Run, Daphne, Run
By Sean Thomas
Daphne stood beneath the trees and tried to forget her life. She was naked and the air felt warm and dry on her bare skin. Brown leaves scattered the ground like cardboard confetti, layering mounds and sinks in the earth. A maze of tree trunks surrounded her, as far as she could see, a forest of shadows, the canopy dense with spidery branches and star-shaped dimples of pale light. Somewhere up there the sun was burning in the sky, a harsh yellow globe hanging in a backdrop of pristine blue, but she couldn't see it.
She walked naked through the forest with her chin raised and her lips slightly parted. Minutes passed. Hours. Maybe even days. It was impossible to know for sure. She thought of stopping and sitting on the ground but her legs weren’t tired and her feet, which had always been a sensitive mess ever since she was a little girl, so bottom-supple that walking barefoot meant dancing and double-stepping over every pebble and twig and earth striation, those same feet were light and firm, featherless, gliding over cotton balls and leading her forward through the trees.
The world around her was soundless. She hadn't noticed it until now but there wasn't a single noise. No birds singing. No rodents scampering the boughs. No water trickling or wind rustling. Not even a single mosquito buzzing by her ear. Complete silence. Oppressive silence. She tried humming to herself but no sound bloomed in the top of her throat. She tried talking, starting low and then raising her pitch higher. But there was nothing. Finally she stopped between two trees, and with all of her muscles clenched from the backs of her legs to her shoulders, she screamed a deep raging scream like the screams she sometimes let loose in an empty house, her insides exploding into the world and rattling the wooden walls and floorboards, a scream that should've ripped through the leaves like fire and broken out of the canopy and into the sky. A flame. A comet. A star. But the scream just fizzled somewhere in her upper-breast, the memory of a scream, leaving the air like a cold mountainside.
She glanced over her shoulder at the silent forest unfolding in all directions, the scattered columns of tree trunks like malicious towers rising from the ground. Something was there. Hidden. Something she couldn't see but feel in the fabric of the air, as if the bits of sunlight were watching her. Laughing at her nakedness. Burning her pale skin with eyes. She quickened her pace, her footsteps crushing dead leaves, building speed and not glancing over her shoulder at whatever was back there. Her stride widened and stretched into a lope, a jog, because something was definitely behind her now. Something was coming for her. Shooting out of the sky and through the trees. Formless. Blinding bright. She wanted to look over her shoulder, more than anything she just wanted to look but she was such a coward, had always been such a coward, and all she could do was run, faster, sprinting, without losing her breath or a single droplet of sweat gathering on her brow, without any feeling in the bottoms of her feet, but that horrible dread behind her, or maybe inside her, ready to burst through her skin.
She ran into infinity, or what seemed like infinity, when the trees suddenly cleared into a field of yellow grass and the sky opened above her, not pristine blue with a blazing sun but cloudy, so brownish-gray and twilight cloudy that it could've been bloated with smoke. She stopped at the edge of the tall grass and stared across the field. The place looked familiar. Black culm banks of shale and slate on the horizon. Hills and slopes and ridges covered in fallow grass and sweeping out like ocean waves, and to her right, three or four ridges back, a patch of trees and a winding gravel road, a square cream-colored farmhouse with a tin roof and piles of abandoned machinery in the yard.
She knew exactly where she was.
She turned and faced the wall of green trees behind her. The branches swayed back and forth. The sky puffed thick brown above the treetops. Definitely smoke. Billowing smoke. She needed a cigarette. She needed clothes on her body. She needed to scream and she needed to run, Daphne, run, because something was burning in the distance and tearing closer through the trees. Fallen from the sky and blazing toward her. She spun around and took off across the field, down the first hill and toward the old farmhouse but it was too late because was right behind her.
Her body went cold for a second, and then hot, and she collapsed into the tall grass. It was on her. Searing her skin. Coarse like an unshaven face and she tried to squirm away but she was pinned on the ground with the grass rising above her like withered needles. She was paralyzed and surrounded by burning light. She tried to yell out but still couldn't make a noise, so she closed her eyes and lay motionless, mute, smelling the smoke in the air and praying for the darkness behind her eyelids to somehow protect her naked body, or praying that she didn't have a body to begin with and instead was a blade of grass, a flower, a tree. Anything but human. So she could disappear into the landscape forever. So she could open her eyes again and stare directly into the sun, unblinking.
- - -
Sean has spent that last five years traveling around the Americas, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. His work can be read in The Vestal Review, JMWW, A Cappella Zoo, Fickle Muses, The Southern Maine Review, and The Sandy River Review.
By Sean Thomas
Daphne stood beneath the trees and tried to forget her life. She was naked and the air felt warm and dry on her bare skin. Brown leaves scattered the ground like cardboard confetti, layering mounds and sinks in the earth. A maze of tree trunks surrounded her, as far as she could see, a forest of shadows, the canopy dense with spidery branches and star-shaped dimples of pale light. Somewhere up there the sun was burning in the sky, a harsh yellow globe hanging in a backdrop of pristine blue, but she couldn't see it.
She walked naked through the forest with her chin raised and her lips slightly parted. Minutes passed. Hours. Maybe even days. It was impossible to know for sure. She thought of stopping and sitting on the ground but her legs weren’t tired and her feet, which had always been a sensitive mess ever since she was a little girl, so bottom-supple that walking barefoot meant dancing and double-stepping over every pebble and twig and earth striation, those same feet were light and firm, featherless, gliding over cotton balls and leading her forward through the trees.
The world around her was soundless. She hadn't noticed it until now but there wasn't a single noise. No birds singing. No rodents scampering the boughs. No water trickling or wind rustling. Not even a single mosquito buzzing by her ear. Complete silence. Oppressive silence. She tried humming to herself but no sound bloomed in the top of her throat. She tried talking, starting low and then raising her pitch higher. But there was nothing. Finally she stopped between two trees, and with all of her muscles clenched from the backs of her legs to her shoulders, she screamed a deep raging scream like the screams she sometimes let loose in an empty house, her insides exploding into the world and rattling the wooden walls and floorboards, a scream that should've ripped through the leaves like fire and broken out of the canopy and into the sky. A flame. A comet. A star. But the scream just fizzled somewhere in her upper-breast, the memory of a scream, leaving the air like a cold mountainside.
She glanced over her shoulder at the silent forest unfolding in all directions, the scattered columns of tree trunks like malicious towers rising from the ground. Something was there. Hidden. Something she couldn't see but feel in the fabric of the air, as if the bits of sunlight were watching her. Laughing at her nakedness. Burning her pale skin with eyes. She quickened her pace, her footsteps crushing dead leaves, building speed and not glancing over her shoulder at whatever was back there. Her stride widened and stretched into a lope, a jog, because something was definitely behind her now. Something was coming for her. Shooting out of the sky and through the trees. Formless. Blinding bright. She wanted to look over her shoulder, more than anything she just wanted to look but she was such a coward, had always been such a coward, and all she could do was run, faster, sprinting, without losing her breath or a single droplet of sweat gathering on her brow, without any feeling in the bottoms of her feet, but that horrible dread behind her, or maybe inside her, ready to burst through her skin.
She ran into infinity, or what seemed like infinity, when the trees suddenly cleared into a field of yellow grass and the sky opened above her, not pristine blue with a blazing sun but cloudy, so brownish-gray and twilight cloudy that it could've been bloated with smoke. She stopped at the edge of the tall grass and stared across the field. The place looked familiar. Black culm banks of shale and slate on the horizon. Hills and slopes and ridges covered in fallow grass and sweeping out like ocean waves, and to her right, three or four ridges back, a patch of trees and a winding gravel road, a square cream-colored farmhouse with a tin roof and piles of abandoned machinery in the yard.
She knew exactly where she was.
She turned and faced the wall of green trees behind her. The branches swayed back and forth. The sky puffed thick brown above the treetops. Definitely smoke. Billowing smoke. She needed a cigarette. She needed clothes on her body. She needed to scream and she needed to run, Daphne, run, because something was burning in the distance and tearing closer through the trees. Fallen from the sky and blazing toward her. She spun around and took off across the field, down the first hill and toward the old farmhouse but it was too late because was right behind her.
Her body went cold for a second, and then hot, and she collapsed into the tall grass. It was on her. Searing her skin. Coarse like an unshaven face and she tried to squirm away but she was pinned on the ground with the grass rising above her like withered needles. She was paralyzed and surrounded by burning light. She tried to yell out but still couldn't make a noise, so she closed her eyes and lay motionless, mute, smelling the smoke in the air and praying for the darkness behind her eyelids to somehow protect her naked body, or praying that she didn't have a body to begin with and instead was a blade of grass, a flower, a tree. Anything but human. So she could disappear into the landscape forever. So she could open her eyes again and stare directly into the sun, unblinking.
- - -
Sean has spent that last five years traveling around the Americas, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. His work can be read in The Vestal Review, JMWW, A Cappella Zoo, Fickle Muses, The Southern Maine Review, and The Sandy River Review.
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That's freak'in weird, Weirdyear