Gadfly

From the dark all things come.. and so it was.

Two eyes slowly opened on a world. They contained within a dim soul, a fragment of that which once was.

The two blue irises peered around, seeing naught but a dim forest. Behind the eyes was a faint curiosity, masked by an overwhelming sense of exhaustion..

"Who am I?" The frail human thought. They pushed themself up off of the worn, cracked stone below. A platform of some kind. It sat amidst the clearing as if it had always been there. The brown and grey underbrush seemed to blend into the man made structure, reclaiming it, but not entirely...

Wearily he stood, eyeing the surroundings with suspicion and caution. It seemed a normal wood: trees, grass, a sky far overhead.. But something was.. off...

The trees were a little less brown, the grass a colorless brown and grey.. as if it were not quite sure whether it was ready to die or not. The worst of it was the sky.. Dark clouds hung overhead, blocking out the sun entirely; However, the light of it still illuminated the world, in much the same way a singular candle will light up a long dark hall:

It left long shadows...

He stepped forward, the thought arising again, pounding in his head, "Who am I?..."

There was no answer from within, so he questioned further, as if he would pull the solution from his subconscious if he merely tried hard enough.

"Where am I?... why am I clothed in rags?... Why am I here?... How do I know this language... Why do I know this is a tree..."

The thoughts came as quickly as they went, and the frustration grew... He stood motionless on the edge of the platform for a moment, stunned by the gravity of the situation.. He stared at his hands, small and pale. He opened and closed them slowly, as he pushed the thoughts aside.. For a moment he became one with the silence...

Then he spotted it, nestled between the trees straight ahead:

A path...

If you could call it that.. The slight space between the wood, and the faint sight of stone leading off into the forest were the only signs of it. Otherwise it was nothing at all..

There was no choice.. So he pressed on.. He wondered as he stepped off the platform whether a choice would have made any difference at all.

"Kakakakawww!"

He jumped as his heart began to beat fast. He looked around for the source of the strange noise. It was shrill and harsh, loud but high pitched.. It came from somewhere in the forest ahead.

"Badum... badum..." his heart sounded in his ears. The boy didn't have to listen long before it came again,

"Kakakakawww!"

He snapped his head to the left and spotted it, sitting in the upper canopy of a tree. It was a massive grey bird. It sat snuggly, eyeing him with soulless beady eyes... It was unnerving...

He shuddered before moving on. He put one foot in front of the other as he made for the path. Canvas shoes were the only things separating him from the rough dirt and rock below as he wound around tree and bush alike..

The forest was much darker than the clearing, and strange sounds could be heard from all sides: shuffling, chattering, sticks breaking... He fought hard not to break into a sprint... His instincts told him to move quietly, to try his best not to disturb the wood, to stick to the path...

The path... It was hard to see, especially further on. At times he had to walk a couple hundred feet through the forest, guessing where it was leading him, before he found it again.

One time he lost it entirely and spent ten minutes retracing his steps...

It was a nightmare to say the least...

He brushed his hand along the trees as he went. The bark was rough, and dry.. The kind of dry that you only see from a long, long drought..

In fact, he hadn't seen any water at all since he had been awake. No puddles, no streams.. No soft babbling brook to provide some ambience in the otherwise silent wood..

Stranger still the wind was all but nonexistent. It didn't rustle through the tree tops, touching the brown and grey leaves.. it didn't brush his skin softly, bringing with it the respite from his sweat on the long walk..

No... it hung still in the air, as if it didn't want to touch the world below.. Who could blame it?

Untold miles he passed, before he came upon another clearing. He stopped abruptly from entering as his eyes fell on something odd in the center.. Something shifting and moving..

Chills instantly ran down his spine... It was huge, a mass of muscle and taught grey skin. It was snarling and huddled over something he couldn't see. The wide back and tree like legs of the thing blocked his view entirely.

He took a few steps to the side, being as quiet as possible, so he could see around the thing.. What was left of the color in his pale face drained as he saw what was going on:

The 'thing' was eating... eating what looked like a woman. It had a turtle like face, with two great big snapping jaws that it used to crunch down on a hunk of meat.. he nearly vomited as he realized it was a human hand..

A mess of bloody hair masked the dead woman's face, and the rest of her body was all but indistinguishable. she had been torn apart... a leg sat askew of her torso.. a hand lying off to the side.. and blood.. blood was everywhere.. It was a bright crimson on the grey world around it.

He backed away, his whole body shaking.. He felt bad.. bad that the woman had died.. bad that he could t have done something.. But she was dead.. long dead by the looks of it..

He was alive.. and he didn't want to end up like her.. he kept his eyes on the creature as he slowly backed off. One soft step after the other he moved, all the while praying that it wouldn't see him...

'Snap!' He stopped... looking down he spotted the source of the sound: a large twig he had stupidly broken. Frowning he looked up, his heart beating fast... He couldn't tell if it had noticed at all, so he took another step backward slowly... he sighed in relief as he..

"No..." was all that ran through his head as the creature suddenly whipped its head around, looking him straight in the eye. He felt fear.. a pure, primal kind of fear that a prey feels when it sees a predator..

The turtle faced creature had blood and flesh dripping down it's mouth, and one large eye in the middle of its head that was jet black. It blinked once, then dashed forward at a breakneck speed.

"Boom..boom..boom.." it's feet hit the ground like falling stone, the vibrations shaking the nearby earth.

He stood watching it closing in stunned stupid. For a few seconds he didn't budge an inch, before all at once his mind caught up and he took flight frantically.

He screamed out, begging, "no!.. no no!... please!..." as if it would do anything.. as if the woman hadn't said the same before she was torn to shreds.. But he pleaded anyway.. He begged with every ounce of his being as his feet led him through the forest.

All the while the beast grew closer and closer. It snapped it's massive jaw menacingly, as if it was licking its lips before a good meal.. He dodged around tree and bush, stone and wood.. The creature was slow to move it's massive body between the thick forest, but it was gaining ground nonetheless.

One minute... two... not even three had passed before the boy was out of breath. He felt it.. He couldn't go on for much longer, and there was no break in the monotony of the wood.. No knight in shining armor or some magical artifact to save him.. He had no weapon or means to stop the charging turtle faced monster.. Nothing...

He dashed around a tree and found his foot had landed on: air...

'Aaah!' He fell, fell quite a distance.. he couldn't tell how far, or what was below... All that followed was a loud 'splash!' And he felt the icy chill of water all around. It was oddly comforting, despite the cold darkness of the liquid, and the strong pull of the current as he felt himself being swept downstream.

He struggled for air, fighting to get above the wake. Eventually he broke the surface and gasped, breathing in the cool misty air. It was hard, hard to breath, hard to keep awake, hard to not give in.. Every fiber of his being fought to shut itself down.. It was too cold, the river was too fast, the large stone his foot hit against in the flurry was too sharp, and it hurt too bad..

But he kept himself awake.. He kept fighting.. At the very least this was something he could survive, unlike the turtle creature. That would have been a guaranteed death.

After a while he couldn't feel his hands or feet anymore.. And only then did the current give way to a still tranquility. It calmed down enough that he could keep his head above the water for more than a few seconds. In the distance a dark shore lay off to the side, and he swam with all the energy he had left towards it. It stuck out oddly from the otherwise dark cliff face all around, the stone hurting upwards for an unknown distance in the dim..

'Cough! Cough!'..

He spat water as he sat on his hands and knees. The boy was dripping wet, and shivering violently. He wanted to be warm, to get out of his clothes, to sit by a fire or drink a warm cup of cider.. "Where have I heard of these things?" He wondered.. He had memories of objects, of concepts, of random words and things... But not actual memories of them.. It was like he had been explained what a fire was, without ever having seen one himself...

It was infuriating...

But not nearly as infuriating as the cold, as the dark world all around, as the idea of another one of those turtle-man-monsters lying in wait, somewhere in the shadows of the world around...

As the wracking paint in his left foot.. It was bruised badly, but not broken.

The shore was small, and barren of all but stone and gravel. The pitch black river babbled peacefully, as if it hadn't just tried to kill him. Slowly he stood, and limped around, unsure of what he was looking for, or where he would go.. There was nowhere to go.. The shore was like an island: The river on one side, and a sheer cliff on the other. He couldn't see any other land nearby, only a similar cliff fifty feet or so on the other side of the river.

He must have fallen into some kind of ravine, a hundred feet at least below the forest above.. "Aah!" He spotted something on the shore. It wasn't stone or gravel, and nothing quite so extraordinary, but it brought him hope: Driftwood..

And quite a bit of it at that. He stooped down and picked one up, feeling the log in his shaking hands. It was dry! Thank the heavens!.. He half smiled, as the thought of a fire crept into reality. He got to work collecting as much as he could into a small pile, and got to work trying to light a fire..

It was no easy task.. He tried rubbing sticks but it was much too humid for that near the river. Instead, he found a piece of flint, and spent the better part of a painful hour finding another.. It didn't help that he had to stop every so often to ease his aching foot. Eventually, after three hours of striking the stones he had managed to light the wood.

The fire was brilliant.. magnificent even.. he stared long into the flames, marveling at the brilliant color and life of the dancing red and yellow.. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.. And the heat was better.. The chill left his hands and feet as he held them close. It made him instantly drowsy.. "I think I can rest now..." the boy thought..

He wasn't entirely sure about the idea, especially seeing the long shadows the fire cast on the cliff face.. Especially knowing that he may still be unsafe.. What manner of monsters lay below the dark surface of the otherwise peaceful river? What was lying in wait just out of sight??..

He didn't want to find out... But he also didn't want to keep his eyes open any longer. The hard stone and loose rock might as well have been a luxurious bed, and the small fire a well stoked hearth. So he slept.. slept long and without dream, the rest of a young boy who had only begun to see hell..