Her : Your Darkest Desire

a search for knowledge

After she left him alone in his room, once again, his mind filled with questions. His only desire in the absence of her presence is "who is she?" He went about his morning duties with the possibilities on his mind. Stumbling into the bathroom, he stared at himself in the mirror. Again..? His face looked full and radiating with life. His brow wrinkles as the confusion comes back over him as it always does. 'Why doesn't she make any sense?'

He walks over to the door of the shower and notices the glass where her hand print once was. 'She is definitely a physical being. She leaves marks on other physical objects. However, she can just melt away her clothes without blinking an eye and has a super human strength that she doesn't have to strain a muscle for?' She truly is an enigma that he feels he has to study and get to the bottom of.

He reaches into the shower, and the steam begins to fill the room. He jumps in and begins cleansing himself and gets lost in thought. This emotion she gives him in the moment is pure bliss and safety. It is something that people go to church for decades searching to find. But he seemed to effortlessly stumble across it in the woods. That's right, the woods! That little house. That's where it all began. 'I have to go back!'

After he gets out of the shower, he slips into some comfortable sweatpants and a hoodie. It is fall, and the weather is chilled. He slides on his vans and begins out of his bedroom, down the stairs and into the kitchen where he was less than an hour ago. His journal still sitting on the table opened up to the back chapter all about how he perceives her and her energy. He places both his hands on the back of the chair and just looks down at the book deep in thought.

With a swiftness, he grabs the book and throws it into a bag he had in a nearby chair along with his pen and phone. He swings the bag over his shoulder and makes his way out of the house, locking the door behind him. His cat is sitting on the front porch, enjoying the morning watching the birds and meows up at him. His ex would never let her inside, and now that his ex is gone, she doesn't even have the desire to come inside anymore. He smiles down to her, "You're in charge until I get back. Don't burn the place down."

He nearly jumps off the porch onto the ground, skips several steps, and walks quickly toward the woodline. It is morning, and normally, when he makes this journey, it is the afternoon. He is hoping she can still lead him in the right direction. He follows his path as normal. The newly fallen leaves are crushing under each step he takes, and the path begins to twist and roll as it did the last time he got lost. He doesn't care to look back. He trusts her and where she is taking him. He knows that she is with him now, watching his every move.

He is nearly running along the pathway until he sees something long and black slither across his pathway under the brush. He stops fast in his tracks and looks into the direction it went. Off the beaten path, there is a tall stone in the middle of the woods. "I don't have on the right shoes to be walking around with snakes," he whispered under his breath. He looked at the monument a second longer and saw the snakes head lift up at the bottom of the monument and circle around behind it. He knew that it was her telling him where to go.

Shuffling through the leaves, he looked up at the trees and took notice that the birds were still chirping. Normally, they would not be near her presence. 'What is different about this?' Once he reached this large tall stone in the middle of the trees, he instinctually reached a hand out and touched it. He felt an energy racing out of it. It had a strong presence, but it wasn't overpowering like hers. There were odd carvings almost like scriptures lined along the stone in curving patterns. Trailing his fingertips along the details of the stone, he circled around to the back.

Carved into the back was a scene that seemed familiar. There was a creek with trees towering on either side. As he stared at the image longer, it mutated into a visual of a large tree with fruits bearing a resemblance to apples. He then saw a carving form of a snake crawling up the tree and hiding in the leaves. The branches on the tree blew as the breeze chilled his spine. He knew this imagery. It looked like the tree that Eve ate the apple from. But what did this mean? He closed his eyes and placed his hands on either side of the stone to just think.

As he lowered his head in thought, the birds became silent, and the breeze vanished. He was left alone in the forest, but he knew he wasn't alone. He felt her presence behind him. His lips couldn't help but smirk as her energy welcomed him in once again. He tried not to turn around to eagerly, but once he did, he didn't see her, but that house that he first met her in. He grabbed the arms of his bag and walked on over through the leaves back onto a new path.

The home looked the same as it did before, old and abandoned. He walked up to the steps, and just before he was about to come onto the porch, the door creaked open. He peered in looking for her beautiful figure, but he saw nothing but the decaying furniture. Making his way into the home, he shut the door behind him and tried to soak up every detail. He walked over to where he fell onto the floor the first time and backed against the wall. from there, he glanced around and noticed the kitchen. He walked in and placed his bag on the table to begin looking through the cabinets. There was nothing out of the ordinary besides an entire wall dedicated to herbs and other preserved items. Someone was quite the hobbiest.

He noted there was no fridge or oven, just an old cast iron wood stove that had a chimney leading out of the roof. He started opening drawers, and in one, he found an old book. Flipping through the pages, he noticed they were the same characters that were carved into that stone. He glanced out of the kitchen window in the direction of the stone, and he noticed it was still there but now glowing a gentle gold color. Looking back at the book, the script was now glowing, too. He gasped and threw the book into the air. It bounced off its spine and closed on the ground by his feet. When he glanced back at the stone, it was no longer glowing. Without trying to anger the spirits of the woods, he picks up the book, places it back into the drawer, grabs his bag, and starts moving through the rest of the small home.

He walked out into a study area. There were a lot more books and a single chair by a big fireplace. He could hear crawling noises coming from up in the chimney but just shook it off as a trapped bird. All the books on the shelves were covered in dust, so he would trail his finger along the spines to clean off their lettering. With each book, he saw it more clearly. Each book had to do with mysticism, magick, the occult, demons, angels, and all things supernatural. He took a step back from the shelves and looked over by the single chair. There was a book sitting on a small table next to it.

He walked over and picked up the book, wiping off the dust with his thumb in red lettering over a black book it read "The Book of Lilith." As he turned through the pages, he noticed how well worn they were. This book received lots of attention from whoever owned it over the years. He glanced around the room, making sure no one was watching, and he slid the book into his bag. He started to walk out of the room, and then the noise from the chimney got louder, and then a bat quickly flew out from the opening and out of the window into the bright of day. It jarred him, but he still felt safe in this house.

He made his way into the back bedroom, where he saw an old mattress on a wooden frame in the middle of the space. There was a desk and a stool in the corner and a wardrobe in the other corner. Nothing out of the ordinary was out in this room either. He opened the wardrobe and saw a few old pieces of clothing and robe, but something told him to reach in deeper. At the back of the wardrobe was a large wooden chest. He pulled it out and went over to the desk with it. The outside seemed less than spectacular. No carvings or designs, just old stained wood. He went to inspect the contents, but it was locked. He couldn't get it to budge open.

He glanced around the room again but couldn't find something to open it with. It was too big and bulky. He didn't want to carry it back with him, plus he already had one lead to follow up on. He was about ready to head back. He knew this wouldn't be his last time out here to this home. He placed the box back into the wardrobe and shut it back nicely. He slowly strolled throughout the home one last time before reaching for the front door. As he did, he glanced into this photo on the wall he could tell it was a figure. He wiped the dust from the pane and saw an image similar to himself looking back at him. It looked so similar but so old and distant. It couldn't have been him.

He opened the front door gently and stepped outside onto the porch, shutting it behind him. As he stepped off into the grass, he glanced back, hoping to see her behind him, but all he saw was his cat jumping through the leaves running towards him. He smiled and welcomed her. "I thought I told you to watch the house?" He laughed and then turned back to the stone. It was gone now, too. He was on a familiar path that he used to travel regularly but further in than he had been since he had started encountering this mysterious woman. He laughed and looked around, noticing the birds and squierrls once again.

She was gone, and she was never even here.