hands for use of the machete in his belt.

Unsheathing the sharp blade, he notices a bright gleam in the machete, even though the sun, or what Stan thinks is the sun, is mostly concealed by the canopy. He walks up to a large group of vines blocking a clear-ish pathway through the woods and swings the blade, effortlessly chopping the creeping plants faster than a chinchilla losing its mind in a 120 degree heat wave in Afghanistan. Stan has no idea why he knows that at all and starts to sing a familiar tune while chopping down the woods, mostly because he's pretty sure nobody can hear him.

"He had a lot to say!" He sings as the blade comes down onto another group of vines, effortlessly severing them.

"He had a lot of nothing to say, we'll miss him!" The blade comes back down onto a tangled mess of decaying plant matter.

"We'll miss him." A final swing severs tangled, dark green ivy.

**************

"To ascend you must die!" Stan shouts, hacking with all his might at a young, thin tree in his pathway, severing it with two blows.

"You must be crucified!" Another slash down the center of a messed tangle of uprooted roots and ivy.

"For your sins and your lies!" No more chopping, but a clearing filled with nothing but short grass and surrounded by even more trees.

"Good...Bye--Oh, hello, what's this?" Stan stops his horrid rendition of Eulogy and looks to his right to spy a patch of fluorescent, neon blue flowers.

He slowly inches forward, trying to catch a whiff of a scent in the wind blowing toward him. These flowers seem to shine. They make Stan feel uneasy, almost like he knows they're dangerous on a subconscious level. Almost like he's seen these plants before.

"What have we here?" Stan kneels down a few feet before one of them and produces the tongs and bag.

Carefully ripping the plant by the strangely short roots, he places the flower into the bag and then zips it back up. Stan raises the bag toward his face and scrutinizes the contents very closely. The flower excretes some sort of thick, black oil when agitated. Hell, the damn thing even twitched when he poked at it's roots using the protection of the plastic bag.

"Disgusting...Gotta take this with me." Stan clamps the bag back onto his combat netting and proceeds forward, facing catercorner to the blue flower bed.

Then something else catches his eye. A light in the dark jungle, right ahead of him. Surprised and fully concentrated, Stan hurries over towards the light, not even minding being covered by plant gunk from his half an hour long homicidal plant slashing
phase. Getting closer to the light, Stan notices the light continues to spread, like it's the edge of something. The edge of the forest! Stan found it and is going to see what's on the other side.

He's about to break the final line of trees when he realizes something. What if there's just another clearing in the woods? What if he finds something he doesn't like? Stan decides 'fuck it' and slashes through the final wall of vines separating him from his goal.

A field of light green grass stands in front of Stan as a large gust of wind blows beads of sweat off his nose. Idle clumps of oak-like trees dot the landscape as it stretches forwards for miles before regressing back into a forest and jutting up a steep height to form rounded yet steep, snow capped mountains.

In front of the jungle lies a rough, dirt path. This excites Stan, as he believes he finds animal treading grounds.

"I'm gonna follow this till it leads me somewhere..." He trails off as he veers a left towards a hill that plateaus after inclining.

As Stan reaches the top of the crest, he peers down below the plateau...and drops his machete in sheer, stupid surprise.

Comments

[Flint Sparks]

2677726

every good fic has a beginning. Be patient, let's wait to see what happens