The Dark Oak Wood
The weekend started off with hope, as all weekends do. Your laugh ringing against the tin walls of our car, the smoky tyres crunching over the cool gravel, and the wood slightly darker than I remembered, but still there.
So was the silence. Not even a farmer’s whistle could pierce that silence. It was as if Gaia, herself only permitted the purest sounds in her air, the fall of a crisp leaf, the drop of pale water, the fragile chirp of the robin. The car door clicked shut and you smiled, and in that moment, I gave my trust to the dark oak wood. That was my first mistake.
My second came a moment later. It was if you were Hansel and I Gretel, running up those jagged steps, turning that smooth handle, hoping we’d find inside, the lost myths of the past. You spun me across the doormat and my leg skimmed the damp, worn wood, and together, we crossed the threshold, stepping as one into that perfect cabin in the woods.
I didn’t see the open space where the window used to be. I didn’t think to knock. I didn’t wonder at the colour of the wood, as if it owed its colour to the last bubbles of some sorry soul.
‘Who are you?’
‘Who are you?’
Like a play…
I felt my gut produce a laugh and send it up, forcing it into my mouth. I clamped my lips shut as you squeezed my arm.
I looked to my right, and something was on the ground. It looks like the couch, with a rug tossed over it.
I close my eyes.
My hand brushes the wood, and my fingers trace the grooves in the walls, running round and round the merry go round until they find yours, and it’s a game, a beautiful game, intertwining and interlocking our fingers with one another; with every clasp of our palms, your smooth and mine rough, I say ‘I’m yours’ and you, ‘you are mine’.
This is Eden, this must be it. A perfect stone of Paradise plucked from the heavens by His hand and dropped onto us, for us! All for us!
I wish I could open my eyes, but a voice tells me not to. I feel my hands raise.
I hope I’ll feel his lips on mine, for what feels like one last time as the light in my mind dims, and the cogs of my bones shift and the sunlight perversely cracks open the door. With every fine strand of golden, luminescent string, I fear that his dark shadow will leave. Something pinches the inside of my nose.
I see Time and I beg him not to go. I hold his cape and bow my head and I think I feel his soft hand caressing my head, but then he vanishes, but the feeling lingers and it’s hard and cold, like ice. I twitch.
Where did he go?
I open my eyes. My third mistake.
