AZAI

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. Its flame glowed painfully bright in the dark night. Azai looked at it quizzically, unsure what to make of this change in her routine. She stepped closer, observing it. The light shone only a few feet from her but failed to reflect on the wood of the window frame or the grass beyond it. She stepped tentatively on, stealing fearful glances around the deserted dwelling.

When she was at the window, she lifted a tattered, yellowing sleeve to the glass. She pushed aside some of the dirt that clouded her view and peered inside. There was a fire burning behind the grate. A rug on the dirt floor blazed in the yellow light. On the rug were slippers. Her eyes widened in panic. Another woman stepped into view inside the cabin, smiling and looking directly into Azai’s eyes.

“Hello, why don’t you come in?” The woman said, but her voice did not sound muffled as if it were truly on the other side of the window. It was echoing around Azai with fraudulent kindness.

Azai shuffled backward before turning to run. She tripped on a stray tree root and turned again to face the house as she regained her footing. This is when she saw the roof. There was no chimney. Which meant there was no fireplace, no grate. She stood and ran, tearing through the trees. She felt every step pound through her ankles and up her legs. Her vision shook as she tried to focus on the ground before her.

“Keep going, yes, keep going. We go. Go. Get away Azai. Need to get away,” she muttered to herself.

“But where can you go? You’ve been walking as long as you can remember, what is it you think you’re going to find?” The voice continued to echo just as loud, just as clearly.

Azai pushed harder, forcing herself to wrench in what air she could. She ignored the stitch in her side and the cramps threatening to seize her muscles.

“Why keep running Azai? Aren’t you tired? When will you stop prolonging your torture?” the voice came again, angrier than before. All pretenses of welcome dispelled, the voice melted down into a growl, chasing her deeper into the thickening woods, past other cabins, all alike, all with the same burning candle.

“Come inside Azai, become a part of us” the voice was entirely inhuman now, the echoing devolved into a mass of guttural voices.

Azai collapsed, gasping and beginning to sob all at once. She scrambled on all fours to the base of a trunk. She sat with her back against the tree, tucking her legs into her chest and pressing her palms into her ears so tightly her heart throbbed in their tips. But she could still hear them. The voices taunted her, accused her, defiled her. Like acid sliding down her skin, her tears ripped white streaks through the dirt that was now an eighth layer of her flesh. She screamed between gasps of air and rattling sobs. Trying to block them, unable to escape them. She rolled to her side, willing her body to curl tighter into a shell around her.

She could no longer tease hallucinations away from the physical world around her. She thought she remembered seeing the cabin there before, but had she? She woke up everyday with the same mission to keep going and not trust her world. It's the only thoughts she remembered having. But when will it end? How will she ever escape if something doesn’t change? Where is she going? These thoughts belied her as she sobbed and screamed, trying to block out the building echo of voices that engulfed her, until she could no longer take the excursion and slipped into a fretful sleep.

When she woke, she was back to the beginning, back to her routine. Her eyes were open but staring through her world. She stood unsteadily on bulging, bleeding, blistering feet. Her brows pulled together accented with a sharp intake of air through gritted teeth as she settled herself into the pain. The muscles in her legs twitched from prolonged excursion. They buckled her into a neighboring tree, but she used it to stand her ground. Then she dragged one weak step after another, a rhythmic metronome to her journey.

She came across the same dilapidated home, this time with no light, and passed without more than a fevered glance. Azai pressed on a hair faster, fixing her sunken eyes ahead to something only she could see. She pulled her long pale cardigan closed over the front of her skeletal frame. The color of it was inseparable from that of her crew neck tee or wide, shapeless pant legs. Her coverings would be the picture of sameness if not for the dirt, blood and rips that asymmetrically adorned them.

She walked for hours through the colorless terrain, a repeating forest forever in the hold of midnight. The trees swayed and flexed, inhaling and exhaling the slight breeze that caught their leaves. The vines actively grew around her, creeping out over the grounds. They pierced in and out of the soil, throbbing thick like the quickened pulse of her veins. As she continued her endless mission they began to snake up her ankles and over her feet, trying to make her fumble.

Eventually their persistence succeeded. Though other than a brief wince as her hands slammed to the ground, her face remained exhausted and unamused behind the curtain of her brown, matted hair. She pushed herself up once more and continued. She walked, as she always has, one foot dragged slowly in front of another. Moving ever forward, no matter how many times she collapsed, no matter how many times she found herself inexplicably back at the start.

“Keep going. Don’t trust. Trust. No more trust. No more…” she continued her dialog, mumbling the frantic soundtrack of her thoughts, trailing off and regaining momentum periodically.

“Mommy?” The small voice that came was so distant, it did not register at first.

“Mommy!” The voice called, louder now. Azai stopped and cocked her head to the side. Her face twisted in confusion, not comprehending today's visitor. She turned slowly despite her verbal persistence to go on.

On the path Azai carved through the underbrush stood a small girl, similar in stature and visage. She was smiling, then grew sad. Her face sank from glee into a frown and then rapidly into the contortion of anger.

“Don’t you recognize me mommy?” The child yelled, “Don’t you know who I am?!”

“No, don’t trust. Not real, keep going…” Azai stammered quietly to herself, but she was unable to go. Her eyes were on the ground, stealing quick glances up at the girl. Her eyebrows gathered low then rose up and apart, back and forth, trying to place the child’s claim in her jumbled mind.

“Not real! How can you say that? Don’t you know me mommy? Don’t you love me?” The girl began to scream at her.

The image of the girl stirred something, conjured a memory other than the drab monotony and horrors that consumed all she knew. It was the girl, and her, in a world that didn’t look like it could possibly exist. They were in a white building with red and blue stripes everywhere. Eating something cold, soft and sweet. Azai’s eyes flicked up, suddenly wide with clarity. She covered her mouth and stared at the child. Then she ran to her, grabbed her arms and shook her hard as she spoke.

“Daughter! Mine! Why, here… No! Go! Have to go!” Azai yelled, pain and desperation wrestling to show prominence in her features. Her eyes remained enlarged with alert and fear, threatening to split the crow’s feet clawing at their corners.

She moved her hand into the child’s and turned, flicking her gaze back and forth over the terrain before taking hurried steps back to her path. She hobbled along as fast as she could, gripping the small hand tightly, forcing the child’s fingers apart. She stepped over roots and evaded vines, trying to gain ground with the child in tow.

Then laughter began to resonate behind her. At first it was just that of the girl. Then one, two, three voices began to contribute. Soon it was a chorus of laughter chasing at Azai’s heels. She did not turn, she did not relent. She stared with new determination at every step she laid in front of her. Then the child’s hand began to deform, elongating as the fingers morphed together into a point. This finally caused Azai to stop as the child began to slip from her grip.

Azai looked down at the vine she was now holding and flung it away from her. She swung around just in time to see the vines that had replaced the child’s arms slam to the ground and lift her into the air. Her feet and legs began to stretch and deform into vines of their own. Then the child’s head flew back and more of the blackish green tendrils of the forest floor came from her eyes, mouth and nose. The child was just a vessel now for the will of the forest, a towering mess of sprouting whips propelling it upward.

“No! No! NO!” Azai shrieked, pinching her eyes shut, dropping into a ball and beating clenched fists into her head “Not here! Not here!” more tears forced mud to cake in the lines on her face as she continued to scream, sometimes more of the same, sometimes just in anguish. She told herself, like she did every day, the torments weren’t real. But there was something different about this one, it stirred a memory that existed outside of this world. It reached a clarity in her mind she could not remember ever reaching before.

She could feel the ground moving around her, a thick, meaty, silken texture replacing the hard, stabbing ground. The tips of the creature before her ran up her legs, under her shirt. She ripped them off and threw them back just for more to snake up her skin, trying to unwind and violate her. With something like a battle cry, she snapped. She began to fight back. She ripped and clawed at the tendrils closest to her. She kicked, bit and spit. She did anything she could to hurt the thing regardless of how dwarfed she was in comparison to it.

Despite her fight, the vines increased in number, wrapping around her as the voices came fast and relentless from every direction, “it's all over. You could never save her, you can’t even save yourself. She belongs to us, and so do you.”

Azai began to lift into the air, still flailing and assaulting any inch of the beast she could reach, but the thing only seemed to be growing. All of its many tentacles moved in unison as they expanded in different directions, ensnaring every inch of the visible world. Azai rotated in its grasp as the vines thickened their hold on her, lifting her higher and higher into the air. As her body rose above the trees, she stopped struggling a moment, mesmerized by the lights finally visible in the distance. Only a few miles away, beyond a cliff, lay a city.

From the voices came one simple acknowledgement of her discovery, “You were never going to make it, now you can be one of us.”

It was gray and overrun, but it was there. She stared, her eyes glossed over with the reflection of life gleaming ahead of her. The pressure was increasing on her diaphragm, stopping her breathing, but she no longer fought. All she could do was stare as she turned slowly over in the clutches of the forest. Tears welled in her eyes, but what finally came from the sockets was a burst of blood and muscle tissue as her body gave way, collapsing inward. Cracking reverberated back to them, the sound tenfold what it should have been, as her ribs, legs and arms converged under the pressure.

***

Beeping filled the hospital room. Azai laid restrained at every joint to a bed with tubes billowing out of her. IVs, feeding tubes, a colostomy and catheter, were all forced deep beyond the barrier of her body, controlling its input and output.

A doctor stood at her side, scribbling a phrase on her chart, “4 miles from city center.”

Then she placed it on the bedside table and inserted the contents of a syringe into one of her many extensions.

“Good work. Your trial is over darling, it’s time to rest.”