The Forest Dragon: A Snippet Story

            It’s not as if there was much else to look at in the doctor’s office. The nurse had taken her blood pressure and heart rate and left with a promise the doctor would soon be arriving. Of course she knew time was relative, and “soon” in a medical facility could mean any number of things. The office was a labyrinth of similar, cell-like consultation rooms, with white walls, clean glass jars filled with cotton balls, tongue depressors, q-tips. She noticed that the paper on the medical table looked slightly rumpled, and wondered who had sat there before she had arrived. Her cell phone had no signal in the belly of this beast, so her eyes flitted nervously around the room, and settled on a painting at the far wall.

            At first it seemed like any number of artworks in a medical compound such as this: meant to remind you of nature but lacking fine detail, so as to soothe a hyperactive mind. A line of fire-red trees in the forest edged a lake that rippled gently, the water reflecting (not quite accurately rendered) shadows of the dark tree trunks above.

            One of her greatest comforts was the forest, so the painting served its purpose in that clinical space, and as she stared at it, she soon forgot the cotton balls, the rumpled paper. It took her a few moments to notice the dragon’s eye. Among the virtually monochromatic russet leaves of the perfectly spaced trees (that one never sees in nature) a slitted golden eye stared back at her. It was only the gap between leaves, she reasoned. The narrow vertical pupil was the branch of a tree. But the more she looked at it, the more she sensed it was staring back at her, not malevolently, but with a calm curiosity, as though it was surprised to be seen.

            Hearing the doctor in the hallway, she quickly took out her cell phone and snapped a picture of the painting. Before she knew it, she was back in the parking lot with a prescription to pick up, and reassurance from her doctor that her insomnia was just anxiety playing on her mind.

            That night she took the pills he gave her, and slept soundly for the first time in weeks. In her dreams, she heard the susurrations of scales sliding against each other. She saw the warm glow of an eye with slit pupils. She dreamt of drowsy autumn afternoons, camouflaged among the russet branches of a grove of trees.

            Perhaps it was time to visit the forest again.