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I watched the snowflakes fall all around me; each one marred by slight imperfection. Starlets they may be in flight, glinting as the cold winter sun gazes across the plains, but on further inspection they are impure; malformed and wretched in some way or another. I’ve been waiting for days for a perfect flake to bless me before it bores deep into the many drifts that dwarf me. Broken snowflakes scatter on, and more sighs escape my breath, rupturing the surrounding air and forming a cloud of which floats up as far as can see. That cloud will grow and grow with hatred until it is porcine enough to rain down on those who are happy, and clear its conscience of the infection that my boredom laid upon its sorry soul.
I’ve lost count of those I’ve left raging from my search for perfection. Each one spiralling up towards the heavens and from my memory. No dashes in the snow to show for those my emotion created, just drifts and drifts that build stronger and colder with each breath that breaches my pursed lips. The tears swell as they enrage, and fall like little snowstorms, adding to the many frozen ravines and sterns of white that eclipse any plant life from my view, only to carry onward and punish those with joy in their lives. Circling my head before they begin their great journey across the Earth, to a pocket where civilization is not at war, where happiness is once again permitted. I can feel them smirk before they leave; wry smiles at their very existence, born from my heart at its blackest.
More snowflakes fall, through the dense clouds, lying broken on the ground. My eyes gazed past the gorge of snow and up to the sky; a veil fills, covering any sign of blue with the torrid sheet of smoke hung over the stars. In the distance the horizon turned a deep green, slowly spilling through the veil, streaming across until all above is glowing a translucent lime. Hail was due to fall. Usually I would tunnel through the snow, but an icy sheen glazed the surfaces around me. Peering out of the cove that arced around me, something caught my eye; a dense forest, seemingly endless, not too far from where I stood.
As the sun glared green, I had no choice; I started towards the pocket in the vast white. Step by step the trees got bigger and bigger; changing from distant sprites to gargantuan figures that towered above me. They stood in a way that formed a maze through the forest, spanning past the dark as far as the eye could see. As I entered a tapping started; hail ferociously slamming into the great trees, still fixated like guardians, merely brushing them aside with no scars to tell the tale. I ventured deeper until the tapping was little more than a distant memory ringing in my ears. I could only see the giant shapes staring, nothing of my surroundings. Foliage would brush past my ankle and send a shiver up my spine; it seems this place is endless, the only difference between the wooded corridors being the slight difference in the green light that traces through the branches above.
The myriad of dark stretches went on for miles; on and on I went, scrambling through the dense vegetation as best I could, all the time a glint of green shining in the corner of my eye, reminding me why I’m here in the first place. A crack accompanied every footstep, with the melancholy of a metronome as I travelled across the sea of dead branches; discarded from the great oaks like a snake would its skin. Up ahead the sketches of light stretched further than elsewhere; there were no trees, a small opening in a deep forest that continued on and on in peaceful repetition. As I crept into the small opening the new light source struck my eyes; blinding me momentarily before a gentle dim washed over my sight. A shrine of light in the middle of a forest of darkness; overgrown plant life binding over the ground in twists.
Suddenly my heart sunk; corpses lay strewn across the small area, faces in the dirt, limbs falling through their bodies at odd angles. Cloths draped around their lifeless skin like makeshift clothes, torn to pieces, vines sprouting through the tears and wrapping around the dead. I knelt over to see their faces. A wretched despair hung over each expression, no peace in their souls, just a powerful hatred painted on blank faces. As the light flickered between the darkness, my mind played tricks on me; the faces blinking, talking, staring at me, but every time I’d shake my head and be greeted with the same blank malice that would drown their expressions.
The stench of death finally reached my lungs; slowly oozing through my body, sifting between my senses, the putrid scent clinging to my nostrils. My vision built a new circumference as it reached my brain, doubling what I could see for a moment. I had to get back into the comforting darkness of the mazes that lined the shrine. As I stood and began to move, a cold grip clenched my bare ankle. A shiver shone over my entire skeleton, jolting the bones in my figure tips. I wished I could have just stayed fixated on the darkness ahead, waiting for the icy hold to unclamp itself from me, but I looked down. My eyes drifting of their own accord, as much as I tried to stay, eyes tightly closed.
A hand. White and decaying, body still face-down, lifeless. A rogue arm outstretched from a pile of sorrow; I moved closer to the corpse, and kneeled to see its face. The same wrought expression filled its face, only this time hidden behind a smile. I just stood, not moving, fixated on the unblinking face grinning, gazing past the blades of grass between dead leaves and fallen branches. I didn’t want to move, in case it would mimic me and jolt to attention, as much as I knew it was an impossibility, all logic escaped my mind, and further dug me into a sense of trickery and paranoia. I kept telling myself it was the darkness casting false shadows, that my mind was playing with me, but still I stayed completely static, trying not to let a breath enter the atmosphere. A hand cannot grip so tight out of pure coincidence of passing.
After several moments passed, my eyes left the jeering face and I walked away, the hand slouching to the ground. As I turned before I left the shrine, the corner of my eye caught a look of grimace on the body, hand now resting on the vines that entwine the forest. I didn’t take the time to look again; I was just pleased to be back between the trees. There was something so comforting about them, like they could protect me from what the light could not. I carried on making my way through the endless labyrinth; pace quickening the further I went, but never turning back. I only noticed I’d reach an exit when light spilled over my body. A warm winter sun soothed my spirits as I stepped out into the vast snowscape once again.
My senses were invigorated after the deep depression that filled the forest. To see the fat sun once again bloated as it shines raised a smile to my face, shrouding the darkness behind me. It was a different sun from last time; no green sky, not staring from above, but from the horizon. Escaping the forest had brought a new day to pass. Looking over at the flaming ball nearing the mountains, I saw another endless forest covered in shadow, to sun forcing the scale to lapse into itself, forming a mist that floated over the distance woodland. I wondered if the two forests were somehow connected, I could see the end of neither, they just spanned on and on until the Earth obscured it from my view.
I turned again to see the rest of the land. An arcane hamlet, joined to my by a twisting path up a small valley, as if it had appeared from nowhere. The mountains behind it shone through the transparent village, lined with an uncertainly. It was as if it was hardly there at all; on the edge of existence itself, its life teetering as the withering winds tore through the sky around it. I began toward it; there was nowhere else to go, and nightfall could burst from the sky at any moment. Making my way up the path, at certain angles the ghostly destination up ahead would disappear from view, only to reaffirm itself in my vision once again. The path was lined with flowers, filling my nostrils with a summer that I longed for; on one side the plants flourished, blossoming as I walked, spreading beauty, on the other nothing but withered weeds, festering beneath blades of grass that surround it. The only colours were black and white, falling into each as vermin chewed on what remained.
A large gate greeted my arrival, slightly open, now solid as I got closer. I entered and everything stopped, not a tick tocked wherever my senses searched. It was like nothing, the blistering winds had stopped, all sounds gone, even as I moved across the gravel that lined pathways. Maybe I was on the edge of existence, a capsule that time forgot, that wasn’t really there at all, and by chance appeared in this reality. Nothing stirred, no atmosphere filled my soul, no feeling crossed my palms, all I had was the vision that stared me in the face, a ghost town that had been torn together by some twist of fate, and born into a world that didn’t know it existed.
I started to seek out something; anything. I would enter the bland buildings that filled the small town. All empty, crippled of all possessions and passion, faceless openings for the people that didn’t live here to sleep. They just went on and on, all exactly as the one before, no memories carved into its history, no history at all, just barely here by a thread slipping down into oblivion. Finally, something different came into view, bigger than the others, this one with double doors. One was slamming open and closed, like the wind was whipping it back and forth, but no wind nor sound accompanied it. I moved closer, and still nothing, a looming silence still arced over this place.
The door stopped open as a got close to it, welcoming me in. Furniture filled this building; small oak stools and tables littered every corner, at the far corner a staircase lead up to a stone ceiling. As I took a closer look at the tables, I noticed that people were sat. Every seat was filled by someone, frozen like the rest of the town, barely visible until I was close enough. Each one looked worried, although it was hard to tell. As I took in a breath, a plume of cloud rushed toward my mouth from another, one that was still. A cackling began in my mind, like radio frequency, before a voice spoke out.
“Is he okay…?”
The cackling took over again and went back to static. I looked deep into the face, I knew it, but couldn’t think where from. A tear formed in my eye and dropped to the floor, I don’t know why. I looked down, past my quivering hand; the tear was gone. Lost in the emotionless pit that is this place. I moved to another body and breathed in another wisp of smoke.
“What’s wro…”
Again it stopped. Tears began to run down my face, falling into an emptiness below, my whole body now shaking. I didn’t know what was happening. Deep inside these words meant something, these faces struck me, but I didn’t know why. I could have gone on forever, inhaling the lost words of lost friends, trying to exhale the truth somewhere along the line, but I walked away. Shaking, letting emotion flow from my essence onto the dead ground below. I didn’t know why these tears swelled, but I couldn’t stop, fingers trembling as my veins pulsed. I kept walking away, further past the ghost town that weaved these feelings, through damp, cobbled walkways that left no feeling on my body, spiralling deeper and deeper into what once looked a small town. Small in weight, but not in flesh.
Difference once again greeted me; a shoddy metal gate, rusty and hanging from the hinges, stood in front of me, grass ahead. It was graveyard. Slabs of cold rock pointing from the ground as a last ditch attempt to escape death.
At the end of the graveyard a man stood, crouching over an open hole in front of a neat tombstone. He was real, not like the frozen figures before, he was shaking, wiping his eyes, and staring deep into the rock. I walked up to him, but he couldn’t hear me; he was silent too, despite his crying. Maybe I didn’t exist this time? I edged in closer; it was me, my body hunched seeping tears to the grass. I looked across to the grave, my name printed deep.
My head went numb, all feeling lost, all senses scattered. I couldn’t be dead. Lights flashed in my eyes. On and off, on and off, on a off…
*
Blinking, I awake; a gentle beep accompanies the slurred chatter going on in the background. White all around me, my hearing is beginning to get slightly better.
“He’s starting to wake up from time to time,” a voice said.
“But it’s still very severe. He never stays awake for more than a few minutes.”
I try to speak but my throat is blocked, not even air can escape.
“So there’s no chance for him, then?” a stuttering voice asked, that of a woman.
“We’ll try our best bu…”
Again I start to blink and my hearing closes down. The white slowly turns to black…
*
Soaring above the skies, above plains of beauty, like an angel I look down upon a beautiful land. I’m back where I used to be, above the snowy drifts that scatter the ground. This time the green sky has gone, instead the bright sun shines peacefully across this place, bathing it in an orange glow. I move further to the great forest; the huge guardians are nothing but sprouting youth of a new wood, animals searching the green wonderland. The shrine between the trees sparkles, no longer filled with bodies but instead a gentle stream.
I pass the forest, speeding through the wind to the town. No longer does it stand; instead the flower-laden path leads to an empty view. Laughter and chatter fills my ears, joyful giggling between a group of people who no longer exist in my world. I reach a graveyard, flowers on every stone. The hunched man now stands proud, casting no shadow over my grave.
A perfect snowflake falls onto the tombstone, before melting to nothing…
I’ve lost count of those I’ve left raging from my search for perfection. Each one spiralling up towards the heavens and from my memory. No dashes in the snow to show for those my emotion created, just drifts and drifts that build stronger and colder with each breath that breaches my pursed lips. The tears swell as they enrage, and fall like little snowstorms, adding to the many frozen ravines and sterns of white that eclipse any plant life from my view, only to carry onward and punish those with joy in their lives. Circling my head before they begin their great journey across the Earth, to a pocket where civilization is not at war, where happiness is once again permitted. I can feel them smirk before they leave; wry smiles at their very existence, born from my heart at its blackest.
More snowflakes fall, through the dense clouds, lying broken on the ground. My eyes gazed past the gorge of snow and up to the sky; a veil fills, covering any sign of blue with the torrid sheet of smoke hung over the stars. In the distance the horizon turned a deep green, slowly spilling through the veil, streaming across until all above is glowing a translucent lime. Hail was due to fall. Usually I would tunnel through the snow, but an icy sheen glazed the surfaces around me. Peering out of the cove that arced around me, something caught my eye; a dense forest, seemingly endless, not too far from where I stood.
As the sun glared green, I had no choice; I started towards the pocket in the vast white. Step by step the trees got bigger and bigger; changing from distant sprites to gargantuan figures that towered above me. They stood in a way that formed a maze through the forest, spanning past the dark as far as the eye could see. As I entered a tapping started; hail ferociously slamming into the great trees, still fixated like guardians, merely brushing them aside with no scars to tell the tale. I ventured deeper until the tapping was little more than a distant memory ringing in my ears. I could only see the giant shapes staring, nothing of my surroundings. Foliage would brush past my ankle and send a shiver up my spine; it seems this place is endless, the only difference between the wooded corridors being the slight difference in the green light that traces through the branches above.
The myriad of dark stretches went on for miles; on and on I went, scrambling through the dense vegetation as best I could, all the time a glint of green shining in the corner of my eye, reminding me why I’m here in the first place. A crack accompanied every footstep, with the melancholy of a metronome as I travelled across the sea of dead branches; discarded from the great oaks like a snake would its skin. Up ahead the sketches of light stretched further than elsewhere; there were no trees, a small opening in a deep forest that continued on and on in peaceful repetition. As I crept into the small opening the new light source struck my eyes; blinding me momentarily before a gentle dim washed over my sight. A shrine of light in the middle of a forest of darkness; overgrown plant life binding over the ground in twists.
Suddenly my heart sunk; corpses lay strewn across the small area, faces in the dirt, limbs falling through their bodies at odd angles. Cloths draped around their lifeless skin like makeshift clothes, torn to pieces, vines sprouting through the tears and wrapping around the dead. I knelt over to see their faces. A wretched despair hung over each expression, no peace in their souls, just a powerful hatred painted on blank faces. As the light flickered between the darkness, my mind played tricks on me; the faces blinking, talking, staring at me, but every time I’d shake my head and be greeted with the same blank malice that would drown their expressions.
The stench of death finally reached my lungs; slowly oozing through my body, sifting between my senses, the putrid scent clinging to my nostrils. My vision built a new circumference as it reached my brain, doubling what I could see for a moment. I had to get back into the comforting darkness of the mazes that lined the shrine. As I stood and began to move, a cold grip clenched my bare ankle. A shiver shone over my entire skeleton, jolting the bones in my figure tips. I wished I could have just stayed fixated on the darkness ahead, waiting for the icy hold to unclamp itself from me, but I looked down. My eyes drifting of their own accord, as much as I tried to stay, eyes tightly closed.
A hand. White and decaying, body still face-down, lifeless. A rogue arm outstretched from a pile of sorrow; I moved closer to the corpse, and kneeled to see its face. The same wrought expression filled its face, only this time hidden behind a smile. I just stood, not moving, fixated on the unblinking face grinning, gazing past the blades of grass between dead leaves and fallen branches. I didn’t want to move, in case it would mimic me and jolt to attention, as much as I knew it was an impossibility, all logic escaped my mind, and further dug me into a sense of trickery and paranoia. I kept telling myself it was the darkness casting false shadows, that my mind was playing with me, but still I stayed completely static, trying not to let a breath enter the atmosphere. A hand cannot grip so tight out of pure coincidence of passing.
After several moments passed, my eyes left the jeering face and I walked away, the hand slouching to the ground. As I turned before I left the shrine, the corner of my eye caught a look of grimace on the body, hand now resting on the vines that entwine the forest. I didn’t take the time to look again; I was just pleased to be back between the trees. There was something so comforting about them, like they could protect me from what the light could not. I carried on making my way through the endless labyrinth; pace quickening the further I went, but never turning back. I only noticed I’d reach an exit when light spilled over my body. A warm winter sun soothed my spirits as I stepped out into the vast snowscape once again.
My senses were invigorated after the deep depression that filled the forest. To see the fat sun once again bloated as it shines raised a smile to my face, shrouding the darkness behind me. It was a different sun from last time; no green sky, not staring from above, but from the horizon. Escaping the forest had brought a new day to pass. Looking over at the flaming ball nearing the mountains, I saw another endless forest covered in shadow, to sun forcing the scale to lapse into itself, forming a mist that floated over the distance woodland. I wondered if the two forests were somehow connected, I could see the end of neither, they just spanned on and on until the Earth obscured it from my view.
I turned again to see the rest of the land. An arcane hamlet, joined to my by a twisting path up a small valley, as if it had appeared from nowhere. The mountains behind it shone through the transparent village, lined with an uncertainly. It was as if it was hardly there at all; on the edge of existence itself, its life teetering as the withering winds tore through the sky around it. I began toward it; there was nowhere else to go, and nightfall could burst from the sky at any moment. Making my way up the path, at certain angles the ghostly destination up ahead would disappear from view, only to reaffirm itself in my vision once again. The path was lined with flowers, filling my nostrils with a summer that I longed for; on one side the plants flourished, blossoming as I walked, spreading beauty, on the other nothing but withered weeds, festering beneath blades of grass that surround it. The only colours were black and white, falling into each as vermin chewed on what remained.
A large gate greeted my arrival, slightly open, now solid as I got closer. I entered and everything stopped, not a tick tocked wherever my senses searched. It was like nothing, the blistering winds had stopped, all sounds gone, even as I moved across the gravel that lined pathways. Maybe I was on the edge of existence, a capsule that time forgot, that wasn’t really there at all, and by chance appeared in this reality. Nothing stirred, no atmosphere filled my soul, no feeling crossed my palms, all I had was the vision that stared me in the face, a ghost town that had been torn together by some twist of fate, and born into a world that didn’t know it existed.
I started to seek out something; anything. I would enter the bland buildings that filled the small town. All empty, crippled of all possessions and passion, faceless openings for the people that didn’t live here to sleep. They just went on and on, all exactly as the one before, no memories carved into its history, no history at all, just barely here by a thread slipping down into oblivion. Finally, something different came into view, bigger than the others, this one with double doors. One was slamming open and closed, like the wind was whipping it back and forth, but no wind nor sound accompanied it. I moved closer, and still nothing, a looming silence still arced over this place.
The door stopped open as a got close to it, welcoming me in. Furniture filled this building; small oak stools and tables littered every corner, at the far corner a staircase lead up to a stone ceiling. As I took a closer look at the tables, I noticed that people were sat. Every seat was filled by someone, frozen like the rest of the town, barely visible until I was close enough. Each one looked worried, although it was hard to tell. As I took in a breath, a plume of cloud rushed toward my mouth from another, one that was still. A cackling began in my mind, like radio frequency, before a voice spoke out.
“Is he okay…?”
The cackling took over again and went back to static. I looked deep into the face, I knew it, but couldn’t think where from. A tear formed in my eye and dropped to the floor, I don’t know why. I looked down, past my quivering hand; the tear was gone. Lost in the emotionless pit that is this place. I moved to another body and breathed in another wisp of smoke.
“What’s wro…”
Again it stopped. Tears began to run down my face, falling into an emptiness below, my whole body now shaking. I didn’t know what was happening. Deep inside these words meant something, these faces struck me, but I didn’t know why. I could have gone on forever, inhaling the lost words of lost friends, trying to exhale the truth somewhere along the line, but I walked away. Shaking, letting emotion flow from my essence onto the dead ground below. I didn’t know why these tears swelled, but I couldn’t stop, fingers trembling as my veins pulsed. I kept walking away, further past the ghost town that weaved these feelings, through damp, cobbled walkways that left no feeling on my body, spiralling deeper and deeper into what once looked a small town. Small in weight, but not in flesh.
Difference once again greeted me; a shoddy metal gate, rusty and hanging from the hinges, stood in front of me, grass ahead. It was graveyard. Slabs of cold rock pointing from the ground as a last ditch attempt to escape death.
At the end of the graveyard a man stood, crouching over an open hole in front of a neat tombstone. He was real, not like the frozen figures before, he was shaking, wiping his eyes, and staring deep into the rock. I walked up to him, but he couldn’t hear me; he was silent too, despite his crying. Maybe I didn’t exist this time? I edged in closer; it was me, my body hunched seeping tears to the grass. I looked across to the grave, my name printed deep.
My head went numb, all feeling lost, all senses scattered. I couldn’t be dead. Lights flashed in my eyes. On and off, on and off, on a off…
*
Blinking, I awake; a gentle beep accompanies the slurred chatter going on in the background. White all around me, my hearing is beginning to get slightly better.
“He’s starting to wake up from time to time,” a voice said.
“But it’s still very severe. He never stays awake for more than a few minutes.”
I try to speak but my throat is blocked, not even air can escape.
“So there’s no chance for him, then?” a stuttering voice asked, that of a woman.
“We’ll try our best bu…”
Again I start to blink and my hearing closes down. The white slowly turns to black…
*
Soaring above the skies, above plains of beauty, like an angel I look down upon a beautiful land. I’m back where I used to be, above the snowy drifts that scatter the ground. This time the green sky has gone, instead the bright sun shines peacefully across this place, bathing it in an orange glow. I move further to the great forest; the huge guardians are nothing but sprouting youth of a new wood, animals searching the green wonderland. The shrine between the trees sparkles, no longer filled with bodies but instead a gentle stream.
I pass the forest, speeding through the wind to the town. No longer does it stand; instead the flower-laden path leads to an empty view. Laughter and chatter fills my ears, joyful giggling between a group of people who no longer exist in my world. I reach a graveyard, flowers on every stone. The hunched man now stands proud, casting no shadow over my grave.
A perfect snowflake falls onto the tombstone, before melting to nothing…
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I watched the snowflakes fall all around me; each one marred by slight imperfection. Starlets they may be in flight, glinting as the cold winter sun gazes across the plains, but on further inspection they are impure; malformed and wretched in some way or another. I’ve been waiting for days for a perfect flake to bless me before it bores deep into the many drifts that dwarf me. Broken snowflakes scatter on, and more sighs escape my breath, rupturing the surrounding air and forming a cloud of which floats up as far as can see. That cloud will grow and grow with hatred until it is porcine enough to rain down on those who are happy, and clear its conscience of the infection that my boredom laid upon its sorry soul.
I’ve lost count of those I’ve left raging from my search for perfection. Each one spiralling up towards the heavens and from my memory. No dashes in the snow to show for those my emotion created, just drifts and drifts that build stronger and colder with each breath that breaches my pursed lips. The tears swell as they enrage, and fall like little snowstorms, adding to the many frozen ravines and sterns of white that eclipse any plant life from my view, only to carry onward and punish those with joy in their lives. Circling my head before they begin their great journey across the Earth, to a pocket where civilization is not at war, where happiness is once again permitted. I can feel them smirk before they leave; wry smiles at their very existence, born from my heart at its blackest.
More snowflakes fall, through the dense clouds, lying broken on the ground. My eyes gazed past the gorge of snow and up to the sky; a veil fills, covering any sign of blue with the torrid sheet of smoke hung over the stars. In the distance the horizon turned a deep green, slowly spilling through the veil, streaming across until all above is glowing a translucent lime. Hail was due to fall. Usually I would tunnel through the snow, but an icy sheen glazed the surfaces around me. Peering out of the cove that arced around me, something caught my eye; a dense forest, seemingly endless, not too far from where I stood.
As the sun glared green, I had no choice; I started towards the pocket in the vast white. Step by step the trees got bigger and bigger; changing from distant sprites to gargantuan figures that towered above me. They stood in a way that formed a maze through the forest, spanning past the dark as far as the eye could see. As I entered a tapping started; hail ferociously slamming into the great trees, still fixated like guardians, merely brushing them aside with no scars to tell the tale. I ventured deeper until the tapping was little more than a distant memory ringing in my ears. I could only see the giant shapes staring, nothing of my surroundings. Foliage would brush past my ankle and send a shiver up my spine; it seems this place is endless, the only difference between the wooded corridors being the slight difference in the green light that traces through the branches above.
The myriad of dark stretches went on for miles; on and on I went, scrambling through the dense vegetation as best I could, all the time a glint of green shining in the corner of my eye, reminding me why I’m here in the first place. A crack accompanied every footstep, with the melancholy of a metronome as I travelled across the sea of dead branches; discarded from the great oaks like a snake would its skin. Up ahead the sketches of light stretched further than elsewhere; there were no trees, a small opening in a deep forest that continued on and on in peaceful repetition. As I crept into the small opening the new light source struck my eyes; blinding me momentarily before a gentle dim washed over my sight. A shrine of light in the middle of a forest of darkness; overgrown plant life binding over the ground in twists.
Suddenly my heart sunk; corpses lay strewn across the small area, faces in the dirt, limbs falling through their bodies at odd angles. Cloths draped around their lifeless skin like makeshift clothes, torn to pieces, vines sprouting through the tears and wrapping around the dead. I knelt over to see their faces. A wretched despair hung over each expression, no peace in their souls, just a powerful hatred painted on blank faces. As the light flickered between the darkness, my mind played tricks on me; the faces blinking, talking, staring at me, but every time I’d shake my head and be greeted with the same blank malice that would drown their expressions.
The stench of death finally reached my lungs; slowly oozing through my body, sifting between my senses, the putrid scent clinging to my nostrils. My vision built a new circumference as it reached my brain, doubling what I could see for a moment. I had to get back into the comforting darkness of the mazes that lined the shrine. As I stood and began to move, a cold grip clenched my bare ankle. A shiver shone over my entire skeleton, jolting the bones in my figure tips. I wished I could have just stayed fixated on the darkness ahead, waiting for the icy hold to unclamp itself from me, but I looked down. My eyes drifting of their own accord, as much as I tried to stay, eyes tightly closed.
A hand. White and decaying, body still face-down, lifeless. A rogue arm outstretched from a pile of sorrow; I moved closer to the corpse, and kneeled to see its face. The same wrought expression filled its face, only this time hidden behind a smile. I just stood, not moving, fixated on the unblinking face grinning, gazing past the blades of grass between dead leaves and fallen branches. I didn’t want to move, in case it would mimic me and jolt to attention, as much as I knew it was an impossibility, all logic escaped my mind, and further dug me into a sense of trickery and paranoia. I kept telling myself it was the darkness casting false shadows, that my mind was playing with me, but still I stayed completely static, trying not to let a breath enter the atmosphere. A hand cannot grip so tight out of pure coincidence of passing.
After several moments passed, my eyes left the jeering face and I walked away, the hand slouching to the ground. As I turned before I left the shrine, the corner of my eye caught a look of grimace on the body, hand now resting on the vines that entwine the forest. I didn’t take the time to look again; I was just pleased to be back between the trees. There was something so comforting about them, like they could protect me from what the light could not. I carried on making my way through the endless labyrinth; pace quickening the further I went, but never turning back. I only noticed I’d reach an exit when light spilled over my body. A warm winter sun soothed my spirits as I stepped out into the vast snowscape once again.
My senses were invigorated after the deep depression that filled the forest. To see the fat sun once again bloated as it shines raised a smile to my face, shrouding the darkness behind me. It was a different sun from last time; no green sky, not staring from above, but from the horizon. Escaping the forest had brought a new day to pass. Looking over at the flaming ball nearing the mountains, I saw another endless forest covered in shadow, to sun forcing the scale to lapse into itself, forming a mist that floated over the distance woodland. I wondered if the two forests were somehow connected, I could see the end of neither, they just spanned on and on until the Earth obscured it from my view.
I turned again to see the rest of the land. An arcane hamlet, joined to my by a twisting path up a small valley, as if it had appeared from nowhere. The mountains behind it shone through the transparent village, lined with an uncertainly. It was as if it was hardly there at all; on the edge of existence itself, its life teetering as the withering winds tore through the sky around it. I began toward it; there was nowhere else to go, and nightfall could burst from the sky at any moment. Making my way up the path, at certain angles the ghostly destination up ahead would disappear from view, only to reaffirm itself in my vision once again. The path was lined with flowers, filling my nostrils with a summer that I longed for; on one side the plants flourished, blossoming as I walked, spreading beauty, on the other nothing but withered weeds, festering beneath blades of grass that surround it. The only colours were black and white, falling into each as vermin chewed on what remained.
A large gate greeted my arrival, slightly open, now solid as I got closer. I entered and everything stopped, not a tick tocked wherever my senses searched. It was like nothing, the blistering winds had stopped, all sounds gone, even as I moved across the gravel that lined pathways. Maybe I was on the edge of existence, a capsule that time forgot, that wasn’t really there at all, and by chance appeared in this reality. Nothing stirred, no atmosphere filled my soul, no feeling crossed my palms, all I had was the vision that stared me in the face, a ghost town that had been torn together by some twist of fate, and born into a world that didn’t know it existed.
I started to seek out something; anything. I would enter the bland buildings that filled the small town. All empty, crippled of all possessions and passion, faceless openings for the people that didn’t live here to sleep. They just went on and on, all exactly as the one before, no memories carved into its history, no history at all, just barely here by a thread slipping down into oblivion. Finally, something different came into view, bigger than the others, this one with double doors. One was slamming open and closed, like the wind was whipping it back and forth, but no wind nor sound accompanied it. I moved closer, and still nothing, a looming silence still arced over this place.
The door stopped open as a got close to it, welcoming me in. Furniture filled this building; small oak stools and tables littered every corner, at the far corner a staircase lead up to a stone ceiling. As I took a closer look at the tables, I noticed that people were sat. Every seat was filled by someone, frozen like the rest of the town, barely visible until I was close enough. Each one looked worried, although it was hard to tell. As I took in a breath, a plume of cloud rushed toward my mouth from another, one that was still. A cackling began in my mind, like radio frequency, before a voice spoke out.
“Is he okay…?”
The cackling took over again and went back to static. I looked deep into the face, I knew it, but couldn’t think where from. A tear formed in my eye and dropped to the floor, I don’t know why. I looked down, past my quivering hand; the tear was gone. Lost in the emotionless pit that is this place. I moved to another body and breathed in another wisp of smoke.
“What’s wro…”
Again it stopped. Tears began to run down my face, falling into an emptiness below, my whole body now shaking. I didn’t know what was happening. Deep inside these words meant something, these faces struck me, but I didn’t know why. I could have gone on forever, inhaling the lost words of lost friends, trying to exhale the truth somewhere along the line, but I walked away. Shaking, letting emotion flow from my essence onto the dead ground below. I didn’t know why these tears swelled, but I couldn’t stop, fingers trembling as my veins pulsed. I kept walking away, further past the ghost town that weaved these feelings, through damp, cobbled walkways that left no feeling on my body, spiralling deeper and deeper into what once looked a small town. Small in weight, but not in flesh.
Difference once again greeted me; a shoddy metal gate, rusty and hanging from the hinges, stood in front of me, grass ahead. It was graveyard. Slabs of cold rock pointing from the ground as a last ditch attempt to escape death.
At the end of the graveyard a man stood, crouching over an open hole in front of a neat tombstone. He was real, not like the frozen figures before, he was shaking, wiping his eyes, and staring deep into the rock. I walked up to him, but he couldn’t hear me; he was silent too, despite his crying. Maybe I didn’t exist this time? I edged in closer; it was me, my body hunched seeping tears to the grass. I looked across to the grave, my name printed deep.
My head went numb, all feeling lost, all senses scattered. I couldn’t be dead. Lights flashed in my eyes. On and off, on and off, on a off…
*
Blinking, I awake; a gentle beep accompanies the slurred chatter going on in the background. White all around me, my hearing is beginning to get slightly better.
“He’s starting to wake up from time to time,” a voice said.
“But it’s still very severe. He never stays awake for more than a few minutes.”
I try to speak but my throat is blocked, not even air can escape.
“So there’s no chance for him, then?” a stuttering voice asked, that of a woman.
“We’ll try our best bu…”
Again I start to blink and my hearing closes down. The white slowly turns to black…
*
Soaring above the skies, above plains of beauty, like an angel I look down upon a beautiful land. I’m back where I used to be, above the snowy drifts that scatter the ground. This time the green sky has gone, instead the bright sun shines peacefully across this place, bathing it in an orange glow. I move further to the great forest; the huge guardians are nothing but sprouting youth of a new wood, animals searching the green wonderland. The shrine between the trees sparkles, no longer filled with bodies but instead a gentle stream.
I pass the forest, speeding through the wind to the town. No longer does it stand; instead the flower-laden path leads to an empty view. Laughter and chatter fills my ears, joyful giggling between a group of people who no longer exist in my world. I reach a graveyard, flowers on every stone. The hunched man now stands proud, casting no shadow over my grave.
A perfect snowflake falls onto the tombstone, before melting to nothing…
I’ve lost count of those I’ve left raging from my search for perfection. Each one spiralling up towards the heavens and from my memory. No dashes in the snow to show for those my emotion created, just drifts and drifts that build stronger and colder with each breath that breaches my pursed lips. The tears swell as they enrage, and fall like little snowstorms, adding to the many frozen ravines and sterns of white that eclipse any plant life from my view, only to carry onward and punish those with joy in their lives. Circling my head before they begin their great journey across the Earth, to a pocket where civilization is not at war, where happiness is once again permitted. I can feel them smirk before they leave; wry smiles at their very existence, born from my heart at its blackest.
More snowflakes fall, through the dense clouds, lying broken on the ground. My eyes gazed past the gorge of snow and up to the sky; a veil fills, covering any sign of blue with the torrid sheet of smoke hung over the stars. In the distance the horizon turned a deep green, slowly spilling through the veil, streaming across until all above is glowing a translucent lime. Hail was due to fall. Usually I would tunnel through the snow, but an icy sheen glazed the surfaces around me. Peering out of the cove that arced around me, something caught my eye; a dense forest, seemingly endless, not too far from where I stood.
As the sun glared green, I had no choice; I started towards the pocket in the vast white. Step by step the trees got bigger and bigger; changing from distant sprites to gargantuan figures that towered above me. They stood in a way that formed a maze through the forest, spanning past the dark as far as the eye could see. As I entered a tapping started; hail ferociously slamming into the great trees, still fixated like guardians, merely brushing them aside with no scars to tell the tale. I ventured deeper until the tapping was little more than a distant memory ringing in my ears. I could only see the giant shapes staring, nothing of my surroundings. Foliage would brush past my ankle and send a shiver up my spine; it seems this place is endless, the only difference between the wooded corridors being the slight difference in the green light that traces through the branches above.
The myriad of dark stretches went on for miles; on and on I went, scrambling through the dense vegetation as best I could, all the time a glint of green shining in the corner of my eye, reminding me why I’m here in the first place. A crack accompanied every footstep, with the melancholy of a metronome as I travelled across the sea of dead branches; discarded from the great oaks like a snake would its skin. Up ahead the sketches of light stretched further than elsewhere; there were no trees, a small opening in a deep forest that continued on and on in peaceful repetition. As I crept into the small opening the new light source struck my eyes; blinding me momentarily before a gentle dim washed over my sight. A shrine of light in the middle of a forest of darkness; overgrown plant life binding over the ground in twists.
Suddenly my heart sunk; corpses lay strewn across the small area, faces in the dirt, limbs falling through their bodies at odd angles. Cloths draped around their lifeless skin like makeshift clothes, torn to pieces, vines sprouting through the tears and wrapping around the dead. I knelt over to see their faces. A wretched despair hung over each expression, no peace in their souls, just a powerful hatred painted on blank faces. As the light flickered between the darkness, my mind played tricks on me; the faces blinking, talking, staring at me, but every time I’d shake my head and be greeted with the same blank malice that would drown their expressions.
The stench of death finally reached my lungs; slowly oozing through my body, sifting between my senses, the putrid scent clinging to my nostrils. My vision built a new circumference as it reached my brain, doubling what I could see for a moment. I had to get back into the comforting darkness of the mazes that lined the shrine. As I stood and began to move, a cold grip clenched my bare ankle. A shiver shone over my entire skeleton, jolting the bones in my figure tips. I wished I could have just stayed fixated on the darkness ahead, waiting for the icy hold to unclamp itself from me, but I looked down. My eyes drifting of their own accord, as much as I tried to stay, eyes tightly closed.
A hand. White and decaying, body still face-down, lifeless. A rogue arm outstretched from a pile of sorrow; I moved closer to the corpse, and kneeled to see its face. The same wrought expression filled its face, only this time hidden behind a smile. I just stood, not moving, fixated on the unblinking face grinning, gazing past the blades of grass between dead leaves and fallen branches. I didn’t want to move, in case it would mimic me and jolt to attention, as much as I knew it was an impossibility, all logic escaped my mind, and further dug me into a sense of trickery and paranoia. I kept telling myself it was the darkness casting false shadows, that my mind was playing with me, but still I stayed completely static, trying not to let a breath enter the atmosphere. A hand cannot grip so tight out of pure coincidence of passing.
After several moments passed, my eyes left the jeering face and I walked away, the hand slouching to the ground. As I turned before I left the shrine, the corner of my eye caught a look of grimace on the body, hand now resting on the vines that entwine the forest. I didn’t take the time to look again; I was just pleased to be back between the trees. There was something so comforting about them, like they could protect me from what the light could not. I carried on making my way through the endless labyrinth; pace quickening the further I went, but never turning back. I only noticed I’d reach an exit when light spilled over my body. A warm winter sun soothed my spirits as I stepped out into the vast snowscape once again.
My senses were invigorated after the deep depression that filled the forest. To see the fat sun once again bloated as it shines raised a smile to my face, shrouding the darkness behind me. It was a different sun from last time; no green sky, not staring from above, but from the horizon. Escaping the forest had brought a new day to pass. Looking over at the flaming ball nearing the mountains, I saw another endless forest covered in shadow, to sun forcing the scale to lapse into itself, forming a mist that floated over the distance woodland. I wondered if the two forests were somehow connected, I could see the end of neither, they just spanned on and on until the Earth obscured it from my view.
I turned again to see the rest of the land. An arcane hamlet, joined to my by a twisting path up a small valley, as if it had appeared from nowhere. The mountains behind it shone through the transparent village, lined with an uncertainly. It was as if it was hardly there at all; on the edge of existence itself, its life teetering as the withering winds tore through the sky around it. I began toward it; there was nowhere else to go, and nightfall could burst from the sky at any moment. Making my way up the path, at certain angles the ghostly destination up ahead would disappear from view, only to reaffirm itself in my vision once again. The path was lined with flowers, filling my nostrils with a summer that I longed for; on one side the plants flourished, blossoming as I walked, spreading beauty, on the other nothing but withered weeds, festering beneath blades of grass that surround it. The only colours were black and white, falling into each as vermin chewed on what remained.
A large gate greeted my arrival, slightly open, now solid as I got closer. I entered and everything stopped, not a tick tocked wherever my senses searched. It was like nothing, the blistering winds had stopped, all sounds gone, even as I moved across the gravel that lined pathways. Maybe I was on the edge of existence, a capsule that time forgot, that wasn’t really there at all, and by chance appeared in this reality. Nothing stirred, no atmosphere filled my soul, no feeling crossed my palms, all I had was the vision that stared me in the face, a ghost town that had been torn together by some twist of fate, and born into a world that didn’t know it existed.
I started to seek out something; anything. I would enter the bland buildings that filled the small town. All empty, crippled of all possessions and passion, faceless openings for the people that didn’t live here to sleep. They just went on and on, all exactly as the one before, no memories carved into its history, no history at all, just barely here by a thread slipping down into oblivion. Finally, something different came into view, bigger than the others, this one with double doors. One was slamming open and closed, like the wind was whipping it back and forth, but no wind nor sound accompanied it. I moved closer, and still nothing, a looming silence still arced over this place.
The door stopped open as a got close to it, welcoming me in. Furniture filled this building; small oak stools and tables littered every corner, at the far corner a staircase lead up to a stone ceiling. As I took a closer look at the tables, I noticed that people were sat. Every seat was filled by someone, frozen like the rest of the town, barely visible until I was close enough. Each one looked worried, although it was hard to tell. As I took in a breath, a plume of cloud rushed toward my mouth from another, one that was still. A cackling began in my mind, like radio frequency, before a voice spoke out.
“Is he okay…?”
The cackling took over again and went back to static. I looked deep into the face, I knew it, but couldn’t think where from. A tear formed in my eye and dropped to the floor, I don’t know why. I looked down, past my quivering hand; the tear was gone. Lost in the emotionless pit that is this place. I moved to another body and breathed in another wisp of smoke.
“What’s wro…”
Again it stopped. Tears began to run down my face, falling into an emptiness below, my whole body now shaking. I didn’t know what was happening. Deep inside these words meant something, these faces struck me, but I didn’t know why. I could have gone on forever, inhaling the lost words of lost friends, trying to exhale the truth somewhere along the line, but I walked away. Shaking, letting emotion flow from my essence onto the dead ground below. I didn’t know why these tears swelled, but I couldn’t stop, fingers trembling as my veins pulsed. I kept walking away, further past the ghost town that weaved these feelings, through damp, cobbled walkways that left no feeling on my body, spiralling deeper and deeper into what once looked a small town. Small in weight, but not in flesh.
Difference once again greeted me; a shoddy metal gate, rusty and hanging from the hinges, stood in front of me, grass ahead. It was graveyard. Slabs of cold rock pointing from the ground as a last ditch attempt to escape death.
At the end of the graveyard a man stood, crouching over an open hole in front of a neat tombstone. He was real, not like the frozen figures before, he was shaking, wiping his eyes, and staring deep into the rock. I walked up to him, but he couldn’t hear me; he was silent too, despite his crying. Maybe I didn’t exist this time? I edged in closer; it was me, my body hunched seeping tears to the grass. I looked across to the grave, my name printed deep.
My head went numb, all feeling lost, all senses scattered. I couldn’t be dead. Lights flashed in my eyes. On and off, on and off, on a off…
*
Blinking, I awake; a gentle beep accompanies the slurred chatter going on in the background. White all around me, my hearing is beginning to get slightly better.
“He’s starting to wake up from time to time,” a voice said.
“But it’s still very severe. He never stays awake for more than a few minutes.”
I try to speak but my throat is blocked, not even air can escape.
“So there’s no chance for him, then?” a stuttering voice asked, that of a woman.
“We’ll try our best bu…”
Again I start to blink and my hearing closes down. The white slowly turns to black…
*
Soaring above the skies, above plains of beauty, like an angel I look down upon a beautiful land. I’m back where I used to be, above the snowy drifts that scatter the ground. This time the green sky has gone, instead the bright sun shines peacefully across this place, bathing it in an orange glow. I move further to the great forest; the huge guardians are nothing but sprouting youth of a new wood, animals searching the green wonderland. The shrine between the trees sparkles, no longer filled with bodies but instead a gentle stream.
I pass the forest, speeding through the wind to the town. No longer does it stand; instead the flower-laden path leads to an empty view. Laughter and chatter fills my ears, joyful giggling between a group of people who no longer exist in my world. I reach a graveyard, flowers on every stone. The hunched man now stands proud, casting no shadow over my grave.
A perfect snowflake falls onto the tombstone, before melting to nothing…
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