Coffee Space

The Forest

I thrived in the intense inferno of the jubilant golden sun as my cool body battled the humidity of the emaciated air. My t-shirt waved around an ocean of calm breeze, as the refreshing smell of spring flowers collided with my pliable chest and the sound of auspicious cars effortlessly slid by.

So how did it change three hours later in such a perfunctory amount of time?

It was an ice cold night at Thetford forest, the blood thick sweat on my open forehead was creating the early stages of hyperthermia. My feet were hurting from the last 15 miles, and felt like a cheese grater had slipped into my shoe. The only thing I could concentrate on was the increasing musty smell of the dead, untouched leaves. The sad old trees watched as I ran through the towering forest, looking in disgust as I awoke their deep slumber with my heavy footsteps.

The darkness crawled along on all paws, as night chased my scent through the forest. The blood red glint of the tree line, and the defiant white moon, was the only illumination. There was nothing, but the notorious sound of my heart thumping feet, swamped the feeling of the bleeding sweat into my drenched shoes.

Death was very nearby, and he could run faster than me. There was no escaping the dismal dungeon of fate that awaited me. The taste of blood accumulated at the back of my mouth, an immortal priest, I carried on running into the swarthy woodland.

They must have been a whispering distance away, as I could smell the burnt residue gunpowder they had with them. I tripped upon a sharp object on the black forest floor, which tore my tired leg muscle. When I turned quickly around, I saw that the black outline of the tireless, mystery figure’s shadow had taken the presence of the moon.

The gun was pointed in my face. I could taste the metallic lead that waited in the chamber of the gun. I tipped my head backwards against the force of the arriving wind, which had come to watch the unjustified execution. I readied myself to die, as the forefinger of the man rested on the harsh drop forged metal of the trigger.

All hope I had, left with the last gust of wind. The executer slowly adjusted his finger, to give me just enough time to swallow my hanging fear which had gathered in my mouth. Milliseconds turned to hours, and as the trigger was pulled, I tried to think of a happy place.

Click… Click. Everything went lifelessly cold and dark, as my pain and vision disappeared. The anticipated noise of a gunshot did not lead to the eager bullet leaving the chamber. The gunpowder was too wet to ignite.

I looked up without a moment’s anticipation; for I knew I did not have long. My long tarried happy thoughts dissolved into the back of my mind, and my fear transformed back into adrenaline, as my metallic heart pumped the much needed hormone around my body. My devoted hands come up round the back of his icy neck, like glass, I knew it would shatter. I could smell fear, and foretasted the crunch.

The satisfactory sound of freshly broken snow was inevitable, as his defunct bag of flesh and bones fell to the permafrost floor. There was an airy silence, as his eyes became fathomless. He was dead.

“Quiesco“. I gave him some Latin words of peace. My mind used them as a way of counteracting what I had just done. I shuddered.

Review

At the time I had been reading Andy McNab, an ex-SAS solider that wrote a series of fiction books. I wanted to cap the idea of a high-stakes chase through a dark forest.

I wrote the initial story quite quickly and got an outline, but the editing took a lot more time. To describe each part I went back with an online thesaurus and looked for better words that created a theme of emotion. The method was simple, but worked well for this short text.

My English teacher literally begged me to write more, and I think I did, but it was lost. I distinctly remember that he was disappointed I used the trope “then I woke up, it was all just a dream”. I think I had become bored of doing extra work, I remember distinctly being very bored in school.

Looking back now, it still holds up in my opinion. There are parts I don’t like, such as “a perfunctory amount of time”, or even asking the reader such a question. The overly descriptive nature of the writing sometimes breaks the pace of the action and the reader is starved precisely when they want more information quickly.

I know that I write here, but I may be tempted to get back into writing, for example a book. I toyed with the idea of an AI writing about the process of becoming alive, conscious, and then dying - all from a very inward looking perspective. Given time, it could be fun to write several short pieces on AI, exploring several different interesting ideas that could never be conveyed in TV or the like. Some ideas to play with could be multiple inner monologues, an AI where events play out in a simulation but there is a history between each simulation, an AI that performs a simple task but is too intelligent for the task and has other motives, etc.

Thanks for reading.