Through A Forest Dark

by Dean M. Drinkel

  I looked at the walls. God only knew what happened in this once-sanctified place. There was graffiti sprayed all over the walls – and amongst the names, the curses and sexual depictions, there were two familiar things. The first was a pair of bright red eyes staring down from one wall. The other was the phrase

  Lost are we and are only so far punished

  The woman walked around me. “How this plays out is up to you. The decisions you make from here on in will decide your fate.”

  I didn’t bother replying, not right away. I was too busy concentrating on making my body calm down, everything was damn hurting.

  “I want to tell you a story,” she began. “About a boy who had an accident. He was so near death, if truth be told, he was more dead than alive. But something happened, let’s call it divine inspiration – and as luck would have it, he survived, against all the odds he survived.”

  Still no emotion from the other man.

  “Is there anything you recognise about this story?” she asked. “But the thing was, he didn’t do what he agreed. He asked for life and all that followed him was death.”

  “Is that so?” I said, spitting again on the floor.

  “Indeed, he made a bargain with those that saved him that if he survived, he would live a good life, be a good person.”

  I nodded.

  “But to be a good person, that doesn’t mean killing people, does it?”

  “I haven’t killed anyone,” I said.

  Claude readied himself, cracked his knuckles again.

  “You believe that to be the truth?” she asked.

  “Of course.” Though something was gnawing at my mind and that perhaps these were only words. I closed my eyes; strange images filled my mind. “I didn’t kill those people.” I tried to convince them.

  Claude hit me across the face, then again in the stomach. He stamped on my feet. I screamed. He hit me again and again. I screamed again and again.

  “Stop!” the other man ordered.

  He stood behind me, rested a hand on my shoulder, leant down and whispered, “Just admit what you have done and the pain will be over.”

  I lifted my head. The taste of blood in the back of my throat, on my tongue. “I didn’t kill anyone.” Agony personified.

  My attention was diverted; there were two pillars towards the back of the church, covered in strange carvings. Angels and devils fighting over souls in torment.

  I knew he was talking to me, but I couldn’t stop staring; the visions seemed to come alive.

  “Is that the God’s honest truth, William?”

  I went to reply but then I suddenly remembered.

  I remembered everything.

  There was an almighty crash. The SUV catapulted through the air. It hit another car, the barrier in the centre of the road, before it landed on the sidewalk, upside down. Wheels spinning. The CD player stuck, playing the same words over and over again.

  I didn’t kill anyone...I didn’t kill anyone...I didn’t kill anyone.

  Then, a terrible silence for what seemed like an eternity but soon the screaming started.

  I couldn’t move. I knew that one, if not both, of my parents were dead. A body in the distance lay face down on the asphalt. Whoever it was, they weren’t moving.

  “Mom...Pop?” I managed to mutter but I wasn’t certain if anyone could hear me; I was having problems hearing myself.

  I wondered who it was that was screaming. Through the broken window I could see that there were people now surrounding the SUV. A couple of them discussed the best option of what they could do. They needed to see if there were any survivors.

  “There’s something there in the back, he could be alive.”

  Damn right, I thought, I was alive.

  I could smell gasoline; it was dripping on my head, pouring inside the SUV.

  “If you’re going to help, you’d better hurry up,” I cried, not sure if anyone could actually hear me.

  Someone leant through the window and touched my shoulder. It was a woman, looking she was wearing an evening dress, looking like she was heading out to dinner.

  “Hang on in there. We’re going to try and get you out. I’m with a couple of friends, I think we can assist you.” She squeezed my shoulder. “My name is Lucrezia.”

  I tried to move my head, to get a better look at her, but a piece of the vehicle was lodged into my neck. “Please...” I whispered.

  She smiled and said, “There’s an ambulance on its way. But I’ll bet you’d do anything to get of this, wouldn’t you?”

  I couldn’t nod, so just said, “Yes.”

  “Anything?” she asked.

  “Of course I’d do anything.”

  She smiled. “Then I have something to show you.”

  I closed my eyes.

  When I opened them, I was standing in a toilet cubicle. The door was shut behind me. An old man stared up, eyes wide open in terror. He pointed to the knife in my hand.

  “Please...please, I beg you.”

  I rested a hand on his shoulder. “I bet you’d do anything to get out of this, wouldn’t you?”

  The man nodded. “Of course I fucking would.”

  I leant into him and started to cut, to slash, to slice and chop. I closed my eyes as I did so, let his blood wash all over me.

  When I opened them, the girl was trying her best to get out of the chair but it didn’t make any difference, she was tied too tightly.

  I walked around her, throwing the knife from one hand to the other.

  I leant forward and whispered into her ear. “I’d bet you do anything to get out of this, wouldn’t you?”

  She nodded, her eyes wide in terror.

  I smiled, leant forward and started to cut, to slash, to slice and chop. I closed my eyes as I did so, let her blood wash all over me.

  Marina. She lay in my bed in the hotel. She slept. I sat on the chair, the knife in my hand.

  She opened her eyes.

  “What’s happening?” she asked.

  I smiled. “I’d bet you do anything to get out of this, wouldn’t you?”

  I had come to Paris to recuperate.

  I checked into the hotel, carried my bags to the room. When I was alone, I took out the small box, undid the lock and picked up the silver knife. It glinted in the light.

  Of course, I’d do anything to get out of this.....

  A Field Full Of Melancholy

  There was nothing I could say, there was nothing I could do.

  Where was any of this going? Where had any of this been? What the hell had just happened?

  One step forward, three steps back. Panic: intense. The frustration. The shouting. The anger. The blood – Christ, the blood.

  I wiped the sweat from my face. Looked down at my hands. Then quickly away. A tear slipped down my cheek. I counted my breathing. Tried to calm. Let the adrenalin flow. Didn’t fight. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. I gasped for breath. My body shaking.

  “Why are you doing this?!” I whispered.

  The first long shadow of the day, the wooden panels of the floor dissected (revealing its true fleshy undertones), the body weeping. My back arched, my arms outstretched, the palms of my hands coiled tightly into two fists (was this possible? – before, probably not, but now everything is), the knuckles cracking and from the very pit of my soul I screamed in anguish of what was and what was yet to come.

  In the onslaught that followed, the rafters came crashing down upon me. I fell to the ground, pinned there by my own guilt, I suspect.

  How long was I there for? I could only fathom a guess, but sometime later, I managed to get to my feet, wipe the dust from my eyes. Once the mist had cleared I tried to find some clarity, tried to gain some composure. I had to be a man, I had to be human.

  Something dripped from the roof space. No, not something, someone. The fluids, like acid, stinging, eating into me. I didn’t move, rooted to the spot, some morbid fascination with the way my flesh melted from the bone. There was no pain. Only
pleasure.

  Thunder and lightning exploded about me. Creatures in the cavities, their spectral murmuring echoing, swirling, around the fabric of the building. Every wall, every floor seemingly alive – what are they trying to tell me? What message were they dying to impart? Whatever: I’ve banished them from my thoughts. I was deaf to their implorations.

  Something was there. Something was coming. Through the melee. Through the storm. The mist as a cloud as a curtain and it parts. A figure. The trumpets call. A round of applause. I turned my back, face a mirror, I couldn’t look. The hand on my shoulder. I couldn’t look, I will not look. I will not look.

  The glass shatters.

  Metaphorically at least if not in reality.

  For one shard hovers millimetres from my cheek. I am reflected a thousand times. Each image a more distorted rendering than the first. In some I smile, in others I frown; in some I laugh, in others I cry. But the eyes--they never change. Cold. Black. Stone.

  Hands are clapped, feet are stamped and then, a sound, shrill, the neigh of a hundred horses and the mirror reforms itself before me.

  So there, a new reflection: temporary flesh and temporary bone. The compromise of humanity. On the balls of my feet I spin round. My limbs begin to dance, a puppet, a marionette. A Danse Macabre. The Great Architect pulls my strings. I begin to sign. Words form from my hands, fingers, spelling out our destruction. But from my mouth, there is nothing I can say, there is nothing I can do.

  Except for scream. And scream. And scream.

  This world is an illusion. I am a ghost. I see that now.

  I take a step forward, trip on one of my suspended strings and fall to the ground. My head hits the canvas and I’m out for the count. It is the Beast that dances about me. Hands in the air and how the crowd roar its name.

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four – my eyes begin to droop, they feel heavy

  Five

  Six – my eyes are closed, the world that surrounds drowning me

  Seven

  Eight – the universe is standing still

  Nine – its weight upon my shoulders

  Ten – the blackness, fuck: the blackness

  Wait.

  Something is here. Something is watching me. The soul of my dearly departed. It has roamed and now it has returned. It hovers about me, a wispy cloud. Not white, not pure anyway, but shades of grey, I reach out and as it reaches back to me, I hear a billion babies scream my name. There is such pain in the centre of my brain, an explosion of synapses.

  A voice is calling me. Shouting, screaming at me.

  My eyes flutter open and I realise that the voice is my own.

  She was smiling at me through those bloodied lips, always knowing that she was going to have the last laugh. She was right. Damn her. Bitch.

  Even when there was no choice but to force the electrodes under the tips of her fingers and the current passed through (a flicker of life in her eyelids, even if for only a brief second – it was there!) – she knew that by her death she had got one over on me.

  As in life, as in death. As in Heaven, as on Earth.

  I wrapped her in a tarpaulin, at the dead of night (isn’t it always?), threw her in the back of the station wagon, drove out to the woods, dug a grave (not too shallow) and buried her.

  After a long, leisurely drive (making sure people saw me, making sure I saw me – I had to know I was alive), I returned to the house. Sunk two tumblers of whiskey, a quick bite to eat (I wasn’t really hungry – was that usual?) and hit the shower.

  An hour or so later, I went back into the den; something wasn’t right. Yet, I wasn’t surprised. I glanced to my left. At the mirror.

  Johan.

  I spun round, her reflection: in her favourite chair, naked as the day she was born. Smoking her last cigarette. A clear sheen illuminated her body.

  “Lilly.” I paused. “What are you doing here...what do you want?” I asked as I turned away, knowing that she was just a figment of my imagination. When no reply was forthcoming, I didn’t suspect a thing. Nothing was out of place.

  I went to the kitchen, poured myself another drink. I saw her move past me, out of the corner of my eye.

  This time I thought I was ready for her, but she was too quick. The fugue travelled too swiftly, leaving only the slightest of vapour trails – her substitute swiftly vanishing into the ether. Like a puff of smoke– the aroma of ozone in my nostrils. Indeed: smoke and mirrors. A magician’s trick. Simplicity.

  I hung around for a while but she didn’t return. Just left the taste of vanilla on my tongue. An entree.

  She wouldn’t let me sleep. First, in the dreams. Then: outside. In reality. At the end of the bed or even worse, lying next to me: the covers pulled back, her legs slightly open, beckoning me unto her, a hint of the wizardry within.

  All this was a game. There was no point in playing, but even so, I persisted in reaching out to touch that body. The result was always the same, always close but no cigar – all I ever felt was the stained and bloody satin sheet: the stench of rotten flesh on my skin, how I wanted to scratch, to dig my nails into my soul to remove all trace of her.

  Of course, I never did. That would be unforgiveable.

  At work, the Sorbonne, my colleagues didn’t know what had happened, they were none the wiser to her devilish diversions. She’d telephone them, leave messages on their voicemail, cryptic descriptions of where she was, what she was doing (“Have you been down to the woods today?” she’d sing). They’d come to me, ask what was wrong with her, had she been drinking? Was she ill? Why did her emails tell them to bring spades? Shovels? Blankets...she mentioned a picnic? Interestingly, they all said the same: she sounded a little distant. Like she had something over her mouth. That maybe it wasn’t her at all, that perhaps someone was pretending to be her?! How little they knew.

  Surely, that was the point: what did they know? Before, they hadn’t given a shit, many of them didn’t even know her name, so why this sudden interest in her? Did they know something was wrong?

  A pause for thought. Was that the proverbial nail in the head? That it was me? I started acting differently. I can see that now. Especially when she started appearing at the window, waving at me through the rain. Mocking me. I would close my eyes (I didn’t want to see her like that, especially when she started to deteriorate), praying that she would disappear, but she was always there when I looked back – even if many moments had passed.

  When I walked down the road, away from our townhouse on the Rue Dante, strangers stared like they knew she was there. What was it? Could they smell her? It was true: my soles left bloodied footprints in the puddles, if only momentarily. The chain that was her around my neck glowed ominously. Like her eyes: burning amber.

  Dogs would bark noisily in my direction. Cats would mew if I got too close to them. I developed a nervous tic, always rubbing my hands, my arms – too much blood on them I suppose, in the pores, under the nails, in my hair.

  I just couldn’t shake her. Even in the brothels of Montmartre (where I sought the caress of another human) she was there. Watching, waiting – commenting on the performance, marks out of ten. Cursing the girls, tempting me with her own delights, as I ran my hands over their throats, playing her game again.

  Soon though, enough was enough.

  “Lilly?”

  Yes, Johan.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  Isn’t it obvious?

  Didn’t we promise always and forever?

  She was right. Again. I threw the used bills down on the whore’s bruised and beaten body and headed out into the night. Like a thief, an angel, a demon: ready to steal the next soul. Ready to go down to river banks and wash my sins away. A dark baptism. A chance to live through a miracle, twisted as it was.

  Stay.

  She asked this of me, sometime after. A couple of months had passed perhaps. I don’t know, days bled into weeks into longer. Her body but a former impressi
on of itself. Should have been where it belonged – back there, that hole in the ground. Six feet under.

  How I hated her but there was some succour in having her around.

  I noticed though that there was something different about her. I wonder if she was also aware of it. I recognised it even if she didn’t – reminded me of our last days together: boredom.

  My bags were packed and I headed to the door.

  “Why?” I asked. “Why should I stay?”

  She looked away. Her guard was down.

  For the first time I really saw her for what she was. I mean, come on, she was barely human. Things were growing out of her for God’s sake. Her words, the way she spoke, as her voice box broke down, really grated me. Her stench was unbearable. I couldn’t wait to open windows, to get outside, to the fresh air (not that that really mattered, for by now she was in me). Her hair, matted. Her skin, transparent, putrefied – her breasts sagged and God only knew what that was hanging between her legs. This was abhorrent and how disgusted I was with myself. With her.

  “This is getting too much.”

  For me or for you?

  “For the both of us.”

  Her silence had a point, I suppose.

  Though for her, I went into the den, sunk back into the chair. (Her chair originally but) I liked the feel of it as it wrapped itself around my body. She stood by the door, ten or so feet away. We had our boundaries, I couldn’t stand her being any closer. From somewhere, she pulled a cigarette and puffed merrily away.

  “Isn’t it time you gave that up?” I stated as I watched the smoke travel through her body.

  She kept on staring at me.

  I ignored the discerning look; I wasn’t bothered. It was time to bring this to a close.

  “One of us has to go,” was all I said.

  A dirty tear from her eye.

  The breaking of bone as she nodded her head.

  I was expecting this. I’m sorry.

  I shook my head, sat forward, wanted to reach for her but thought better of it.

  “Don’t be. All good things must come to an end.”

  She smiled.

  I’m glad you think like that. We’re on the same page.