Forest of Rope

Chapter 7

The mind plays tricks, or at least it did for the young Mr Steward. Visions and visages of the repressed and unexpressed replayed on a loop in the empty screening room of his consciousness, jutting out from the automated projector in the back room, the room Riley had no way of entering. Fretted memories of the past, nagging worries about the future - every superficial smile, every night spent wide awake in restlessness... Every debt and every regret all here to be seen on the big screen.

Riley often imagined himself in that screening room, trapped in an inescapable hell, condemned to be haunted by the footprint he left on the world, a footprint that he frequently considered to be worthless, not worth anyone's time, destined to be washed away when the tide comes in.

The questioning idea of his birth, the inevitability of his death. His existence lay somewhere between those two footnotes. He was at face value, a youthful and naïve traveller blessed with the world at his feet, sheer potential and possibility bustling at his side.

He scanned the path ahead only to find that it was hidden from him, like the back room where the projector reeled through his torment to no avail. What he wouldn't have given to acquire access to that room, to pick at will the outcome of the façade, to be shown the light, the actual purpose of his life.

He became apprehensive of what he might find, about what the future might throw at him or fail to. He soon began to understand that the supposed possibility and potential were as superficial as the smile he pulled for the girl he loved too much to see go to waste. There was no future, not for him. It had already been decided and dealt with. The end was nigh, his time was due, the tide was coming in.

It was time to be cast away.