dark short story – Helen Marie Joyce

The Children of Leviathan (Chapter three)

Heavy breathing, her fists clenched behind her back against the door, her legs shaking.

Eyes still shut, she took a long deep breath.

Relief.

She had just marginally escaped the double wrath of the strange limbo-like wilderness, manifesting itself in the imminent Electric storm and the pack of crones prowling outside. Yet somehow she did not feel entirely safe even behind the bolted door. A false sense of security grew in the pit of her stomach. She could not be sure whether the insides of this House on the Hill held no hostility, no grudges against her, and did not seek to harm her soul. In fact, she was more certain than not that the House was awaiting her arrival in order to begin its foul play. However, she could not afford to be overcome with panic and so she tried to calm herself by thinking, “confront each fear as it comes, not before”.

But was it fear indeed? Fear of what? Of the unknown, fear of something real, or an illusion? Fear of feeling helpless and alone, fear of feeling powerless and lost? Fear of pain, of loss, of damnation? She still did not know which questions to ask, and this scared her more than any demons or traps Leviathan placed in her path. Continue reading The Children of Leviathan (Chapter three)

The House on the Hill (Chapter two)

Voltaire – To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.

Her hands dug deep into the moist and dense soil. It had only just stopped raining, and the ground was so wet, she could feel the water drench her clothes at her knees as she sat on all fours at the base of the hill. The great tree that she had taken refuge under, to sit out yet another Electric Storm, had wept; its old bark had cracked and tears of resin had trickled down to its base. She had an awkward sense that it was tears of resentment, and rushed to her feet. She touched its resentful resin, and it burned to her touch. Sucking on her sore finger she thought she heard a voice: a child’s voice, coming from the base of the tree, no, from beneath the roots, rising up and reverberating through the bark’s cracks and resin pus.

“Hurry”.

The old voices had stopped since she had crossed the river. This voice was of a new order, sounding innocent yet compelling enough for her to pay serious heed. She knew she had no place there, amidst the strange nature, the twisted nature of past, of longing, of yearning, there, deep in the Forest of Forever. She knew it even before she decided to cross beyond the silver river and penetrate the unknown North, but the Gray Wolf left her little choice. He had seized her thoughts, entering her mind at his will, during the dead of the night, and she often could see through his auric eyes, images of frustration, of chase, of want, of desire. She would wake each time thirsty and hungry to venture into the Forest to seek the questions, to which she already knew the answers.

“Hurry, follow the Moon”.

Continue reading The House on the Hill (Chapter two)

The Forest of Forever (Chapter one)

So she walked a whisper like walk, weightless and wistful, as her white gown trailed behind her frail footsteps. Her head hung low and the usual sea of thoughts filled her mind. It was no wonder she could not hear the sound of her feet or the rustling of leaves; voices muffled and reverberant, a multitude of shrieks and woes, of secrets and confessions. For the all of eternity this would be her price to pay, in the conscious awake part of her being, in penitence, in restlessness, in the prison of her mind for the crime she had been condemned of. According to her impious fate, now, as it was written in the Scrolls of the Stars, she roamed the Forest of Forever, searching for questions she only knew the answers to. ‘Balance’. She sought the equilibrium of Balance.

The voices were never discernible. The voices were always there. Day in, day out. Her dreams were her only haven. She solaced in the revelry of her subconscious escapades where she would be free from fear, free from frustration. ‘In Somnii, Veritas. Per Somnii, Libertas.’ She had no other place to go than to retreat to her core at nightfall, in the midst of the Forest and seek redemption for her scarred soul.

Continue reading The Forest of Forever (Chapter one)