The last rays of the sun fight their way laboriously through the dense canopy of leaves. The forest slowly, but steadily, fills with an aura of fear and confinement, which seems to creep up from the earth like thick, heavy smoke, as the sun hides away, leaving behind the wretched cold of the night. It follows me, trying to find me. I’ve seen its tracks. I must stay alert. Branches brush my scarred arms as I run, but I have grown used to it by now. The sharp thorns and whipping branches of the trees no longer bother me. The leaves and twigs crunch under my bare feet. But I am sure my pursuer cannot hear me.

  Once I was normal, once I was happy, but all of that feels so far behind me that I can never reach it, no matter how hard I fight against the current of pain that overtakes me each day. I have decayed now. Eaten away from within. I am a mass, on the brink of falling apart at any moment, held together only by the drive to survive. Despair, fear, and sleep deprivation are terrible companions to my morbid existence. I don’t know how long I’ve been here. Long enough, at least, that it feels as if it has always been this way. As though the forest is all I’ve ever known. My past is like the far side of a river I cannot cross because of its current.

  A grotesque, degenerated abomination stares into my gray eyes. Its face is scarred, and it’s missing a front tooth. Its long hair is tangled and full of leaves and dirt. I drink from the waterhole, reflecting the last sunlight, as long as I can, before I must leave again.

  The forest is endless, and I am certain it stretches farther and farther as I near its boundaries. There is no one else in this forest. I am the last survivor in a world that desires my death. I accept this. It is my destiny to flee. It is only natural for me. Everything I am, everything within me, has been made in such a way that all of it is right. I fulfill what I was made to do. It’s not hard to understand. It’s the only thing that makes sense. I do what I am meant to do.

  I run and run, farther and farther. My eyes adjust to the darkness. My pupils expand, so that every trace of light can be captured. My hearing sharpens, like a knife against a stone. I smell the damp leaves and hear the rustling of the trees in the gentle wind as I run. In the forest, there is only me and it, apart from the birds. The birds. I don’t hear them often, but they sing for me. The beautiful melody that draws me to them. The melody that enters my mind and carries away the heaviness that weighs on my broken shoulders. The melody even pierces the decay within me and gently caresses my wounds, healing the corruption’s damage. But I don’t hear them often. I hear them only when I need to. Just as I do what I am meant to do, the birds fulfill their part and do what they must. The birds, they guide me. Guide me from infinity, and someday, I will be free.

  I come to a clearing. The once cruel trees give me a rare glimpse of the moon. Coldly, it stares at me while I am exposed to its judgmental gaze. I look into its indifferent face, and I see that I do not matter to it. Grinning grotesquely, I feel that it secretly mocks me. My pain means nothing to it, my suffering and torment. Rage rises in me. Blood runs from my clenched fists as my nails dig into the flesh of my hands. An outsider judges me and does not acknowledge my pain. It is devastating, and my inability to stand up to this injustice only fuels the hate inside me further. The trees laugh at me for the moon’s judgment, as I stand, enraged and with my head lowered, in the burning moonlight. The trees whisper, chuckle, and delight in my misery. Bastards from another world laugh at something they cannot understand.

  My skin is pale, and the long fingers of my hand are dirtied and battered. Where my long nails had dug into my skin, the wounds were surrounded by blood and bruised purple skin. Yet I endure the pain and keep running. Breath by breath, I run. I no longer have any sense of how far I’ve come. I cannot say whether I’ve run ten or one hundred kilometers in the past hour. The only thing I feel is when I draw closer to the forest’s edge. It’s a sensation that runs through my veins and nerves. As though the strings and threads of my body are tingling with excitement.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  It is pale, and its bones shimmer beneath its white skin. I’ve seen it several times, when it has come dangerously close to me. Sleep is as precious as it is risky. If I sleep too long, it catches up to me before I can flee. If I sleep too little, I won’t get far enough from it, and it closes the distance between us. I saw it once, dancing in the moonlight. Its long, skinny arms, with claws flailing back and forth as it swung them to a twisted symphony of the moon. It hummed the corrupted, twisted version of my beloved bird song. Its ribs wriggled beneath its pale skin, as it performed its trick for the moon, the yellow scars on its back shimmering, sliding back and forth in the light of my loathed judge. I could never see its face, as it was hidden under the creature’s mane, but it must have a maw full of fangs. Yes, that must be it, it’s only natural. It will never die, it will always hunt me. I don’t know what it is, I don’t know what it wants. It doesn’t revel in my suffering like the others, but it won’t let me go.

  I hear it suddenly. My salvation, my muse, my savior, leading me to Elysium, free from all burdens. I straighten up and let the mushrooms I had so greedily devoured fall. The sound stretches its hands toward me, gently brushing its soft fingers across my weathered cheeks. The warmth the melody carries into me dissolves the pain in my chest that has been building since the last time I heard it. I don’t want to let go, but the soft hands slip away from mine. It grows quieter, and I know I must run. I follow it. The ease with which my feet glide over the ground of the dark forest feels like flying. I feel free, and the excitement rises joyfully in the strands of my being. I am so happy, I must laugh. As long as my little bird is with me, no one can harm me. The glances of the grumpy, angry trees, that they cannot stop me, no longer matter. I run, as though I could go on forever, but the bird cannot.

  The melody fades into a symphony of endless sorrow. My smile fades, and running feels heavier with every step. What’s wrong with it? Why is it crying? Tears glide down my battered cheeks, and now I am crying too. Despair pushes out the euphoria, and everything the melody had tried to lift from me crashes down on me, suffocating. The melody grows quieter, but it no longer leads me out of the forest. It has stopped. The bird softly sings its final verses and falls silent before I can find it. I kneel and see thick red drops cover the shining blue feathers of my savior. Its plumage still faintly sparkles in the light of the moon, which begins to grin maliciously before all life within it fades. I cannot bear it, the pain is too much. I can barely stand. I stumble, darkness overtakes me, and I crash my head violently into a tree. I lose consciousness and fall limp into a hole in the earth left by the roots of a fallen tree.

  I wake up and know that there was a high price to be paid for succumbing to sorrow. I am empty. Only pain and despair remain inside me. The loss of the bird weighs heavily, and the strings of my existence threaten to snap. It is here. It is closer than ever before. My back is pressed against the roots in the damp earth, and I dare not breathe. I hear it, searching for me just a few meters away. It knows that it is close to reaching whatever it seems to desire so desperately.

  An sensation overcomes my entire body. The certainty of what I must do, of what I know I must do. The primal urge to kill or be killed for the sake of one’s own life. Torn, shredded, completely consumed. The zenith of destruction. I hear the music now. It steadily grows louder until I can hear nothing but the one thing. The melody of my monomania, my utter hatred. All the violence that my mind had kept hidden somewhere. The emergence of the dark that must lie beneath hell. THIS IS IT. THE ABSOLUTE, WHAT THE MIND CAN SUMMON TO SAVE ITSELF. I FEEL IT. I HEAR NOTHING BUT THE ONE THING. My face twitches, and I reveal myself.