My hands tremble against the heavy blade. It’s sinister how easy it holds. My breathing barely catches up to the thud of boots against the soft terrain of sopping fall foliage. Clamped to my side the worn bandage starts to unravel—the grotesque scales of skin exposed to the pelting rain. I grip the blade tighter in hopes of quarreling my foolish heart. The forest is guarded. Sunset slips through the breaks of wood. The smell of burnt flesh and hair is almost bearable to the muddied swamp water sticking to my skin, feeling me all over. The white linen draping my torso is now sun-aged and unkempt. More than the elements I feel it all over—the shadowy presence enveloping me from behind. Teasing me by barely touching, but just enough to cloud my judgment. I’m a flight risk. It knows. I’ll crumble to its hold the second I lose my footing. My ears ring as I draw closer to the canyon. A dark abysmal opening more welcoming than the rain dancing across my raw skin. The shadow changes shape. Now overhead and clawing through the overhead branches. Remitting the last bits of autumn to drape the blood-depraved corpses along the bank. Time feels amiss when the creature slows down again. Gliding down the barren banyan tree. A mass of bone and cartilage licking at my feet. Searing the hardened flesh there. I don’t know if I can speak anymore let alone scream—the mass of human and beast contracts with fluid motion. It trapezes along the bank. Scarfing the remains of life forms littered across the jagged path. It shifts again. Taking the form of a human. Human. Human. Human. Human. Human. Human. Human. Human. Human. Human. Human. Human. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN. HUMAN.
The word feels nonsensical as it wracks my brain. Over and over. My ears begin to bleed as I try to cease the noise. A mix of crimson and rough rainwater taints my palms. I nearly drop to my knees wishing the shallow earth swallows me whole. It clambers my brain again. I scream out. No sound. I’m outnumbered to one. It laughs. The hair on my arms flutters up at the sound. I rake my feet through the dirt. Earth and rocky terrain now hit my legs. I speed up. It slows down. It shifts. No longer human. She’s me. It’s me? No. She’s me. Cloaked in shiny black leather and long midnight hair. She aims her arrow at my chest as the rain pelts her domineering form. I grin through bloodied teeth, “Just do it. Get it over with.” She shakes her head.
“Darling, if I wanted you dead. I would’ve just snapped my fingers. Your bones would snap and twist. Your muscles would start to tighten wrenching your feeble skin. Your hair would fall out in clumps as I simply sat a watched. Your brain of course intact all the while” she smirks.
“Why don’t you?”
“That’s much too generous, you see?”
I furrow my eyebrows tightening my grip on my blade. Already looking for an escape.
“You play my game so well. How can I let you go?” She frowns fluttering her lashes.
“Play with someone else.”
“But there is no one but you.” She draws her face down almost in grief.
“That’s because you killed everyone and pretty much everything living in a 50-mile radius.”
She kisses her teeth and shakes her head and lowers her bow and arrow. “Darling, just for you. Can’t you see?”
She approaches me. Holding out her hand. Just inches from my chin.
“Together we could be unstoppable can’t you see?”
I look for a moment into the creature's eyes, seeing a glimmer of truth in its dead eyes. Almost believing it for a moment. My eyes catch the carnage surrounding me. I smile.
I surrender to the rain. Letting it fill my wound, and taint my warm adrenaline-slick skin.
I lunge my blade into its fickle heart.
It sputters out fresh crimson painting the white linen on my breast. In shock, the creature is unable to muster any noise feebly falling to my feet. Lifeless.
Tossing the bloodied dagger to the ground. I grab the bow and arrow from its grip.
Already the creature starts to decompose. Flesh and cartilage searing off its frame. Into ashes of beast. Gore and grime meld into the soft earth.
The canyon glimmered in the silent embers of the setting sun. It’s musical almost.
The brevity of the soft lavender haze falters. I too fall to my knees.
Contorting and shifting. I am darkness.
A grim blanket of midnight dusk in Nightmare Forest.
Jafnun Suhrawardy, October’22