The only time Lucas could remember feeling such a strong, surging current of fear circulating within him was when he uploaded the wrong document to an assessment submission, which left him unable to look the teacher in the eyes for the rest of the year.

But thank goodness this was only a dream. How he wished that moment was one though. His mind was racing and his thoughts were jumbled, my, what fine teeth you have, Grandma, being just one of them.

But fairy tales wouldn’t help him here. Warm, sticky saliva dripped onto his arm, causing him to jolt. He could smell the putrid breath of the beast as it inched closer. His heart raced and his hands fumbled around before his fingertips landed on a jagged stick. He grasped it, and it pricked his palm in response.

“FUUCK I DON’T THINK THIS IS A DREAM!!!” He screamed and lunged the stick at the creature’s eye. It flinched and he scrambled to get up, taking off at a pace faster than his grade 4 self during the 100m sprint.

The soil squished under his bare feet, making a squelching sound that caused him to shudder slightly. The trees shot upwards, the thick canopy consuming any traces of the sky. Some strands of light had managed to stray through and despite their sparseness, they were bright enough to irradiate the entire area. Shadows were few and far between, which Lucas was thankful for, as the otherwise hidden tree roots threatened to injure him, or at worst, trip him over and… well, you know the rest.

He could hear the thuds behind him becoming louder and louder. His breathing was ragged and his thighs were searing, but he continued flinging one leg in front of the other. Just as he thought things couldn’t get worse, he found himself approaching a dead end, walled off by trees. Left, or right, the beast would catch up to him eventually no matter which way he went. But there, just in front, a gaping hole in a tree, likely from decades of wood boring and decay caused by God knows what. Straight ahead it is, then.

He sucked his chest in, waited for one more stride and dove through.

He hadn’t made it all the way through, his abdomen caught on a section of bark that had dislodged from his rapid movement. He was in a crawl position, half his left leg sticking out, and he looked behind him to see the creature opening its jaws, expectant for a meal. He tugged and tugged, wood splinters lodging themselves into his hands, whilst those sharp, curved teeth closed in.

“COME ON” he roared, and with a violent force, he plunged forward through the hole, landing face-first into the wet soil. He swivelled his head around to see teeth slamming into the hard bark, followed by whimpering, and finally, the sounds of paws treading on the ground growing fainter.

Lucas spat out the dirt and stood up, his body too full of adrenaline to notice the gaping wound on his abdomen. He wiped his mouth and brought his head up. The trees ahead were sparser and the ground beneath him was well-worn.

The clouds were blood red and the skies were a deep orange with streaks of murky pink cutting through, converging to a point on the horizon straight ahead of him.

He stood there and in front, the two suns peeked at him, one unfathomably dark, and one blindingly bright.

~ ~ ~

The first thing he had to address was his wound. He crouched down and winced whilst he leaned over to inspect it. Thankfully, it didn’t seem like it was too deep, although it was rather lengthy, as it wrapped around the left half of his waist, so it would take a while to recover. He needed to wrap something around it since he couldn’t just let himself bleed all over the place.

He yanked at his left sleeve, but to no avail, as the polyester held steadfast. He found a serrated rock and picked it up, sawing through his left sleeve and then his right sleeve, before fastening them together and wrapping them around his waist.

Lucas squinted through the dirt and mud that had collected on his glasses and instinctively brought them down to the bottom of his shirt. He paused in the automatic movement, deciding that wiping it would likely make it worse.

The uneven rhythm of gravel and rocks crunching beneath his feet reverberated in the still atmosphere. He paused and listened. No cicadas chirping, no rustling of foliage, no screeching of owls. The day’s brightness had retreated and given way to the night’s signature blackness.

Silence before a storm, and what follows would be a hurricane of sin and immorality, and the ever-evil night would swallow him up whole. But not here. Here, the night was pleasantly warm, his clammy skin no longer stuck to his shirt and sending chills across his core. A delicate breeze tickled his cheek, circled him, curious, and then left as soon as it came.

The darkness was almost fluidlike, the black sun in the sky pouring it into the landscape, filling the air around him until he could not see what was directly in front of him.

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But then, colour. Dim at first, but slowly, subtly strengthening in its incandescence. Lucas opened his mouth slightly and closed his eyes, just for a moment, breathing in the unfamiliar atmosphere, letting it settle in his lungs, before forcing it out.

He opened his eyes. There were crushed rocks on the path, fluorescing into brilliant shades of green, blue, and red as if aurora borealis itself had descended into the crushed pebbles that were laid out before him.

He did not know how long it had been, but Lucas knew that it surely must have been a while, for the night had cooled and his legs were jelly. His hands were quivering and his breathing had become more and more irregular. Every bone in his body, every muscle, every vein screamed and pleaded with him to JUST STOP and he could not help but comply.

He stumbled sideways, his back colliding with a tree and he collapsed, sinking into the ground. A hacking cough escaped his throat and a splitting headache had begun to set in. His eyelids fought their way downwards.

“I can’t fall asleep here,” he whispered, feeling a fog settle in over his thoughts, enveloping his brain, whispering back, “You must.”

~ ~ ~

He came to, his eyes once again glued shut and body pinned.

If he opens his eyes, he’ll be back. He’ll finish that presentation and give Brent a good, hard talking to. He’ll receive a promotion, and be given a distinction for his course.

The wind had picked up, shifting the foliage amongst the ground which brushed against his hand.

His coworkers would have a team-building session and they’d be out on a picnic. Lucas would be sitting on the grass and leaves, and they’d think that he was asleep, but really he wasn’t. He’d wake up and surprise them. Liz would be the first to scream and-. His eyelids had loosened and light began to seep in, -it’ll be alright, and he opened his eyes, the unwelcome sight of the forest flooding his pupils, clawing at his brain, ripping it apart.

The right side of his head, around his temples, was being stabbed, being mutilated, and his eyes were tearing up. A lump in his throat formed and he clamped his jaw down, stopping himself from letting any noise escape. He twitched his left leg and attempted to bend it, to bring it closer to him, but the blistering pain in his abdomen forbade him from doing so. He bent his right leg, to greater success and planted his hands flat on the ground, straightening his arms so that he hovered just above the ground. He counted down in his head.

“Three…Two,” Lucas bent his elbows slightly and tensed his right leg, “AND… ONE” his leg spasmed, bringing him upwards as he grasped at the wood behind him. His heart skipped a beat, as his legs threatened to betray him, but his hands remained fastened to the tree for dear life.

He was up, as was the sun, and all the other abominable creatures that lurked in the area. One path.

Lucas took in the sight around him. That was all he could do, really. The forest was rather vibrant, with a multitude of greens and types of barks.

Peeling, stringy, smooth, cracked, in strips, am I seriously describing bark types right now?, ridges, yellowed, mossy, covered in ants, wrapped in vines, wow… bark was truly such a fascinating invention of trees, “Why, yes, sir the market is diverse as can be! Take a pick, any pick! Could I perhaps interest you in a pile of ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE BARK.”

He groaned an old man groan, that sort of involuntary noise that escapes from every ageing member of the human species once they stand up and every joint in their body decides to start clicking.

You really could just turn that into an instrument. Each joint clicks at a different key, and if you move different joints at different times, voila, you make a song.

He wondered if this happened to everyone left alone with only their inner voice. Though, he supposed, this was infinitely better than being chased back there.

But why wasn’t there anything else here? He pondered for a while, staring downwards at his shadow, and then upwards at the sun, instantly regretting it as his vision went completely white for a couple of seconds. In the few seconds that he was blinded, he thought he saw a brief outline of someone, perhaps a female, but it was gone as quickly as it came. A trick of the light, or maybe a trick of his mind. He couldn’t tell anymore.

He just kept ambling forward.

~ ~ ~

The white sun had reached its peak in the sky, now directly above Lucas. It was watching him, observing his misery and laughing uncontrollably at it. It made great care to highlight all his little missteps and stumbles, surely to upload it to a YouTube Ultimate Fail Compilation later on.

Yet, it wasn’t swelteringly hot. The climate here was a blessing, that was for sure, not too humid, not too hot, and not too cold. A goldilocks zone. Perhaps it was late spring, although he saw no flowers in bloom, except for a few stragglers on the side of the path that were likely weeds.

He noticed that the trees were more dispersed the further he went along the path, opening up to larger and larger patches of bright green grass, almost impossibly bright and saturated in its colour under the sun. Everything was more vibrant and energised in the light, as was he.

He was surprised that he could even walk. Just getting up was a feat in itself, but now he had travelled on for hours. With the lack of canopy and other sources of shade, he had been completely engulfed by the sunlight for a while now and it felt like a soothing bath after a long, hard day. His migraine had subsided and his abdomen now tingled unpleasantly, a considerable step up from the scorching sensation he had felt every time he took a step.

If the sun was laughing at him, it was more like that of an amused mother who chuckled at her child’s naivety but nevertheless adored and cared for her precious little cupcake. Lucas smiled, for the first time since he had come here. Perhaps it really would be alright.

A zephyr blew ripples across the open, grassy meadow. Ahead was the unmistakable, unnatural arrangement of rectangular stones glued together by cement. A petite, circular window lay directly in his line of sight.

And just like that, there was a wooden door left slightly ajar, beckoning him to come inside, and finally, rest.