A Short Story Collection

The Journey Into An Enigma

The Hunter appeared from the road that led from the village to the strange, great forest. He could see the sun grow on the horizon, grow so putridly large in the sky. The great sky ballooned in the world... And clouds crackling, spitting upon the blue...Very great, very beautiful, like a cracked mirror, filled with blue and orange lines, reflecting upon itself.

He continued with his pack and his pistol. Into the deep rainforest, among the animals and wild men, and a great strange stringy animal, or so he had heard from the old man... The homeless man with a pistol and a bike, with such a strange, wrinkled face.

A familiar face, like his own filled with pockmarks and scars, and a great gash from a chemical spill. But he did not need trivial knowledge, for the forest he knew by heart... The entire vastness of the channel and the rivers. The whole blue of the world. The sun, grey and lifeless against the dust.

He knew the swath of burnt sticks, fire, and the stone webbing rising from the cracks and lines in the dirt. From the ancient earth, a humongous concrete labyrinth forming, like a spider's web... Somewhere in that deep place, where mysteries unfolded, lay Bharat Singr like some great wounded animal, dying... A boar hunting by itself, then the great guns firing in the distance, and it was running away quickly into the deep brush. Just as a revolver pounded into the sand.

He had heard of the name on the news, heard of the bounties, the years of fame, and his mind, burnt and frayed, had built a memory, remembered the familiar jungle, the familiar webs and paths, and a maze built around a complex system of minds... A brain festering, growing rotten, insane, yet bold, had sought the Enigma, Bharat Singr, building a labyrinth... He had known... From little, unimportant clues... From strange statements, and strange dreams... Built himself a memory of a great rainforest.

"The clue... The place..."

His words echoing across the place, empty of any meaning.

He walked, across the frozen valley, across a place of a blue emptiness, solemn, quiet, barren, all except for a trail, like a great winding snake, burnt across the ground, like a serpent's trail, winding, crushing the trees, burning away leaves and sticks, until there were thousands of stumps... And the faint lingering of smoke from flames untold and unseen.

Like a finger separated from a hand, and blood rushing down the palms, like a serpent biting through twisted sinews, veins bubbling... And then, the bones separating ever-so-slowly, ruthlessly, until only a bloody mess, a heap of bubbling muck remained... And growing from this, green trees, growing and growing, building animals, and roots running through the deep center of this blood. Through the mess of a world, through the absurdities, tiny little things...

He placed a twine of thread, buried it in the dirt with a stake, tied it to his wrist, and walked forth into the darkness. Holding the thread tight in his hand, it grew looser and looser as he continued across the plains, across the echo and the wind that grew soft... Across the horrible fiery earth, across the heat of the scorching sun, underneath the emptiness, loneliness, the infinity that continued across the horrible place... Forever and ever... Like a house burning and burning, one by one, ornaments melting, all alone, the happy house, fading away to time...And a great wind blowing by and by, through the endless place...

As he continued, he forgot more and more, and memory faded, and there was nothing he could remember, and the pictures in his mind, the locations, the place, blew away slowly like ashes in a photo, until there were only fragments, and a shard staring into the soul... With crimson dripping off the frame, and footprints leading into the kitchen... Like a mystery underneath the rotting wood... And a piano spitting out the last few keys from the dying song...