´óÏó´«Ã½

Heavy eyelids flicker, struggling to comprehend the darkness. A puncturing of blazing lights, a firework display on mute.

Here I am, discarded in dirt. Alone. A shudder of panic pushes up through the earth and into my body, as I absorb my alien surroundings. That spontaneous, mental force pushing me to my feet, my body lurching and disorientated vision worsening. My head full of the humid, stale stench of the forest in which I find myself. Looking around, the realisation of utter confusion grabs a hold, as my brain cells fight desperately for explanation. All around broad, towering, shadowy vegetation surrounds me, and my stomach plummets.

I looked down at myself; fresh green rings are ripening into violent shades of black and blue. Vicious red stripes, etched into my limbs like revived carvings from a lost past. So unfamiliar is my new environment that I cannot help but remain where I stand, halted in a static buzz as my mind races. An age of stationary panic passed before I began to pick my way through the shrubbery; picking my way into the deeper regions of the unknown darkness.

Aeons of time seemed to flash past, my pitiful soul left behind, hushed by its own despair. Salty tears surged from my eyes to burn the grazes that patch my cheeks, as I continued to stumble blindly among the great oaks that hold me prisoner. The more accustomed my eyes grew to the darkness, the less my body cared about the branches slicing my skins surface. I felt the limbs of the trees dragging at my hair, scraping over my careless eyes. Don't give a damn. Moons pass, suns rise and I am completely unaware of this world's orbit. The denseness of my hell obstructs all light, all life, all hope from this desolate existence. And then, something different in the air fills my lungs. Something undiscovered awaits me. Something new. Something I know. I stalk towards a loose collection of trees, a clearing unnaturally filled. Something wrong, something I recognise. Someone.

Retching uncontrollably. Gagging. New sweat pelts over the old. I heave until my insides feel hollow and raw. I look back into the clearing; there lies that mangled mess. My mess. My mistake. My sister. Barely recognisable, her body just a battle ground, sheltered by rays of luminous blood, dried into her distorted carcass, ruby ravines in the desert. I can't believe it, can't let myself. My own sibling massacred in the same endless wilderness I've lost myself within. I kneel beside the chaos that is her broken limbs, and a rush of such horror, such disorientation; such anticipated grief spins through my body that I collapse beside the wreckage of my flesh and blood.

'Wait' Wait there' Don't even think about screaming' Damn well shut up' Shut up' Oi!' A hurtling thud to paralyse your insides. A deathly scrape to burn your ears. A scream so desperate you must be deserted. Left for dead for trying to survive. The last momentary hug of two girls, dying for a miracle. Catch twenty-two. The violent slam of a door, the hurried footsteps, the sickening snarl, the perverted breath down your neck, seizing your body, filth. Their two gripped hands ripped apart. The last flash of her face, petrified, putrid, alone. With a slam of a door, darkness engulfs you and all that's left is the noise; screaming, twisting, breaking, thrashing, biting, pushing, snapping, crying. Anything to not hear her suffering. And then comes the silence; the silence that stitches your lips, bleeds your insides, and eats you alive. It rips out your eyes and leaves your mind to picture what horrors lie in front of you; the picture of that mangled mess. The picture of what he did to create such contentious art; a prize to the most explicit, the most horrifying, the most deadly.

I stare down at his work. The old movie flickering impulsively in my mind subsides, the creaking projector halts its etching of images in my eyelids and the memory bleeds away. I look towards my destination, twisted shadows plundering into darkness, seeping into nothing. The concept of encountering these demons alone shreds my insides, inflicting panic throughout my body. I breathe deeply, savouring this last moment of tranquil dignity we share, then I carefully lift her body, tucking her broken bones into the ripped flesh, heaving the loose weight into my arms, feeling innards snake into crevices and leak over my body. My desperate clasp at precious company battles with the sickening ease of a crushed body slipping through my fingertips. But nothing is as unbearable as the knowledge that my sister is, and always will be, this deformed creature I clutch to. And then it hits me.

It will only get worse. Her matted body will rot to hide the tiny flaws she once obsessed over, her ravaged flesh will disintegrate to leave her smashed skull as a souvenir, the tears between limbs will disappear but never heal. She will never grow old; instead, she will seep into the earth like the carcass of a predator's prey. My plan of our escape falters and falls dead before even fully evolving; out of this wilderness, it will still happen; she will still perish, she will still decay, she will still disappear. And with the acceptance it is too late to save her, I have, in all respects failed her, I place her back on the ground, protected by the blossoming branches of a tired oak. I stroke her forehead, now unrecognisable amongst the brutal damage, and as I stare intently at the catastrophe that has taken her face, I see, for a moment, a melted smile, acknowledging my leave.