* ~ * ~ *
You are asleep. You are dreaming.
Or are you?
Is it real? Is it a dream?
You decide.
* ~ * ~ *
While it is likely this is not the first thing you would notice, it's important that you know there is a small red jewel embedded in the hollow of your collarbone.
It is not especially large -- perhaps the size of a robin's egg -- but over half of the jewel is buried beneath your skin, so it's difficult to determine the exact size. (And, in the end, does it truly matter?) It is round and smooth and the color of dried blood, and deep down in the depths of the strange jewel, which is now very much a part of you, there is a faint yet undeniably eerie glimmer of light, like the glow of distant fires on the night-darkened horizon.
But, again, this is not likely to be the first thing you notice. You are without a doubt an observant person; possibly you pride yourself on the degree of your ability to observe, whether you are observing objects, people, or places. That is why it is the last of those three you will likely -- more than likely, really -- pay attention to first and foremost.
Surrounding you is a wilderness, but it is unlike any other you have seen.
* ~ * ~ *
Save for the echoes of distant screams, the howling of the wind and the wailing that follows in its wake, and the squish-squelch of your footsteps, it is quiet in the wilderness. It is vast, endlessly so, and except for the person next to you, appears to be otherwise uninhabited. Perhaps it is better that way, considering the circumstances. Awake or dreaming, no one would want to be here; it is a horrible place, the very embodiment of the surreal and the macabre.
The air is thick and heavy, making it difficult to breathe; it fills your nose and mouth, raping them on a sensory level until it is forced out of your lungs with considerable effort. There is a wind, but it does little other than carry the wails and moans of what sounds like the tortured and/or the dying, than swirl the overpowering, combined smells of blood, rot, and excrement that seem to envelop the wilderness in a perpetual, stomach-turning miasma. Streams and rivulets are everywhere, like a visible network of glistening, gurgling vessels -- except these consist of blood, urine, pus, and liquid feces, among other stinking bodily fluids. In some areas, where there is a depression in the land, the various fluids meet and form a disgusting, sickeningly pungent pool that occasionally bubbles; in others there are sphincter-like geysers which tremble and then spew the same foul fluids in a roaring, boiling gout, splattering anything nearby with their putrid concoctions.
In the wilderness the trees are not trees at all, but instead twisted formations of flesh, tissue and bone that rise as extensions of the land. Here, a "tree" as massive as an ancient oak climbs to the sky, its trunk consisting of layer upon layer of quivering muscle tissue stretched taut, their interwoven tendons on the verge of snapping; its branches were snow-white ribs, curving outward, sometimes out and up, and femurs, long and straight and knobby at the ends, and fused to each of them were countless skulls of varying shapes and sizes. And there, another "tree": this one was like a fir, at least in design; its entirety was composed of male and female genitalia, and its branches dripped with ejaculate. And another, and another, and another, each as abominable, if not more so, than the last -- one was a tortive pile of distorted bodies, men and women cut up, shredded, or simply disfigured until they formed something monstrous, something coniferous; another, a weeping willow by the look of it, was perhaps the oddest of all, for it was made up of countless eyes of countless colors, shapes, and sizes, their cornea reddened by intricate traceries of capillaries, and all of them leaked an impossible single drop of blood from the pinpoint black of their pupils.
The land itself is not the soil or stone you have come to know and love, to take for granted; it is skin, pulsing and alive, throbbing and moving, with purple veins bulging from its surface as if on the verge of bursting, with contracting and relaxing muscle beneath it in some places and soft, rubbery fat in others. In addition to the repulsive fluids coursing over the "land," these movements and sudden changes in terrain will obviously make it a trial to traverse the wilderness, much less explore it to any real degree. With your every step the skin underfoot shivers and shudders, as if it were actually feeling itself being walked or ran upon -- as if it were pained by it, or at least made distinctly uncomfortable.
Now that you are aware of your environment, however -- now that you have had a proper amount of time to observe and subsequently absorb it -- you should focus immediately on the person next to you.
* ~ * ~ *
The person next to you, put simply, is someone you do not like at all. Possibly you hate them. Truth be told, it doesn't really matter so long as somewhere deep down in your mind and your heart, you once -- just once -- wished they were dead or thought the world would be better off without them. That's all it takes.
Now what you may or may not discover is the crumped piece of paper in your hand, your pocket -- it's difficult to say where exactly it will appear on your person, but it will be there. Hopefully you read it, because it contains a very, very important message, which, should you find and then read the note, will state the following:
If they die, you die.
If you die, they die.
If you die, they die.
At this point it is ironic to point out that in front of each of you there is a strikingly familiar knife: it has the same square pommel, the same leather-wrapped haft, the same rectangular guard, and the same eight-inch, double-edged blade with its serrated side and blood gutter. It waits almost expectantly, perhaps impatiently; this is emphasized by the same two words etched into the bottom of the pommel:
Use me.
Before you act, however, before you act -- please finish reading the note. You missed the last sentence. It states:
Keep moving.
Well, fancy that. Perhaps you ought to stop standing there gawking at everything around you and the person you don't like that mysteriously appeared next to you? Hopefully you do, because the light inside the jewel is starting to grow brighter -- and hotter.
* ~ * ~ *
There are several questions you may be asking yourself: how did I get here, why am I here, where is this, how do I get out; what am I supposed to do, where am I supposed to go, what is happening; and so on.
The real question, though, is this:
How far will you go to keep the person next to you alive?
That's up to you.
And whoever else may be in the wilderness.
