So, I have been experimenting with a new writing style.

This is a very novel experiment for me as style, that elusive and difficult to define aspect, is something I have not tried to craft. The lecture series I purchased has given me thoughts and really courage to experiment in this way.

After the jump is a short story playing with this new style, albeit in an extreme form. Let me know what you think.

THE HAUNTED WOOD

By

Robert Mitchell Evans

Enkidu crossed the last measure of grass, entering the forest, his young eyes adapting quickly to the dim light filtering through the thick canopy, his bare feet silently crushing wet moldering leaves, the sharp, sweet smell of decay filling his nose, and from deeper in the forest, the presence of the dead filling the shadows with silent voices.

Behind him fields, green and welcoming, shone in golden sunlight, their crops waving in summer’s gentle breeze, promising a bountiful harvest. A boy, not yet fourteen summers, he wanted to run, dashing, back through the fields to home. The wood was forbidden, a place where no sunlight touched the ground, where spirits reigned, and where death patiently waited. He stood frozen, his feet refusing to go into the wood, his will refusing to flee, leaving him torn like a scrap of meat between hungry hounds.

The elders said all who trespassed into the wood died. As a child he believed them, as a man to-be he doubted them, and as a brother he defied them. He would find Humbaba, strong, brave Humbaba with skin like bronze and hair like ripe hay, now only a wandering spirit of the wood. He would find his brother. He would find the truth.

His delicate balance shattered, he turned stomping into the wood, behind him the green fields, living, bright and safe, vanished behind the dark twisted thicket.

The wood was dark, impenetrable shadows obscured tree and ground, seemingly lost in the perpetual night fireflies flashed, the wind, filled with the spectral voices of spirit and wraith, moaned in low mournful tones, surrounding and frightening Enkidu. He walked carefully, moving slowly, his steps uncertain, the ground wet, muddy, and treacherous. In the deep shadows, fireflies danced, their flashing never near, but always present.

He remembered warm summer nights, fireflies dancing in the fields, chasing them, catching them, enchanted by their light as they left his palm escaping back into the breeze. The wind in the wood was cold, cutting through him like a winter’s bath, the chill of endless graves blew and he shivered, hugging himself for warmth that would not come, beating his arms, his breath clouding and his ears stinging.

He stepped, breaking something under foot. He knelt, careful of the slope, leaves and mud clinging to his leggings as he sank into the rich dirt. By the dimmest light, like a clear night with only stars, he felt near his foot, fingers resting on smooth hard, bone, the end jagged and sharp.

Enkidu screamed and fell, tumbling down the slope, mud and leaves filled his mouth and nose, stones smacked sharply against his head, the dark shadows spun madly as he cascaded, stopping in the freezing waters of a fetid pool. Thrashing, throwing muddy, slimy, algae filled water with his panic, he stood, fell back into the water, clambered to his knees, then scuttled like a beetle, back onto land. He collapsed, panting and crying, not the man he thought he was, but a boy alone and scared, the desire for hearth and fire pushing the quest and his false bravery from his mind.

He lay there a long time, hot tears running down his face, cold and fear setting him to shiver, wet leaves clinging to him like a burial shroud and far above the fireflies danced, heedless of his misery. When at last the tears stopped he sat up, his vision clearing, the wood a faint world painted in gray and black, his breathing no longer ragged with sobs, his determination sparking like dry kindling. Enkidu climbed to his feet, the fireflies danced closer, reminding him of warm nights, of the courage of family.

His eyes adjusted to the perpetual night of the wood, bones littered the ground, not in vast heaps, but scattered across, and partially buried by, the carpet of decaying leaves. Skulls, humans skulls for the wood presented no danger to elf or dwarf, lay here and there, eyeless sockets staring out with fear and horror, men and women who, like Enkidu, had challenged the haunted wood.

He climbed the slope, slipping, falling to his knees, but with nails and strength and stubbornness, crested the embankment. Victorious, he laughed, not the womanly laugh of a boy, the rich hearty full-throated sound of a man, a man defying the gods. Enkidu knew he would find Humbaba, that his brother would not only give him the truth, but that his brother would honor him as a man, that his days of being a boy had ended.

Moving deeper into the wood, he steeled himself for the trials he thought he knew. Darkness closed around him, the fireflies guiding him through the night, the shadows deep and susurrous. The wind carried the voices of the dead, now faintly audible yet remaining unintelligible. He was scared again, the voices shaking his resolve, setting his soul quaking, the vast multitude exerting a pressure on his self, threatening to shatter it into shards of madness.

Every dead person’s voice flew on the wind, winding around tree and trunk, echoing in the rustle of leaves, decayed to raw unfettered emotion. Hate boiled from the darkness, hatred for the living, hatred for the darkness, hatred for Enkidu and his terrible trespass.

Humbaba’s rage erupted from the storm of hate, piercing Enkidu, shattering his spirit with unabashed abhorrence, abhorrence of all that lived, abhorrence for Enkidu. The boy turned and ran, his feet sliding over the slick leaves falling, stumbling back to his feet to fall again, scrambling for the fields, for the light, for life.

The fireflies closed, swirling around him like an illuminated dust-devil, blocking his path with menacing deathly light. He fell, his knees driving into the mud under the leaves, the squish echoing loudly in his ears, the fireflies advanced. He cried, he screamed, leaping up, trying to sprint through the unearthly green glow, but a penetrating pain fell him. The fireflies swarmed, clinging to his flesh, burning with unnatural heat, driving him to to his stomach. They flew into his nose, his mouth, choking him with their hot searing bodies, he thrashed for breath, his lungs burning with the futile exertion.

Gasping, wheezing, he beat the ground, in his struggle clenching great handfuls of dead leaves, kicking mud madly as his strength ebbed until he moved no more, and still the fireflies fed.

The guardian of the wood consumed the boy, reducing him to bones, bleached and bald, no different from the score that lay about his remains. The task completed, the guardian dispersed, dancing to unheard, inhuman melodies, waiting for another intrusion.

Enkidu did not hate, he did not rage, yet, but soon he would. Soon the revealed truth, that horrible undeniable fact, would enrage him, joining him with Humbaba and the countless others in perpetual wrath.

The unnatural wood, crafted long ago by Elvish sorcery, forever mankind’s prison and tomb.