Cassius awoke with a strangled breath, his lungs full of stale air and the world spinning in crimson hues. Beneath him, cold stones pressed against his face. The floor was coarse, slick with moisture, and unnaturally warm. He pushed himself up, coughing fiercely and scraping against black rocks as he took in his surroundings.
He was on a tiny island (no more than four meters across) hemmed in by a lake as still and dark as oil. Its surface didn't ripple, didn't reflect the sky, it simply absorbed the light, as if the water itself was devouring it. The silence was deafening, broken only by the sudden wind.
Gnarled roots extended from the forest like broken fingers, reaching for the water, never touching it but forming a ring around the small lake surrounding the island. A single path made of twisted roots curved away from the island, forming a narrow causeway that led toward the forest shrouded in shadow. The trees in the distance were colossal with wide twisted trunks and dense roots spreading in all directions before sinking in sand, their bark glistening under the fractured sky.
"What is this place? How did I get here?" questions with no answer assaulted his mind.
Cassius crossed the bridge he glanced back at the small island. It seemed familiar as if it accompanied him his whole life. He shook his head.
"I wont find any answers by staying here. With no phone or food I must find the way back home, somehow.
~I don't want to die in a place like this
He didn't dare to voice that thought out loud but still full of fear and determination to look for way home Cassius walked the path into the unknown.
Walking on sandy ground with half exposed roots proved to be exhausting but it was only part of the problem.
"This place feels wrong, beside those trees there isn't any living thig here. No bird sounds or any kind of insects….. and now I am talking to myself. Is this what it is like to go crazy?"
Strong wind surged through the crooked trunks, the trees shuddered with a sharp, wooden shriek a mixture of half creak, half scream. The sound dug under Cassius's skin, sending shivers all over, itching like something trying to crawl inside.
"JESUS!!! ... WTF!? Can this place get any creepier?"
After endlessly marching forward unable to tell time, Cassius trudged forward, the twisted trees thinning behind him as the sand swallowed the horizon ahead. The silence pressed in, the kind of silence that gnawed at the mind.
His steps slowed. Then stopped.
Finally reaching the edge of the forest, looking up at the reddish sky he further realizes the impossibility of this place.
"Is this even earth?"
Knowing full well that this isn't earth, he refused to give voice or any more consideration to that though. Words, thoughts and action all have power and Cassius was well aware of that fact. Yet still he let himself ponder.
For the first time since waking up in this nightmare fuel of a place, he let his body rest. Shoulders slumped, he gazed out across the endless dunes, letting his thoughts wander—not because he wanted to, but because something deep in him needed to remember.
Home.
The word itself felt distant, alien, but the images came flooding back.
A dimly lit bedroom. The hum of an old fan pushing warm air in lazy circles. The soft click of a keyboard. A half-drunk mug of coffee cooling beside a flickering screen. Piles of laundry he never got around to folding. Posters of old RPGs lining the wall, thumbtacks barely holding them up. The low drone of traffic beyond the blinds. The muffled bass of music from a neighbor's apartment.
His mother yelling at him from the kitchen, "Cassius! Come eat before it gets cold!" Her voice sharp, tired, but warm. Always warm.
His dad's chuckle during those rare, peaceful breakfasts, when the world felt still and easy.
He remembered sitting by the window on sleepless nights, staring up at the sky, watching the stars and streetlights blur through the glass. Thinking that one day, he will leave. He will go somewhere better.
"Somewhere I matter."
He never imagined this.
"I have a life," he whispered to no one. "I have… family."
He looked. The wind blew harder, brushing the sand in waves around him, and for a moment he could almost hear the hum of his air conditioner again.
"I didn't ask for this," he muttered, shaking his head.
His lip quivered.
And in that fragile moment, in the quiet of memory, he sensed something coming.
A rapidly approaching blur of motion.