18-Kit
The forest is awake today; listening.
Waiting.
I pull a ribbon from my trousers and tie it beside the others. As a ritual and marker, yet another reminder that I’ve walked this path too many times to pretend it’s simply a dream. He etched this place into the back of my skull with a blunt knife.
Wet earth clings to the morning dew as if the world’s been washed clean after catastrophe.
The sun hasn’t crested the horizon yet; only a thin sliver of pink cracks through the milky blue sky.
I reach for one of many ribbons tied to the willow branches.
There are dozens, perhaps more; I stopped counting ages ago.
Musical laughter drifts through the trees like a cursed siren call. It’s always just ahead, luring me forward like some cosmic piss take designed to keep me chasing. Of course, I follow. There’s never an alternative.
The ancient and gnarled tree appears around the bend, its moss-covered bark damp beneath the rising mist. Per usual, Zachary stands beneath it, frizzy curls cascading down her spine in dark waves.
She turns enough to reveal her profile of a delicate upturned nose and heart-shaped lips I’d seen in person months before.
Her features aren’t warped, the dream no longer bothering to hide her.
I try to whisper her name, but it doesn’t reach my mouth.
My necklace glints from her neck in the half-light, the smooth grooves catching the pink dawn. It’s a symbol of a moment of desperation, the mark of a choice I never should’ve made. It hangs from her like a bloody fucking tumor that keeps popping up no matter how many times I cut it from my skin.
The rising sun frames her like a halo as she faces me fully. She’s unreal, divine, and it’s enough to weaken my knees. My body moves without my permission; one step, then another, as though a puppet master pulls my strings.
Mere paces away from her, oxygen dissipates around me. We’ve never been this close. Not in this place. My arm lifts, and with trembling fingers, I reach for her. As we’re about to touch, she turns.
And runs.
I fill my lungs and sprint. Her taunting snicker trails behind her, weaving through the trees like one of my satin ribbons. Birdsongs stir the forest awake with tuneful chirps.
My feet barely touch the ground, lifting me above the blades of grass. I move faster than physics should allow, as if an invisible force drags me along. Wind slaps my face as branches slice my cheeks. A foreboding terror tightens my chest.
She tumbles into a somersault of limbs as her foot catches on a root.
Her hitching breath cuts through the forest like a snapped string.
I skid to a halt inches from her. This never happens.
Palms digging into the damp earth, she scrambles backward.
Curls fall wildly around her face, leaving only trembling lips visible.
She’s afraid of me.
I reach for her with a shaking hand, wanting nothing more than to speak. To reassure her that I’m not here to hurt her. But I don’t remember my voice, or how to use it.
“Please let me go,” she begs so desperately that something inside me slips.
My grip on this skewed reality falters, and when she bolts I don’t chase her. She disappears between the birches, her silhouette swallowed by the rising mist. Something buried in my soul’s abyss reaches after her even as my body stays rooted.
A shape tears itself from me, forming like smog solidifying into flesh. My knees buckle. He looks like innocence carved into marble, but his presence tastes like rusted iron.
“Why did you allow her escape?” Somnium asks, his curious smile lacking warmth.
“Because chasing her isn’t part of our bargain,” I say, forcing my spine to steel even though my legs are made of jelly.
I bite my lip, and the corner of his mouth crooks into a predatory smirk as his form begins to change. My jaw pulses. His dirt-brown waves lengthen as the colour bleaches, turning a honey-blonde. Golden curls fall past petite shoulders in loose tendrils.
His eyes lighten, syrup-brown melting into a piercing blue. Freckles scatter across his paling skin. My stomach drops, the shift too practiced.
The defined edge of his jaw softens as his cheekbones lift. Thin lips plump into a familiar curve until Melody stands before me. Her round gaze has haunted me for years. It catches the early sun, shimmering like water as she watches me.
She steps closer, and an aroma of crushed peonies wraps around me. Her fingers stroke my jaw, sending a shiver down my spine. My breath stutters, caught between longing and dread.
“Without him, you do not get me,” she murmurs, her breath humid as it skates across my ear. “Am I no longer enough?”
“Always,” I say like a right idiot.
Melody and Somnium are one and the same; two faces of the bargain I made between life and death. Halves of the same bloody coin I continue to flip. And like a true madman, I keep hoping it’ll land on a third option.
“You live on the music you forge from your ghostly muse.” Melody speaks with the god’s tenor-toned cadence, her form smearing back into him like a swipe of chalk on a blackboard.
Somnium smirks, brushing dust from his puffy sleeve like a smug little wanker.
“What would you be without me? Without her? You have always known the price of our search.”
My gullet constricts—proper gobsmacked.
“Yes,” I say, peeking past his shoulder to where the Zach-like maiden vanished into the mist.
It isn’t her, at least not the living, breathing, thinking version that opened herself to me in that meeting. That thing is a figment of Somnium’s manipulation, just like Melody. There is no destined love or blasted bloody fate.
The forest collapses around me, swirling into a nothingness. A gasp scrapes through me as I jolt violently. I grit my teeth so hard my jaw pops as the dream clings to me like cobwebs. Sheets are wrapped around my legs as if I’ve been wrestling in my sleep. My shirt sticks to me in a cold sweat.
Somnium’s a master. He takes a simple want and warps it into something grand, but also terrifying. There is always a sliver of rot buried in the harvest. The shadow of Judas, the weight of the persona; it’s heavy and suffocating, woven into my frame like a second skeleton.
Zachary is the object of an obsession she didn’t ask for. I never meant to drag her near Somnium’s net. Now I’ll have to avoid her on this tour as much as bloody possible to make sure she doesn’t tangle within his clutches, more than she already has.
This wasn’t just a dream; it never is. Not with him. It’s a threat; clear as day, and sharp as a blade pressed to the back of my neck. A reminder of how selfish beings wield any semblance of power to their will, regardless of initial good intentions.
I’m a right pillock to ignore it.