“We live as we dream: alone…” — Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

Lost.…the realisation strikes deep…

The endless trees are like bars of a green prison…

The labyrinthine wood, surrounded by the trees, like blinded and muted sentinels of a dark court…

I cross their array of lengthening shadows merging into the darkness of night…

How long has it been since I strayed in confidence from the trail? The sun on my face…feeling strong, invincible….’til one misplaced step sent me down the ravine?

Sharp branches like spears have hobbled me, each footfall feels like a dagger thrust…progress is slow now.

“Progress?”

The intersecting shadows of trees are like arachnid strands that I tire in.

The dense trees are of a comparable height…the bracken is tall…

I am disoriented…lost.

The towering trees are aloof to my ordeal and fear as the gods seem to be…cries that explode from tortured thoughts of despair echo and re-echo across the march of trees…

The birds grow silent at my cry for a moment before resuming.

Aren’t they looking for me?

In answer, the anticipated helicopter roars over me like a deus ex machina…I am euphoric.

The canopy is stirred violently…and a wild interplay of light shafts down…

I cry out but my voice is drowned out….the lights pierce the trees in intervals then pass away in succession…it hovers and lingers…

I race after it…then it passes…leaving me.

I am unseen.

The effort exhausts me; my pierced soles throb with pain.

The forest is oblivious to my agony and why should it be otherwise?

To the wilds, humankind stood as an executioner with an axe.

And from the butchered bones of the trees, civilisations were built or destroyed.

Yet the axe still struck and struck and trees fell and fell.

Humankind became a stranger to their own world. Out of their element in the wilds, yet somehow still drawn to it by some primal call….sometimes fatally.

Yes, the natural world was vulnerable to human rapacity and brutality.

Yet, in this fight…the wilds held the whip hand.

I was alien here…a child of the city and the gathering wounds told me so.

And there is one hunting me…

Before I am looked for by saviours. I am hunted

The “man” who called out to me as I passed him in the parking lot.

“Nice hair,” he said, leering.

Something in his eyes and voice quickened my step.

I sensed he followed…that he knew I was lost…and hurt…

I heard him…looking for me…

He intended his steps to be stealthy…but tree branches cracked under his lumbering tread like gun shots.

I felt kindred then to the life in the forest…creatures hunted for sport…for the beauty of their skins, fur, and feathers. As if being alive and beautiful were meant as a sentence of death.

My instincts screamed to run…I could not…they rallied me then to fight…

Agony lanced through my every step.

I was wounded.

He was not.

He was armed.

I was not.

I heard his machete slashing at vines while he jeered and called out to me.

He had a blade….I had….the forest…the forest….

My palm touched a tree to steady myself…

I looked up at the tree with new eyes…

I looked at the trees around me…the ferns and vines…where once I saw a prison….now I saw a battleground. I swept my environs with calculating eyes before nodding.

I dipped my hand in the bloodied earth and raised my fingers to my face, tracing streaks of the earth mingled with blood across my face like warpaint.

Yes, I was wounded…yet I forced myself to go on…forced myself not to cry out at the pain…

He followed a trail of blood that betrayed my path…

I made it easy for him to do so….twigs dripped with blood and leaves were flecked with it.

He followed, expecting any moment to gloat over a cowering frightened victim….

He paused when he heard singing…

My voice…like a siren’s call luring him on…ventriloquised by the trees…

He laughed and started to track me again…

The trail ended…

He paused…bewildered…

He faced a tree, confronting him like a dark banner…on its pale bark…a smile was painted in red over a heart…like a regal insignia.

I pivoted away from the tree then to face him…

He comprehended…too slowly…

Red sputtered from his mouth as he was impaled by a sharp branch.

The machete fell from his hand…

Like a vampire slayer staking a monster, I leant my weight and anger against the staff….

Yes, I was beautiful. Many have said so with their eyes and words.

But beauty is a warning from nature.

I drove the spear just deep enough…I wanted him alive, yet…

He fell backwards….

His pain and shock must have been terrible…I was unmoved…

I stood over him, face striped like a Bengal tigress over her kill…and my battle cry with bared teeth was like the cry of the bereaved and butchered wilds. My rage is a force of nature.

I stood over him…as his limbs flailed like a pinned butterfly in a collection…the blood chant of my heart quickened in tempo like ritual drums…

I swayed as if in a tribal dance…feverishly…to soundless songs under the trees…the trees spun kaleidoscopically around me morphed into seemingly human shapes bearing witness….’til I shook myself from my danse macabre…

I hammered the spear down by a volcanic rock with grim finality.

The person I was before I entered the forest might have wept then or been sickened by the sight of blood…

I wasn’t that person anymore…I wouldn’t be again.

From a detached perspective, I envisioned myself reach a consoling hand to the person I was before as they sobbed uncontrollably…before willing himself back to the present….

I left him then…I left him to the hunger of the innumerable small creatures who stirred under the leaves….

The forest would claim him…

He was, as hunters say in defense of killing a forest creature, “meat.” Just a discarded carcass. Naught more.

In wild rapture, I pull the spear out and raise it as one with trees…a sapling among giants.

The trial by combat was done…

The forest still had its final challenge…

Trial by ordeal…and it would be a terrible one…

I went through his pockets…no signal to his phone…

I tossed it aside…

I might have asked for the mercy of gods…mirages called out to through the ages in depths of despair and human frailty…yet I did not…using the spear as a crutch I hobbled on.

The sky floods with ominous cauldrenous clouds…and a torrent of rain falls…

I stagger, then crawl into the oubliette of a small cave…a dark musty haven…

Regrets of life vex and haunt like a tribunal…lightning illuminates me in harsh light before the storm passes…

I gather water in leaves and drink deeply…

Sweltering days change shift in my torment with punishingly cold nights.

Disoriented hopelessly…like a child lost amid a towering crowd, shrugging my cries off.

Labyrinth and no mistake, yet there is no minotaur hunting me, no leopard nor tiger of the wood after my trail…only hordes of ravenous insects assailing my every step, getting past my flailing hands till my weakened, battle-weary arms fall limply by my sides and they close in…feeding and feeding…buzzing maddeningly as they cluster on my wounds, infecting blood and brain…’til I shiver under the myriad of stars between swaying canopies of trees, like dancers reaching the climax of a ritual…I weave and falter…I slide down the staff to the forest floor and splay my arms, as if to welcome death like a lover or old friend in cold embrace. The nail-hard thorns of the forest floor have pierced my palms…the spear lays useless by my side. My soles are pierced. I can go no further.

I close my eyes and the nightmares are terrible red visions…

I shudder and thrash in the throes of their danse macabre in my dreams.

I cry out…once…twice…thrice…only echoes…only echoes…

I hear my name then…dimly…

My voice answers in a ragged battle cry against the dark banners of trees…

The wood won’t have me…

I’m blinded by the weaving lights followed by silhouettes…the trees glower down like jailers reluctant to release their
captive…my cold hand touches a warm one.

The sensation of being up-lifted high over the tree canopy.

The rush of the wind and roar of the helicopter sweeping through my soul. The mariner beacons of the stars beckon and the rebel angel’s soul of me laughs in reply.