Levi Rem in: A Sculptors Nightmare

Chapter 6: Miniscule

The smileys, with one last burst of power, pushed the cart into the river completely. Water overtook it quickly and started pulling it downstream.

Levi saw splashing and a hand emerge from the water, it kicked his legs into overdrive. He raised his gun to start firing on the smileys but froze. The hand was blueish, he would have been convinced it was lifeless had its fingers not been moving. The hand grabbed one of the smileys ankles, yanking it hard enough to topple it over, falling into the sand. Another hand followed, grabbing the other ankle. The water bubbled, split. The hands owner came up. The nearly rotten arms were attached to a fish. Jet black scales, matching its eyes. Jagged and broken teeth. Two human arms jetting out of either side of its body. It dragged the smiley into the river, drowning it. Levi watched, a deer caught in the headlights. Heart pounding. Head throbbing.

Another set of putrid hands came up, grabbing and pulling the other smiley into the murky depths. Three more sets, thirty boney fingers. Veiny blue hands, skinny arms missing chunks of flesh. More popped up, too many to count. Each set another black fish. They crawled out of the water and onto the beach. Dragging their gasping bodies towards Levi. Some had different length arms, others had theirs in different spots on their body. None of them the same, all equally darkly twisted. Deformed. Digging their gnarled fingers into the sand and pulling. Dragging.

Levi stood there, couldn't move. Couldn't process what he was seeing. They grew closer. Just fast enough to be a threat. Levi pulled out his gun, fired, bang. He didn't even aim, it was just a fear response. A desperate bid for power. His hand shook. They grew closer. He couldn't tell if he hit any of them, not that it would have mattered. They outnumbered him ten to one, maybe more. An army between him and the river. He could just spot the corner of the cart, now almost fully sunk, still drifting downstream. He couldn't see Nerthus. He couldn't see her white gown. He convinced himself she couldn't have been in the cart, he would have seen her white gown in the water, would have seen her float up, would have heard her scream. They were all lies to ease the uncertainty and he believed them. The fish were nearly on top of him. He finally turned heel and ran as fast as his legs would take him. Blindly rushing into the forest beyond the cabin.

Hopping over fallen, rotten logs, age had caught up to them. Ducking under low hanging branches, Levi ran. Flashes, streaks of vibrant oranges, deep reds and the fading greens finally letting go. That's a beautiful part of a panic fueled fight for survival, it keeps the mind quiet, focused. Like sunlight through a magnifying glass. It's another reason Levi clung so tightly to the puzzling situation he found himself in, the mystery. It let him cope, silence the thoughts of the traumatic events that have unfolded. It was his car radio, his static.

He thought of escaping the nightmare, waking up. Going back home. Laying in bed. But as he tried and the fight or flight response died down, so did his pace and peace. In the middle of the forest, no end or beginning in sight, the ache to solve the puzzle remained clear but his mind jumped back. Home. He couldn't picture it. He couldn't remember anything before waking up on that bench in the alleyway. The earlier memories became less and less clear. His thoughts returned to the terrifying idea that he didn't exist before that. That the world didn't exist before that.

An existential dread smothered him, pulled him under the waves of tension, a strain to his feeble grip on even breath but the mystery was a lifeguard and it pulled him up for air because looking up, there it was right in front of him. A light in the darkness, a sign. The tree with an "X" carved into the bark.

"Out of everywhere I could have ended up in this forest, how did I end up here? Where I needed to be? Where I always need to be?" Levi asked himself. Hoping his subconscious would answer back, reassure him of his own free will, make him believe he was real before and he'll be real after. But his mind was his, no one else's, so it can't respond. He thinks, so he is, or so he thinks.