these sweet nightmares

chapter 11: white bones

When I reopened my eyes, I quickly set off to find James as to hurry and finish the game as fast as I could. But that was a Herculean task easier said than done. James had proved himself as a good hider as well as a trickster.

As I crept deeper into the woods, I noted that there were a lot of trees covering the sky above, blocking the sunlight. No wonder nothing else but the trees grew here; sunlight was cut off by mass leafage.

And at any rate, I hoped to get this over with soon as possible, because I had forgotten about my fear about the forest, and it was returning with a vengeance. But curling up like a baby wouldn’t do much, so I swallowed hard and supressed the slight hysteria that was creeping on.

I hummed to ease my nerves.

My shoes crunched under dead leaves as I moved. I squinted to see better in the semi-darkness but it didn’t help much. So I followed my hearing.

The crows were clumped together in a mass horde, just sitting there in the trees, making it seem like night time rather than the day. Curse these annoying pests. Crows were scary birds, with what their black feathers and beaks gaping. I compressed my lips from letting a whimper out.

I wandered around endlessly, weaving in and out of trees that sometimes I would come around back again. At first I was too stubborn to give up, but when I noticed night falling in quick, I proposed to myself that the best way to end the game was to admit that I was lost and call it quits.

Cupping my mouth, I drew in a lungful of air. “James! You win! Come out now!”

But only silence replied.

“James?” Again, no reply.

This was starting to scare me.

I walked a bit more until my knees gave away, my body falling to the floor of the forest. Ugh. I should have never agreed to such idiocy. And now look where it got me: lost in a creepy place with a missing kid. What if he never showed up again? Then it would be like that time all over once more; only his disappearance would be because of my own actions.

That struck me cold. Oh no, I could not let that happen, not after I formed a friendship, too. Thinking over my bleak memories of my late best friend, I made up my resolution: I had to find him, and quick.

The crow seemed to sense my determination and it cawed out, flapping to one tree, jumping in a strange pattern in front of me, almost as if it was leading me to James.

I kept a rather steady pace with the bird as it fluidly glided over and under green foliage; I could have gone faster, though, had it not been for all the branches up in my face. Going through the trees like a stranger intruding on private grounds, the forest began to stir.

In quick flashes, I came to remember parts of my ill-fated childhood.

“Come along, Christopher!” my friend says running ahead and looking back. “You’re getting left behind!”

I run after him, smiling and laughing because even on such a cloudy day, his grin was all that I needed to lift myself up and keep on.

We both laugh because it is hilarious and soon set off running after each other in mock war, swinging our stick swords in the air. It is blissful, this world we call our own. All we know is happiness, unbound by the strict confines known to be rules and regulations conjured by the minds of adults. It is freeing to let go of the expectations foisted upon us by the moment of birth and simply live.

Carried away by our imagination, we are distancing ourselves from the boundaries of the safety grounds and moving towards deeper into the trees. We are untroubled, though, because we unaware of what is to occur.