Interlinking stories that build up a fragmented picture of what’s going on so far:

THE SMEECH MAN: read here or on Ko-Fi
THE ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES: read here alone, or in this 99p collection
IT CAME FROM THE AMBER: read part of it here, in full on Ko-Fi

Green Dreams

TW: imagery that may be triggering for trypophobia

Where did the broom go, with its sickly yellow, and the bluebell carpet, a thousand bells ringing silently? 

What does the wind say when it forces the leaves to conspire, forging a transient sky-path for the canny to follow?

Where does the path lead, the track so familiar, the destination unsure? Why does the earth flow underground like water, and the air turn thick as a garden wall? 

Why is the silence so loud today, cloud-grey muffling at maximum, nature suppressed by a strange suffocation, the application of invisible downward pressure?

Who’s there?

No one. Nothing. Real things make a sound, have a shape, can be touched. Touch should be two-way. 

Something from a dream bored its way out, then bored back in. Something left a memory-hole, more than one, a honeycomb, a place to crawl in and out, from one waking to another. 

Is this real? 

Everything looks familiar, but it’s not. Where did the real things go, the textures of the trees, and why do they feel wrong today? Which waking is this? Is there another waking waiting beyond, at the end of the path, is that where the wind goes, is that where the wild things are?

There is nothing here. No sound, no life, no movement. Only the steady, slow suppression, the grey suffocation amid the green. 

Who’s there?

No one. Someone. A prickle at the back of the neck. Nothing tangible, nothing visible, nothing more than a tickling, a crawling, a sensation over the skin that comes from oneself. 

It’s not a man. 

It’s too big for that. 

And the sky is pressing, pressing, and the silence is loud, ringing, and the green is swallowing, consuming, and the path goes on forever. 

Wake up now. Blink. 

There is the yellow and the blue, the lilt of the birdsong, that feeling lifted. The path is the same, familiar, and nearly ended at the cheery gate of the cottage in the woods. 

Do not look behind. 

Do not blink again, or another hole might open up and there will be another waking, waking within waking, and there will be no more dreams, only an endless tunnel of green. 

Do not ask. The green may answer. There is a monster in the green, in the holes, in the waking. There is a monster, and it has seen its way through. Beware the green dreams. Beware the green waking. Beware the Watcher in the woods.