prey to the blind eye

I

Wood. Clock. Tick tock. Silence. Alone. Safe. There I was safe. In my hut. Alone was where I was safest. Wood. Clock. Tick tock. Silence. Alone. Safe.

I had been in that wood hut for a whole night. 
I left so much behind for that: safety. Or so it seemed. The rain was heavy, outside that is. The thin white blinds swayed a little, a draft had crept in through the window. A cup of herbal tea that I couldn't remember making calmed my nerves, though, it stung my bleeding lips. The heat of the mug warmed my previously impaled hand, it throbbed with every beat of my broken heart. My head was heavy and my mind was foggy, like the forest surrounding the hut. Fir trees stood side by side like sentinels, their tips creating a jagged and uneven silhouette every time the sun set. This wild and forgotten place was full of beauty, far away from any civilization, far away from the cities and the factories, far away from the revolution that suffocated the poor. The revolution that took my father's life so many years ago.

I shook the morbid thoughts from my head and tried to recall how I had come here. I seldom thought as hard as that, and I doubted I ever would again. For a time I believed that maybe I had been dreaming something, or that I just needed a bit of rest. My eyes - completely coincidentally - fell upon my bandaged hand. It was then that I recalled the morning of the previous day, or at-least a bit of it...

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The day before...

My hand was tense and it felt as if my veins were pulsating with every step I took. The fields rolled off into the distance like giant corpses lying still after a bloody battle. These fields were vaguely familiar to me, but the past was long gone and what may have been farm land was now an expanse of dead crops and overgrown hedges. The earth's breath carried the gentle singing of birds to me. The breeze released my tension and I fell to my knees. It was just too painful to carry on.

Alice told me there was an old abandoned hut in the forest near here, it had seemed like a short way to go the way she told me how to get there, but the journey was far longer than I had imagined

Tears streamed down my face, rivers anyone could drown in. I struggled for breath, my chest, my legs, my lungs, my heart, they burned with the journey of fifteen miles in a single night. She said she would find me. So did they. How could it come to this?!

I can't go any further, that's what I told myself; I should let them take me back to the hospital. My tears turned to a new pain, one I never knew to this extent before; I've let Alice down, they'll take her too if they find me. 


My strength had left me, I was weak, alone, vulnerable. Alice would get up. I found the will to stand and wipe away my tears. I took a heavy step, my vision still blurred by tears and stumbled. I took steps slowly, as they came. Another step... one more. Soon my pace quickened and I was running clumsily, I fell once or twice. A mist began to settle between the trees and a cacophony of natural sounds was all that I could hear over my heavy and raspy breath. The constant sound of flowing water was distinct like the bass line of the forest's song.


The forest was made up of pine and other various evergreens, it's borders consisted of younger trees and plants. Pine saplings dotted around the forest's edges like the audience at an execution. My execution. But the wooden audience would be left disappointed today, I wasn't planning on dying any time soon.


I entered the crowd of plants, a whole different terrain beneath my feet after a mere few steps. Roots and branches grasped for my feet and clothes as the undergrowth thickened. Their grotesque limbs broke my skin at every chance they were given. Vines whipped me as wickedly as any slave master, making me work harder, run faster.

The branches parted momentarily, light flooding the musty darkness and illuminating something wonderful. There it was: the hut. My refuge. My safety. A place to hide.

The door was dark oak wood and had a dirty, ill maintained window on it's upper half. The windows all around the house were shrouded in darkness as thin, white blinds with tattered edges hid what lay inside.

I practically crawled up to the hut for the last few meters and fell into the old door. Scrambling to my feet and grasping the brass door handle, I closed the door. The handle sent a jolt of pain up my arm, something to occupy my thoughts. I stumbled into a room directly opposite the entrance. There I found a small leather sofa. Then I knew I was safe.


Suddenly all the pain came flooding back into my head like some sick torture. Why was it like this? Why could I not love Alice and still be who I have and should always be? Why is loving my own gender so wrong in the blind eyes of my peers? I needed to cry, I wanted to cry, but my tears wouldn't come. These emotions won't leave me and these feelings won't stop pounding on the inside of my skull in synchronized steps like an army marching into battle.


I felt my stick-like legs give out beneath me before I could sit by the coffee table, and the world began to spin around me, or was I spinning around the world? My head hit the ground, or was it the ceiling? Sounds grew distorted and my vision left me.

Be warned this is my first published book and the first 3 or 4 chapters are a little slow going. But trust me it's worth it when the plot picks up momentum. 

Enjoy <3