Smile Forest (**One-shot**)

Suicide Forest

Somewhere off to my left, a wolf's desolate howl crooned through the forest.

Staggering, I lurched over a rock and clutched at a tree, the damp bark concaving under my fingers. I looked up desperately, trying to see a constellation I recognised.

My breath curled in front of me, a cloud of mist that vanished almost instantly. Through the dark canopy of leaves overhead, a few lonely stars winked at me amid inky blackness, a claw moon sailing through a dusty sea of clouds past spiked leaves and gnarled branches curved like fingers curled in agony. My own fists clenched in response.

It had to be almost midnight, judging by the moon's position. My stomach lurched as I remembered the night when my mother had sat, staring at the clock with its hands both pointing at twelve, in her bubble of numb depression after my father died. I pushed the memory away as it made my heart pound and forced the breath to rattle in my chest.

I held my fists to my mouth, breathing hot air into my palms. I swallowed back a sob at the sight of them shaking.

I looked around, blood roaring so loudly in my ears it was like lying on concrete while icy rain poured down around me. A dirt trail wound away from me into darkness, studded with stones and bordered by unkempt trees and grass. A trodden trail where no-one trod.

My chest heaved as I forced myself forwards. Shivers crawled up my legs and arms, my hair raising. Sodden leaves squelched under my shoes, every noise shoving my heart further up my throat.

I have to get away. I have to get away.

To my horror, the trees started to thicken on either side of me, hugging closer and closer to the path on either side of me with each step I took, branches sweeping lower and lower overhead until they clutched at my hair and dragged at my dress, which was ripped and torn and hanging in white lace shreds from my skirts like unruly ribbons.

I stumbled to a stop as my path curved viciously, then vanished beneath a wall of leaves and curling strands of blood-red berries.

"No, no..." I gasped, the sound cutting the air like a knife, as my breath crawled up my throat with the texture of sandpaper. I whirled in a circle, looking for a way out, another path.

I could see my footsteps on the trail, stretching away into darkness, back the way I'd come. Shadows loomed around me, slinking up trees and darkening every niche, every hole, every hollow, forming shapes of things I didn't want to see. Wind dived down from the sky with whistling wings and brushed the grass with slender fingers, whispering to the shadows while the trees swayed to its silent song.

A long, dragging moan tore out from between my teeth, terror squeezing my bones and making my knees click together in the start of buckling.

I turned back to where my path disappeared under bushes, and I took a shaking breath, and threw myself through it.

Scratches burned along my face, my arms, my legs, my face turning sideways to try and protect it as I pushed through the foliage, tripping over rocks and branches.

I gulped in relief as I felt the leaves vanish, as I came out into open space again. I opened my eyes -- and stared in horror.

My mother swayed above me, eyes an unnatural blue as they stared in my direction. The noose had cut into her neck, turning her skin swollen and red, the inhuman smile cut into her face in gashes on either side of her blood-stained lips grinning at me in gory humour.

I had always wanted her to smile.

The hole torn through my mother's dress was still dripping blood, down from where she hung on a long rope, tied around the branch from where my tyre-swing had always swung.

The blood-stained knife lay beneath her where I had dropped it, after I... After I--

I could see the beginning of a trail, the trail I had only just come off, leading away into forest on the other side of the clearing, my footprints still marking it,and I found the air to scream, because my path had led me all the way around,

and

back.