Jason awoke to the sounds of grasshoppers rubbing their legs against their wings. The sound was both distant and at the same time near. Jason slowly fought to open his eyes, but his drowsiness overpowered his senses lulling him back to sleep.

“Wake up buddy,” Jason heard a nasally sounding voice close to his ears asking him to wake up. Thinking it was part of his dream, he casually shrugged it off. “Wake up buddy,” Jason heard the same voice a few octaves higher. Jason was starting to get annoyed, he just wanted to sleep. “Wake up buddy,” Jason head the voice again right in his ears. Without thinking he swatted at the voice by his ear. SLAP! Was the sudden sound he heard before everything went silent.

Jason felt something getting up and a sudden kick to his ribs. He groaned from the pain and had no choice but to open his eyes. At first, he couldn’t make out anything the darkness was too much for his eyes. He waited until his eyes adjusted before looking at who kicked him. He was greeted with the sight of a slightly chubby dude. He had a goofy innocence about him that made you want to be his friend.

“Are you awake now”

“Huh… Where am I? Why am I on the ground? Who are you?”

“I’m not sure where we are. I’ve been walking around the forest for a couple hours now and you are the first person that I’ve seen so far. As for why you are on the ground uhm I’m not so sure. When I woke up I was also on the ground, so your guess is as good as mines. Uhm my names is Chubby, Chubby brown.”

While hearing Chubby talk Jason sat up and looked around him trying to get an idea of where he was. The trees around him were blocking most of the moonlight from coming through. So, Jason field of vision was limited. The only things he could make out where the rhythmic swaying of the tree leaves above him, a limited amount of moonlight, Chubby and an endless number of trees.

The last thing Jason remembered was blowing off his school work to watch some random shows on the internet. When he had finally remembered he had an exam coming he tried to cram as much knowledge into his head as possible. Suddenly around midnight he heard this soothing sound coming out from his bedroom window. He got up to check who was making that sound. He opened the latches on the window and looked outside. There was nothing there and the sound had suddenly stopped. Bewildered and tired he thought nothing of it at the time. He slowly closed the window still trying to find some clues. He found nothing out of the ordinary and decided to leave it alone. He rationalized that he was just overly tired and paranoid. Stepping away from the window Jason jumped back into cramming for his upcoming exam. But while closing the window he forgot to close the latches.

A few moments later the soothing sound came back. Jason thought nothing of it and started unconsciously humming to the rhythm. The unlatched window started to move up ever so slowly. Every time the window went up the stronger the soothing sound effected Jason. Unknowingly Jason was humming himself to sleep. When he finally noticed he was getting drowsy it was already to late. His face hit the desk while he fell into a deep sleep.

The next thing he remembered was trying to open his eyes, but not being able to and falling back to sleep. Then was finally awaken by Chubby’s nasally voice close to his ears. Looking around him, he began to wonder what the soothing sound was and where did it come from. Most importantly how did he end up in the middle of nowhere in a forest of all places. Was he kidnapped and brought here for the sick enjoyment of others. He couldn’t remember making any enemies. He was just an ordinary fellow trying to get somewhere with his life. “Puzzling very puzzling,” He thought to himself.

“Hey buddy, are you listening? Who are you?”

“Huh… Oh I’m Jason King.”

GROWL! Jason heard his stomach growling. He hadn’t eaten anything for a long time and was starting to get hungry. He looked up at chubby to see if he heard the growl.

“Are you hungry? I heard your stomach growling. Now that I think about it I’m hungry too. I haven’t eaten anything since I came here.”

There came Jason answer. Chubby did hear his stomach growling. He was slightly embarrassed and blushed as a result. Ignoring his embarrassment, he asked Chubby did he have some food on him. Chubby shook his head and emptied out his pockets for emphasis. Great Jason thought they were both hungry and there wasn’t anything in sight to eat. Plus, it was night time so trying to find something to eat was practically out of the picture.

Just in case he missed something Jason tried checking his pockets to see if he had any chocolates. As he already knew there wasn’t anything in his pockets before he checked, it was still disappointing to find his pockets empty.

Both people having nothing to eat became quiet. They stared at each other before staring into the dark forest. Nothing was there other than the sounds the crickets were making. Having nothing to talk about the creepiness of the forest became more apparent.

Chubby finally got tired of standing up for the moment and sat next to Jason. Jason looked at him before turning away. The relative quietness was deafening.

GROWL! GROWL! Both of their stomachs growled at the same time. They both looked at their stomachs before looking at each other. They started chuckling at each others misfortune. Their chucking was the icebreaker they needed to start socializing again.

They started talking about their lives before this incident. They talked about what they use to do, their hobbies, girlfriends and other miscellaneous boy talk to pass the time. By talking they found out they were the same age and were going to the same college. The more they talked the friendlier they were getting, and the faster time seemed to pass by. They would have kept talking until they heard their stomachs growling again.

“Maybe we should look around to find something to eat,” suggested Chubby.

They decided to look in the diameter of fifty feet around them. It was to late into the night to look any further. Chubby took the left side while Jason took the right side.

Looking around Jason saw trees of varying sizes spread around. There were trees ranging from a foot thick to five feet thick and bigger. The more Jason looked around the more mystifying he found the forest to be. Being a city boy, this was the first time being surrounded by so many varieties of trees. He touched the barks of the trees to find some bark rough and some smooth. He found out the trees that seemed rough were actually the smooth ones and vice versa.

The further out he walked the more diverse the trees became. Finding everything novel he touched and prodded. There was one tree that he found the most interesting. One second the tree was rough and the next it was smooth. He tried knocking on the tree to find it hard as stones.

The more he looked, the more he was starting to think maybe they weren’t on earth. He wasn’t a tree expert, but a tree that could change its textures that fast wasn’t one he was familiar with. Getting caught up and his discoveries he almost forgot the true reason he was looking into the forest in the first place.

He stopped with his fascination and became serious for finding food to eat. He tried looking up, but none of the trees were short enough for him to take a good look at. The only place suitable for him to look at was the ground he was standing on.

Every step Jason took from there on he payed attention to the ground and its surroundings. He took caution for possible bugs and insects. To his surprise he didn’t stumble into any bugs at all not even spider webs. He also didn’t find any food. Jason started drifting around and before he knew it he was past the twenty feet diameter previously set. Not knowing that he passed the point set he kept walking and walking. When he turned back to see if Chubby was still near by he became lost. Not wanting to panic he tried retracing his steps, but it was pretty much impossible to. When he was walking it wasn’t in a straight line and all the trees looked familiar to one another.

Seeing that retracing his steps wasn’t working he got closer to the forest floor to look at his previous foot prints. When he got close enough to the ground he saw that everywhere he stepped was going back to their previous untouched states. Every second that passed the ground was raising back up and leveling. It was like the forest was a living breathing creature. While fascinating it was pretty dangerous without any markers to retrace his steps being lost was a sure thing. If you added not finding any food in the surroundings to the list this forest wasn’t a place you should ever step foot into. This place was starting to feel like a beautiful but forbidden forest.

Jason took a deep breath and slowly breathed out. Nothing good would happen from losing his composure and Jason knew it. Standing up Jason brushed the dirt off his knees and looked around. He was trying to find something, anything that he remembered seeing while walking. Nothing registered in his brain. Everything was starting to look the same and the more he looked the smaller the distinctions became. It was like the forest was intentionally messing with his brain and urging him to stay lost. Jason started to feel like the forest was closing in and was trying to swallow him whole. He shook his head and took another deep breath. That one breath soothed his mind and the paranoia started to disappear.

Knowing that Chubby shouldn’t be to far from him reassured him. He just had to pick a direction and follow it. He closed his eyes, brought one of his hands up and pointed. He stood still like that for ten seconds before he started to spin in place. He counted to three before coming to a complete stop. He opened his eyes and looked at where he was pointing and went the opposite direction.

This wasn’t a rational decision, but with every direction looking the same it wasn’t like picking one rationally would work any better. As for going the opposite direction of where he was pointing it was a spit second decision and it felt right.

He started walking following the direction he choose. When trees got in his way he walked around them getting back on path to the direction he choose. While walking for thirty seconds he was starting to doubt his decision. Nothing he passed by was something he remembered and was starting to feel he was walking for too long.

Jason walked for another ten seconds before he decided to stop. He leaned against a random tree for support. He needed time to think. Randomly walking around wasn’t as effective as he hoped for. While leaning into the tree his hand touched the bark. The texture changed from being smooth to being rough. He took a step away from the tree and turned to look at it. From an appearance perspective it looked like any other tree in the surrounding, but when being touched Jason was able to see the difference.

His mind started operating at full speed. “Maybe this is the tree from earlier and me picking a random direction wasn’t ludicrous,” Jason thought. To make sure he found the right place he kept his eyes on the texture changing tree and felt the textures of the surrounding trees just in case. From feeling the different textures of the surrounding trees, he didn’t find one as special as the texture changing one from earlier. Just when he thought he found his destination close to the Chubby he felt another tree with the texture changing characteristic. Stomped was all Jason was feeling right now. He felt his conjecture was false and maybe he was lost.

“Jasssonnn, where are you buddy. I found some mushrooms and they seem eatable. Where are you.”

As he was starting to lose hope of finding Chubby he heard Chubbys nasally voice. Jason couldn’t be any happier to hear that distinctive voice. It felt like he saw the light at the end of a dark tunnel.