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Leaves and branches crunched beneath Mystery’s feet as he walked. The birds chirped in the trees, droplets of rain slowly gliding off the leaves and falling to the ground, soaking into the dirt with the rest.
Mystery watched them fall. He abruptly stopped walking to stare at the ground where one had landed.
He wondered if when he was gone, he, too, would disappear and be forgotten like the separate rain drops. Maybe he’d be remembered as part of a group, but he wouldn’t be remembered as him. Mystery was always ‘that kid in my biology class,’ ‘my partner for that one history project,’ ‘We worked at the same minimum wage job once,’ so on and so forth.
He supposed that was where he got the nickname Mystery from; no one truly knew him. He was a mystery. Though, he didn’t have to be, people just didn’t care to unravel it.
He let out a sigh and continued walking. He watched a squirrel run across the ground in front of him. He looked up to see a bird in the trees above him.
If nothing else, the animals would remember him. The forest would know he was here. Maybe, when he died, he wouldn’t mind it to be here.
He started to hear the river that he knew to be a ways down from where he was, though it wasn’t where he was headed.
Mystery pushed a branch out of the way, startling the bluejay in the tree as he stepped past. He stopped in front of a grave.
He didn’t know whose grave it was. The engraving wasn’t legible anymore. it could’ve been there for any amount of time, but either way, he was clearly the only one who knew about it.
Mystery liked to come out here sometimes. If he’d died long ago, he thought that maybe he’d like if someone still remembered him. So, he came to this lone grave, to wonder about a person he never knew.
He along with the usual questions that arose, ‘whose grave is this,’ ‘why is it alone out here,’ ‘did they have anyone to miss them at first, or was it always this lonely,’ came another; ‘if I died, would anyone visit my grave like this?’
He pushed a lock of hair out of his face, though it fell right back into place, obscuring his view. He stood and began to make his way back.
He kept thinking on the way back. The more he thought and wondered about the environment around him, the less he thought about himself. The less ‘nobody even knows my real name,’ ‘does anybody I know know me?’ and the variety of other questions made their way into his head. Of course, they snaked their way into his brain.
Snakes.
He’d think about snakes, there was something.
He didn’t see many around, but when he did, they were the usual harmless ones, like garter snakes.
He thought about snakes on his way home.
—
If— when he died, Mystery didn’t want to be buried. He didn’t want to be cremated. He wanted to be part of the world. Or maybe he didn’t hate the idea of being buried, and he only wanted to be buried in the forest, like that grave he’d been visiting.
Maybe flowers and mushrooms would grow out of him. Maybe wolves and maggots would find him before the flowers got a chance to. Maybe a tree would grow from him.
If people wouldn’t remember him, he’d like the forest to. The wolves wouldn’t know him either, but they’d know that his body fed them for a night. The flowers would know he’d given them somewhere to grow. The snakes would recognize him as the guy who went on random walks in the forest. The mice would run around his grave, and they’d know he’d been buried there.
If he couldn’t be remembered in a graveyard, he’d be remembered in the forest.
—
A week later, Mystery heard his voice for the first time.
“I can make you memorable.”