The cold nipped at my skin as I walked the foreign path, hoping it would lead me out of the depths of the forest.
The wind clawed at my unclothed body mercilessly. My feet were gently walking over the rain-soaked leaves on the forest floor.
Tress, swayed by the wind, shook off cold raindrops into my raven hair, which was soaked in rainwater much like the leaves.
I stepped on rocks that were sharp enough to cut the soles of my feet causing me to hiss out in pain. The trees were whispering strange things to me.
Back when I was younger, I found an ancient book in a box under my grandfather's bed, there were pictures of the most bizarre things.
A deer next to a rotten tree. A kicked-through anthill and a fox skeleton – the flesh that was left was being devoured by worms, I knew this for there was another picture of a very detailed rotting flesh consumed by worms.
I was left wondering, what on earth could capture a picture such as that, surely not anything man-made.
The box also contained a set of drawings that could only be described as deeply meaningful and nothing less. The book itself as a complex concept didn't make much to no sense at all, each page I read felt as if it was written by either demons, forest fairies or witches, that also made me wonder if I should even be reading the book at all.
Some pages were torn out, some were blank, and some had been covered in writings he had never seen before.
A cold breeze hit my face and whipped my body. It felt as if the breeze pierced the skin along my ribs, thighs, and forearms.
The cold droplets that came with it were like blood trickling down my shivering skin. After so many raindrops fell upon my hair from the tall trees, my hair was dripping with the cold water, letting it stream down my cheeks like non-salty tears.
The book held many stories within it, even more than many, many was just the part that I could read, the stories in the book were weird and incomprehensive, all the stories I read were that way, most of which were created by the mind of his grandfather.
The cold rain staining my cheeks comforted me in some odd way. It felt like letting tears fall without crying, it felt like something impossible.
As I walked, thorns of a wild rose bit into my skin, the cold has made my skin and body numb, therefore I could not feel it. I continued walking, the thorns dragging themselves along my hips.
I was freezing, but I didn't feel particularly cold. The longer I walked the number I got. The feeling of numbness I felt before disappeared was gone in seconds and now replaced by a new feeling entirely.
The feeling that comes after holding snow with bare hands for too long. First comes the numbness and then the feeling of intense pressure put on the receptors of one's skin, the feeling of everything being too much and yet being so light and swift and invisible.
I felt the air around me move despite there being no wind. The rain started to fall, not from the trees; it fell from the sky, pouring onto my hunched shoulders and the back of my lowered head.
They were beads of ice running down my back. I felt as if the shivers and cold might tear me apart.
I felt the want to dissolve in the cold rainwater and I let myself feel it.
I saw the deer from the old picture I found in that wicked box. I knew it wasn't the same deer, but for now I willed myself to forget it and let the memories of the old wooden house calm the riot in my mind.
I walked past the deer, it didn't even turn its head in a sign of acknowledgement, it didn't even seem to notice me.
The rain had washed away my scent, the lack of care slowed my heartbeat as the cold chewed me apart from the inside.
To me it was no wonder that the deer let me pass as if I were a mere object, an un-living thing, it was no wonder because that's how I, too, saw myself.
I wondered how I was still alive. There were times when I wished the rain never came and times when I wished it poured harder.
I could move my legs, but just barely. I was on the edge of the forest when my legs gave out and I fell to the ground.
I didn't make a single move to get up; I just laid there in the damp tall grass. I dug his fingers into the dirt and the sensation I felt was one of every bone being snapped, every bone from my knuckles through my elbows all the way to my shoulders breaking.
My gaze fell upon the grass in front of mr, seeing a few sun rays shining onto the flowers that arose from their hiding among the blades of the grass.
I lifted my head higher, letting the sun dry the tears of rain from my cheeks. I opened my cold green eyes and looked at the sun, feeling the burn in my eyes, never did I think I would enjoy the sun in my eyes as much as I did in that moment.
As I lay there, cold grass grazing my chest, I closed my eyes again. Never did I want to get up, for this was now my favorite place.
I let go of consciousness and let the dark take over.
As I rested in the darkness and the calm, I remembered a bundle of half-burnt letters bound tightly together as if they would crumble to ashes if they weren't.
I longed to open them when the time was set right. It was a shame that the time was being set right at this exact moment in existence. I wasn't going to pity myself over it.
It was still sad that I would never know what secrets they held.
Thoughts were making a mess in my head and there was no one who could clean it up.
I thought about my grandfather again.
Sometimes I wished Icould be blind like he was, maybe then I could see more, like he did.
