‘Not What You Think’ by Alan Sincic

This book is not what you think it is. It does not begin with you sitting in the hollow of a tree, eating crackers and scratching your elbow as you look out across the forest in the morning. Ignore that picture over there. That was a mistake. 

In fact, you shouldn’t even be reading this sentence, this sentence that talks about how you left home to live by yourself in the middle of the woods, in this treehouse you carved out of the hollow of the tree, with the table and the chairs and the stairs, with the wooden bedroom with the wooden lamp, the wooden rug, the wooden bed, and the pair of wooden shoes. You would not be doing something like that. That does not sound like you at all. Better we just end the story here. 

Even now it’s not too late to turn back. You could close the book here, at this word, here, before the bear comes to visit. Because once the bear comes to visit, everything changes. That’s it. That’s just the way it goes when the bear comes to visit. You have to hide up in the branches at the top of the tree, with your toast and blackberry jam and your funny papers and your pyjama bottoms flapping in the breeze, while the bear (who knows better than to crack a book), he totters round the kitchen with his big paws a-clackin’ across the beautiful tablecloth you finished carving the night before. 

Now you’re stuck.