"There once was a forest in a forlorn and faceless land

Tucked away in the corner by man’s unwavering hand

Rotting in the bask of a glittering metropolis.

It loomed lamentably in the darkness, easy to miss.

I’d journey to it often in the damp and husky night

Drifting away from the droning blurs of the city light,

 The thick thorny branches of trees twisting into the sky

Haunted by the hollow shriek of a banshee’s echoed cry.

Dwindled logs laid themselves before me as if graves

In an unkempt graveyard, within it souls of lowly knaves

Tortured between the bark, trapped in an endless agony,

Anguished by dismissal, withering woes beneath the tree.

These were ghouls that dripped from the leaves and hovered in the dark

Years and years oozing out carvings like a rot in the bark.

A cadaverous stench slithered up from the twisted roots

And a gelid breeze mimicked the songs of men with their flutes.

Such men were shadows, discarded by the world, abandoned,

Tossed away like the works of a blasphemer, shushed and shunned,

Every branch crafting the form of such ancient figures.

Such a realm reflected upon with only mere sniggers,

As the moon gazed on, shrouded by a thick and heavy cloud

And the ghosts of another dying world bellowed and howled.

I had walked among such a withered and waning woodland

And worried with deep despair; was I another shadow?"

All the remaining whispers faded away among the trickling slithers of water that snaked among the darkened woodland floor. Deep, husky night crept in through slender branches and neither the chimes of far-off birds nor the buzz of lowly insects could be heard. The forest was static. Empty. A forgotten void, a cemetery, a kaleidoscope of memory, lives of old, meshed into untraceable obscurity. All that remained was the shallow stream, slinking its way among clumps of mud and the whispering wisps of grass, like the last pump of blood through a dying vein. Among this aqua blood flowed a solitary knife, twisting and turning downstream, submerged under the currents, fading into obscurity like all it touched, all it had touched.

When I awoke, the last of the light was already receding. I could hardly make out the faces in the crumpled picture I now clutched between my fingers. I hunch over like some discarded foetus, gazing into the frozen image. Who are they? The photograph has etched into it creases, wrinkles of a sort, telling of age, and the wounds of love. Yet there are people inside this image, strung up like puppets, hung in limbo, their smiles so permanent, yet their glow remains. Who are they? I am drawn to them - recognise them, even - but I am not among them in this image. They are like foreign voyagers, held captive in my fragile time capsule. I may know their faces, but their eyes obscure me. I do know them. But who are they?

The last tendrils of light that seeps in from behind my drooping curtains now lavish my crinkled capsule and bless it with flourishes of colour, blotches of daylight, bright clothes, sparkles of sun, shiny green shrubbery, warm smiles. Yet the colour is beginning to fade. All around me this house is held in limbo. I drift from room to room, I touch the doors, stroke the walls, gaze into the mirrors, and yet my presence makes no dent on this place. I feel cryogenic, quietly growing, moving into something, but nevertheless, I am frozen.

This house too, it may be frozen, but it still moves and grows. Plates stack up from dust, curtains crease in ways I do not remember, sofas shift in their solitude. Sometimes, far above me, I hear the warped contortion of some mutating mass. There is life outside this barren womb, but when I peer out the windows, I find only darkness. There are street lamps, but their gleam is harsh, toxic, staining, and artificial. The light makes me heavy, weary. Yet I still crave light. It scalds my eyes, and so I squint, turning to my reflection in the window, cast out onto this blackened night. My face, too, is frozen. It lacks the wrinkles of age, the wear and tear years of emotion sketch onto a face. It is young, smooth, and pale. It is alone.

The roads, now below my feet, lay in dormant slumber. Deep cracks have formed, and the tarmac reeks of neglect. Houses hang low in the deep dusk, huddled yet solitary. Lights hang from overhead, electric buzzing the only noise to be heard; a constant, static droning, sucking away at my sanity moment by moment. The deep electric currents seep into the puddles of shadow that slather every house, parked car and bend in the crooked road, yet fail to penetrate, fail to illuminate. The darkness is everlasting, the light receding the very moment it emerges. Amidst the night I think I can make out markings on the road that I had once walked among, some time ago, but the dusk shrouds my memory, and the dangling bulbs of neon replace whatever recollection with an idle headache. I think I know this place, but it has mutated so much since I last wandered among its roots that it is unfamiliar. Yet the cracks in the road remain.

Among this static void I am drawn to a faint whispering of trees, and I follow their path. Before me now stands a graveyard, each spike of the twisted metal fence an arrogant monolith, piercing up into the blackened sky. The trees kiss the humid air above the graves, playing among themselves, the last remnants of life reaching out to the climax of decay. I approach one of the stones, a jagged, lopsided structure, and I cannot read any of the words. I prefer it this way. I am less tempted into pained recollection, trying to figure out if I can identify them. To my eye, it is just a stone, but to my mind it is a flower, the final blossom of the body below. Is life the full blooming of our souls, or just the seed of decay, sown out into the world destined to flourish into this macabre eternal testimony of suffering? Is this grief I feel a momentary illness or a climax of my being?

Though every stone stands together, I cannot help but sense a sombre isolation from one grave to the next. The stones do know one another, see one another, sit beside one another, as a person would. But their contents are submerged, buried, unknowable. Are they fresh, or long since decomposed? I cannot shake this anxiety, this trembling in my extremities as the uncertainty of what lies below my feet overcomes me. To be a corpse is to be forgotten, you are only seen as the stone that stands in your place. To be dead is to be disregarded, tucked away, shushed, and shunned like the works of some blasphemer. Being unable to read whatever cutesy quote that may be inscribed on one grave, or another, makes this place feel much more sincere. Such words are a mockery, a shallow replica of identity. Soon my fear turns into enraged bitterness, as I see that these souls are not remembered, not even recognised. Who would dare bury a soul so deep and still pretend to cherish its memory?

All the while as I brood over these solemn stones, a flock of birds flail among the blotted and cluttered night sky. I gaze up at them, perplexed. They soar above me stroking against the closeted clouds, swooshing, and swirling, all their energy emitted in one continuous movement, before soon they merge into the blackened mist and drift out of sight. I see them floating in that vast emptiness and I find a strange kinship in them. Yet, they seem at peace. They are in a desolate and barren land, crowded together like sheep to a slaughterhouse, yet they still chirp among the stars. It is that courage which perplexes me, to sing in the face of annihilation.

Leaves rustle by my boots, once bright and colourful and rejuvenated by the potency of spring, they now wither, caked in mud, and trampled by my aching feet which now find themselves flaccid, dragging along the ground as the waving of long slender branches direct me forth. One lonesome lamppost protrudes from the ground, erected in anger, sparkling above me, and I gaze up through its firm, rigid body, a tyrannical stiffness bolting it still. The light is blinding. I cannot find my way.

I soon find myself instead standing by a branchless tree, stemming up from the murky ground, nestled within a dense woodland. The air is cooler here, and faint echoes hover through the wind. I swear I hear a banshee’s cry, some distance away, perhaps from a valley, and I don’t think it is calling for me. They say Banshees are lonesome women, dressed in white, who carry the grief of foreboding tragedy, the loss of a loved one. I wish she would come to me. I place my hand now against this naked tree, feeling every etch of bark - there may still be spirits trapped among it. Who else once walked through these woodlands? Perhaps if I felt intensely enough, I could trace their footprints, and follow their path. But the path before me is empty.

I find myself standing atop a sharp incline, trees poking out at an angle, and far below a shallow stream bleeding along the woodland floor. I raise my hand to the branches, which twist in the night sky, mimicking nostalgic silhouettes of playthings, of pets, of people I used to know. I feel a sudden tingling in my palm, and as the branches brush through my fingers I remember the sensation of touch. I feel daylight searing through me, and as my eyes close, I see a hand holding my own.

I approach this stream, too shallow to even be submerged in, and grope the ripples of silky water. The forest is empty, even the wind has subsided, and in this barren dusk, the flowing of water is my only sense of time. I feel my dying cells drifting from my hand and being carried away, assimilated into the land of which birthed me. It is this touch, the creases and smooth carvings of soft, sensitive skin that reminds me once more of the daylight. There is a person I know, somewhere. I tilt my head down, the water now licking my ear, and I listen to the faint voice of the water and whisper my reply. They say sound carries far over water, and I wonder where my words have been taken. I pray they may be found. Yet as I stand, nature’s blood-trickling from my face, I see a deep gash in the ground before me. Some obtuse, bulging pipe stabs through from the ground, and vomits out of it clots of water. Even in this moment of intimacy that hard, urban world wants to wrench itself back inside me. It is as if these metal tendrils wish to push me further away, brush me away like crumpled litter.

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I stand atop the crest of a hill, balding patches of grass dancing in the glimmers of moonlight. Before me, obscured by a thin line of trees, those same glaring street lights twinkle and flash and blink on and off - some strange aberration, some mutating organism, so intrusive, yet so far away. From over here, I feel far away, but when I am over there, I feel engulfed. Both within and without, my loneliness persists. The darkness obscures me, but the light eviscerates me. Am I just a shadow?

 On my way home, I pass a gaping tunnel, abandoned and abominable, gulping down dirges of echoing darkness. It seems like it is drawing me in, wanting to eat me. My gaze is pulled in, but, feeling uneasy, I pull away.

I pick up the photograph once more, scanning the image, trying to encounter my own reflection amidst the vivid vignette. The figures clutch one another in a warm embrace, their smiles are impossibly wide, yet their skin nevertheless is hardly stretched. Their warmth is mocking me.

 Suddenly, an alarmed buzz echoes from a different room. I hurry over, and on an empty table lurks a solitary telephone. Gingerly, I pick it up with shivering fingers and press the cold hard plastic against my flesh…

The voices are murmured, strangled even, unintelligible, drowned out by croaks of static. They seem urgent, strained, dishevelled, hoarse, shrieking. They are far away. I feel a surge of panic overcome me and I wrench the phone away from my head.

Just as I do so, the television behind me splutters and churns into life. Piercing, screeching static raptures into the room and I gaze into it aghast. Soon the static begins to fade, and what remains is a grainy, pixelated, jumpy black and white image. Something about it feels sinister. And then I appeared. I didn’t recognise myself at first, but my long, ghostly face is unmistakable. I am walking by slowly, the image cutting frames, distorted, as I turn to what must be the camera. I stare back at myself. And then I am gone, and the screen turns to black.

Within an instant I find myself stammering into the woods wielding a torch that pulsates, hot in my hand. I shine the light from trunks to branches and through bends and down slopes until some far away light answers my call. It is a blinking, swaying light that dances between the pillars of trees. My first instinct is to duck amidst the shrubbery, gazing upwards into the sky. I begin to pray for daylight. The moment fades and I jolt back upwards, and the light is gone. I make my way home again, exhausted and overwhelmed. I do not know if it was just my laboured breathing, but as I had kneeled among the ferns, I could have sworn I heard an echoed cry, perhaps from the bottom of the valley, down by the stream.

Sleep is not easy. I squirm and struggle among the sheets, which wash over me like a tidal wave. Yet I still feel blazing hot, perhaps the watery sensation is sweat. I feel clamped down, oppressed, unable to move, and it is strange, for not far outside I can feel faint flickers of daylight. Yet my paralysis resumes. Sometimes I wake myself up with my pained groaning, and lie dormant under some invisible, heavy weight, and a stinging agony pulsating from one arm, my head light and blurred colours sloshing around in my eyes. Sometimes, I begin to dream.

First there is only blackness, but soon that piercing static begins to echo. However, as if on cue, other noises approach, like some foreign cacophony. There is muffled, far off laughter, idle chatting. The noise is vibrant, but still there is nothing to see. Then a primordial, droning rumble builds, and I gaze into that gaping tunnel. The tunnel itself is crumbling, a door hanging ajar, greenery wrapping itself over it like a slithering noose. I can now also make out the soft trickles of the stream, and I distinguish the static alongside occasional beeps and blurts as the noise of a television. The voices grow closer as suddenly, I find myself hovering towards the tunnel like a moth towards a lamp. For some reason, there is an unwavering stench of blood. The droning suddenly builds, and all the noises merge into this panicked shrieking and I zoom ever closer until I can no longer see the perimeter of the tunnel and my vision begins to spiral and soon, I am sucked back into the blackness once more, all brief flickers of daylight vanished yet again. However, as the blackness consumes me further and further, I still make out subliminal flashes of colour, and they persist until my eyes open, only to peer out the window to the same hollow, husky night.

These dreams have become more frequent. The light I envision, I cannot tell if it is what I see or what I feel. It is warm, enticing, yet elusive. It entrances me, and simultaneously confuses me. It is so blotchy and unfocused I can make out no concrete image, like the neon boca of some quixotic city backdrop. Quixotic is the feeling that lingers with me in such dreams, despite their oppressive nature. There is something mystical, idealistic, hidden in its depth, something I feel inclined to reach. Nevertheless, it intimidates me. As I gaze around my empty house and each empty room, any hope of light feels truly forlorn.

The television turns on for me again. Just as before, strained static morphs into shaky, jittery, monochrome video and I see myself, stumbling and lurching, this time wielding a torch, wobbling from one side of the frame to the other. As I watch this the phone by my side begins to vibrate. I place it to my ear again, expecting more garbled muffled noises, still nervous but simultaneously I am beginning to feel numb.

The voices still seem far away, further in fact. They are screaming. They flourish into an almighty, wailing chorus, echoing… My name. Soon all that is left is a muffled sob, distorted by the crackling of the connection, which promptly cuts. As it does so, the television fades to black.

I cannot piece together these instances. There may be some internal rhythm, but whatever that rhythm, what possible cause and effect there may be, eludes me. I think it is best to accept this strangeness as a banal quality of this land I now inhabit. It is taunting, tormenting, intoxicating, but it is now my home. It feels as if it is both the end of things, and some between-land, waiting to metamorphose into something greater. The static limbo I had come accustomed to remains, but something about it is starting to feel fleeting. My eyes are growing sorer, my feet heavier, my breath more forceful. It is as if my soul is disintegrating. I clench onto a cool glass of water, almost wanting to crush it in-between my fingers, watch the blood mingle with water, and the pain scuttle up my arm, which already throbs continuously, though I have long since stopped registering it. Just as I sip from the water and peer out my window, I sense something out of place. The sky is as blank as paper, and the trees continue their meek swaying in a gentle, yet increasingly gelid wind. The humidity in my house and the heaviness in the air has morphed into a sickly cold that begins to prick up my hairs. But is it the climate, or is it because I have noticed something? No house light is on, there is no traffic on the road. No more birds have since wandered the sky. I squint my eyes towards the halo of streetlight. There it is. Just beside the erected wooden pillar, there stands half a body. It is dark, silhouetted, it’s features warped and veiled, yet something tells me its invisible eyes are gazing right into my own. As I think this the figure suddenly contorts in a rapid motion and sprints along the road.

Without even an impulse I am now staggering after it, the weary heaviness in my bones momentarily subsiding as a surge of adrenaline pummels through me. In my sudden scramble out into the road I managed to obtain my torch, and I now stumble with it, scanning and probing into the shadows of the road, and soon through a field and now penetrating the cavernous opening to the looming woodland. I hear footsteps beside me, rustling like daggers in the grass, an opportunistic assassin plotting an ambush. Yet, I continue running onwards. In my desperate search – what of, I am not sure – the phone once more rumbles in my pocket, lashing against my thigh like the spasms of a dying animal. As I run, I hold it against my head. Through each narrow pathway, under every lurking tree, a deep, monotonous breathing now accompanies me. The adrenaline begins to subside, and terror now overwhelms me. I am alone in the dark. The relentless breathing is overlapped now with echoed screeching, shrieking cries for help, and alongside them… whispers of my name. The voice is soft, young. I run over fallen branches and trip and stumble over jagged roots as I begin to sway and tumble into a state of deliriousness, moonlight swirling above me. I almost topple over as now sudden barrages of bright sunlight annihilate my sight. These visions are where I am. They are in the woods, running joyfully in the daylight. I can… feel these images, too. I am not alone. The very moment these hallucinations appear they simultaneously dissipate, and I now find myself panting, feeling physically sick and catching my breath beside the stream. My skull feels as if it is gnawing its way out of my skin, as if my flesh is a shell in need of being cracked open. All the while I sense a figure rising behind my back. Is it rising from the stream itself? I am now frozen in place, pinned down, only able to slowly creep my head around. My eyes widen and my jaw flops open as I try to let out some form of trivial exclamation as a great white flare of divine magnitude spits and singes the very air before me and a sudden gust of blazing wind soars over my skin. The light is too much. I hear a reverberating thud and a vibration ripples through me. I think I can smell fresh blood.

I am soaked through and through in a thick, drooping wetness. My body is boiled through, yet the water is achingly cold. I collapse down onto my bed, once more feeling the thin crumpled paper of the photograph in my fingers. The wetness stains it, warps the colours. Even this picture I can no longer touch. I do know these people. I want to know who they are. I want to be with them. When have I last been touched? But now as I gaze in torment, I find my dripping figures have distorted the faces of those in the photograph. There is someone young, my age in fact, dressed in serene white, playfully holding a small silver camera. As I touch the broken image a shockwave of grief now channels through me and my muscles grow stiff. Where is she? The people in the photograph hold their hands as if there is nothing to it. With my own free hand, I enquire about my own body, slithering it over my torso, searching for scars of touch.

I toss the photograph aside, one final time. I lean my head against the bed, and I grope the ripples of the bed covers, feeling their currents, the gentle flow, the faint static whisper of my suburban tomb that encompasses me. When I feel the bed I feel the stream, and I once more begin to whisper. My mind wanders these shadowy woodlands, roams detached from my body, a strange lightness to it, a relinquishment. Though I cannot see them, for the first time, I begin to sense the presence of other shadows in this woodland, lingering in the edge of my vision, both beside me, and forever eluding me. They exist yet torment me with detachment. They are spirits, dead and lost.

My spirit may too be lost here, in this land, unshackled from my withering neglected body, and set free into the very organs of the holy land which morphed me out of its angelic clay. Is death an embrace? Is it that ecstatic, euphoric serendipity, that orgasmic unity after a journey of torment? Is it peace with the light that pains me so? I pray I can head there, but I feel still anchored to the ground. Can I fly above this void, or will I ever be tethered to my body, rotting in this barren hell? Where will my soul make it’s rest? Will it cocoon itself within some old, wizened bark of a tree? Will it nestle into the leaves that snigger and play among the fractured moonlight? Will it sleep among the tender tendrils of grass that swirl along the horizon? Will it submerge between the shallow waters of the stream and slide between the rocks? Or will it plummet into that endless sky and join the birds? Will it be touched again? Or will it just drift among this land, unsettled, anchored yet adrift, observed yet unseen, alone? 

To settle this uncertainty is now what tantalises me. The knife is cool and slender in my fist, smooth yet firm, as if ready to pounce. I put it aside. I sit and watch the television - though it is only static, the steady noise and flicker of electronic life gives me at least a hint of comfort. My phone rings again. I expect more static, more shrieking, perhaps a message from my Banshee…

“Please. Please, wake up! You can’t stay there, please, you must come back to us! Please!...”

The voice is continuous, clear, and crying. As it murmurs and mumbles, the static before me begins once more to morph into video. It appears to be from a different place. It is looming over a body, clad in black, face-down in the stream.

I need answers, for my spirit can bear this torment no longer. I feel as if I am about to collapse, one final time, that my cycle is coming to an end. My soul is squirming inside me, ready to burst from my flesh, droop out of my orifices like a sticky vomit. I pant and stumble and soon I stand atop the muddy peak, gazing down at the stream. With my torch I scan the water. There is a body. Its face is turned towards me, eye open, half submerged in the stream. It is my face. I nearly topple forwards down the slope, gripping onto the tree for support, and losing grip of my knife in the process. I feel the urge to scream, but I am too exhausted, so I merely scamper away from the scene, the knife splashing into the water below me.

I have my answers. I am dead. This world is my servitude for the sin of my departure. This is, anyway, what I tell myself. There is only one last place to go. Forgive me, my thoughts grow briefer and blunter, my energy is focused and yet diminishing. I can only continue to trample through the forest. Forgive me.

Like a domineering judge weighing up my worth, the tunnel stands proud before me, and I slump before it ashamed. Inside that dark, shadowy mass, I think I can see a camera, staring back at me. No more can I take it; I bleed from my eye a tortured weep and my fists claw into the ground with anguish and my knees buckle. I glare into that abyss, and I scream amidst the tears, words I cannot recall. I do not have my answers, and I am alone. I do not know why I am alone, and that is what needs answering. Even gravestones stand with company. I kneel here by my lonesome. Why? Why me? Why have you left me? In my wretched angst that euphoric embrace comes to my mind again. I finally lift myself onto my feet, and I stagger towards the darkness. My body feels hotter and hotter, and the sharp throbbing of static in my head returns as my arm grows limp. I can hear faint chattering, and the churns of a television, the click of a camera, the drooling of the stream. I raise a hand to the abyss, I push the door aside, and I venture forth.

The womb is black at first, but a sudden burst of searing surging colour blasts into my retinas, and minute by minute they formulate into a clear image. I am laying in bed. Across from me a lamp is active, buzzing and gleaming into my squinting eyes. My door is open, and I follow it through. Light pierces through my curtains and I hover towards them, each step lighter than the last. With pale, ghoulish hands, I brush aside the curtains and the daylight stuns me. Outside I hear bellows of laughter, idle muttering, and the blossoms of life. They are there, and I know them. Between them and me there is only a window, a frozen, pale, rigid sheet of glass. But on that glass, there reflects a great visage of trees, waving in the wind, and it obscures my face from the outside world. Each person now stands in formation as a camera rises and snaps. It was pointed right at me. It observed me, yet I was unseen. To anyone looking into that image, my hollow face would be dismissed as a trick of the light, a mere shadow meshed among a false mirage of woodland.