Chapter Five: The Truth

The farthest back I can remember is waking up alone in a thick forest, the trees so tall and full that barely any light reached the floor where I lay. Vague memories danced in my mind of stone walls, people in white coats, something about an escape, and a bright burning sea of red. My head was a jumble, and it was then that I noticed I couldn’t find my head. I began to panic, I couldn’t find any of myself, and yet I could see everything. Where was my body? All of my senses were clearer then they’d ever been, as if every part of me was taking in the world at once, but I couldn’t see myself at all.

 For a time I thought I was dead, and that my ghost was stuck in this forest. I decided the only way to see if I was alive was to look and see if my arm was transparent. I tried to lift my arm, and could feel something moving. Soon a thin sliver of pinkish skin began rising into view and I panicked again. As I did, the sliver dropped back to the ground, and things started to become a bit clearer. I tried to lift my arm again, and once more the sliver of skin rose to meet me. I tried to move my whole body, and soon tendrils of skin began writhing in all directions, rising and falling, twirling this way and that. This strange mass of skin was me, or what was left of me. I had no idea how to control my body anymore, every attempt ending in random flailing. I wanted to cry, but when I tried, nothing happened.

It was then that I realized that I no longer had eyes, or any face for that matter. I had no idea how I was seeing or hearing so clearly without a face, but I was too freaked out to care at that point. As I became more and more upset, my body began to flail around on its own, and it was then I learned another lesson about my new form; I was physically unstable and any intense surge of emotion or pain makes me lose control of my body. After some time I calmed down and decided that there was no point getting upset anymore. I was what I was, and if I wanted to survive I had to learn how to live with it.

Without any way to track time, who knows how long I sat in that spot, trying to get my body to cooperate. Finally I was able to pull together enough skin to make two thick tendrils, and drag myself across the ground. It was tiresome, difficult, and not the best way to travel by far. But I had to make do with what I could. I dragged my body for what seemed like ages through that deep forest. Finally I made it to a clearing, some sort of farmland deep in the woods. It seems an odd place to put a farm looking back, but at the time I didn’t care, all I saw was a place to stay. I saw the possibility of warmth and food, and that was all I needed to see. I began to pull myself along the ground so fast I was practically bouncing off the ground as I hurried toward the small shack. It was in this small shack in the middle of a mysterious forest that I would meet a man I would soon come to call my father.