Twisted Dreams

🟨 Where Do We Belong?

"But where do we belong?" she asked suddenly, casting her eyes upwards as if the answer she was seeking would lie there. "Here in this dense, dark forest, only the shadows have eyes, and the shadows are everywhere. It is ever so silent, just our footsteps echoing their crunch upon dry leaves, too dead to even fly up into the air with our disturbance. There are bodies, though - with burned out eyes and mangled limbs - leaning heavily against each trunk we pass. Though we know they lie still, they seem to vibrate in the darkness, and we shiver in response, before tearing our eyes away and back towards the path ahead.

"Here, the sun does not shine." Her arms come up now, as if to cup the air between her hands as one would water. "It does not bathe us in warmth, either - but something sends the shadows sprawling and swirling upon the forest floor around us. The darkness parts - and it is not ominous because it is unfamiliar. Instead, it sends chills down our spine at the intense sensation of home we feel sliding like honey through our bones. Around us, the cold embrace of a starless night constricts, like puzzle pieces filling in all the blank spaces. Here, the darkness does not consume - it celebrates, and that terrifies us to the very core, startling us into the realization that we do not know how we arrived.

"So, it seems, we belong here, in this paradise of corpses, wandering from tree to tree, hoping that we never see a familiar face... or perhaps we wish the opposite. We stop, suddenly, falling to our knees upon the ground, uncaring that even in this place our knees feel bruised. Our hands come up to grip our temples, as if the dull ache would somehow leave with the pressure. We do not know if we scream, for only silence meets our ears. But if we are not able to hear, and there is nobody else to witness, is there anything else to tell us if we scream or not? Either way, our chest heaves - exertion? panic? - and our arms come down to wrap around our stomachs, clenching against the crashing, ebbing, flowing waves of nausea.

"We realize only now that there is sound - a distant one, almost too low to be perceptible, but is just barely under the ringing in our ears. It is a monstrous sound, like an enormous metal structure
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crashing down, creaking and moaning and screaming. Now that we are focused on it, we can hear it more clearly, and our head jerks up in the direction of its source. We slowly pull our feet out from under us, and drag ourselves backwards, never lowering our eyes from the intense darkness, until our spine presses against the rough bark of the tree behind us.

"We draw our knees up, pressing them to our chest and wrapping our arms around them, squeezing, reminding ourselves distantly of the sensation of human touch. Our eyes never shift, never waver, and soon, they burn. The pain sears and grows, but so does the sound, immense and titanic. Our eyes are alight with fire, and it licks at our sockets - but we cannot turn away, cannot move except to tighten our grip on our own limbs, pressing harder against the trunk behind us. And then...

"We are just like the others."

Silence, then, in the WcDonald's restaurant, as she lowers her arms, finishing her order.

"Coming right up!" says the jolly voice behind the counter. "Would you like fries with that?"