Mortar shells. The chatter of gunfire. Pine branches whipped against my face, sugar sand kicking up behind me and bullets ripping through the foliage. The shouts came from behind, from left, from right. In this place of peace, there was only chaos. “Go, go, go!” And I ran, ran, ran.
No, this wasn’t right. This wasn’t what this place was.
I stopped running and the air stilled.
I heard only the echo of gunfire now, from some far off time or place. Explosions like a whisper from yesterday. But there was no pursuit. No figures on a rise. No young soldiers with weapons of wood and imagination. There were only tires in the water that had been there for years, rotten logs, and stunted, stubby trees reaching up from what had once been open land. Mother Nature had come here. She had seen that the boys were gone, that their mind terror no longer ravaged the landscape, and she took hold of what was once hers. Grabbed it, caressed it, and began to take it back.
I became He.
He remembered this place, but not like this. He dragged his eyes across a landscape he once knew, a place that was once pure but which was now a scab healing over. Heard a heartbeat coming from nowhere. Saw trails now grown over. In the distance, a structure, once a garage of some sort, now a shell. A bird cry. A silent symphony of frog calls. The faint niggle of something crawling on his ankle. Behind him, he heard laughter. He turned. There were inky figures just inside the wood line.
“We see you out there,” one of them sighed. “You can’t go back. No one can go back.”
“I don’t want to go back,” he said. “I just want to be home.”
“Lies.”
He shook his head, denying them.
“Lies,” they insisted. “You’ve always wanted to go back.”
“No,” he said. “I have a life now. I have a purpose. I don’t need this place anymore. I just need my life back. Why did she take me away from it? Why are you keeping me from it?”
A faint laughter from the woods. The figures were indistinct, nothing more than murky wisps. Their voices were hollow. They spoke in unison. “She does not exist. We do not exist. You brought yourself here. You did this.”
“I didn’t.”
“You did.”
“But I don’t want any of this.”
“Lies.” Somewhere in the far, far distance, gunshots and mortar shells – but they were only a memory of things that never happened. “You crawl into homes you never had. You dream of people you never were. You pine for a past that was never yours. You are lies. You are built of lies. Your memories are lies. Your past is lies. Your now is lies. Your future is lies. You are a lie.”
“That’s not true! I’ve … I’ve become something. I’m complete.”
“You are a lie.”
He tried to deny them, to tell them they were wrong, but a dull ache arose in his gut, a pain he could not describe, and he felt sick. The pine trees wavered. The already indistinct figures began to fade. He vomited. Puke splashed on the off-white tile beneath him. The bathroom swirled. He reached up, grabbing for the toilet seat. Tried to pull himself up, but the room spun too hard. It spun. Spun. Spun.
He set his head back down on the cold tile, the rank smell of vomit next to him, and hoped she wouldn’t find him there like that, curled up into a pathetic little ball.
When the morning came, he managed to sit himself up. The pool of sick had cooled and congealed. The bathroom light felt like twin suns. He could barely keep his eyes open under its fierce gaze. He pulled himself up, the room unsteady but, mercifully, no longer spinning. He pulled at his face. Deep lines had begun to work their way into his features. His hair was now a pale gray. His face was covered in stubble. He knew he should at least get rid of the five days of growth, do a little something to make himself feel like a human again, but he didn’t often shave. When he did, the mirror twisted and cracked, his face split between the shards, each of those infinite reflections thinking of infinite ways to die and why he was frightened by, and drawn to, each one of those endings.
There were so many endings.
end
