Michael was almost unrecognisable. The tiny luminous ballerina pirouetted across his eyelids, and he grunted in protest. His clawed fingers raised to bat away the flickering sunbeam. A nail scraped his cheek. Blood seeped across his face. His eyes snapped open. Michael sprang to his feet, arms raised to defend himself. He didn’t know where he was. A strange woods filled with contorted trees, black grass, and thick silence. His eyes darted between the trunks, adapting slowly to the darkness. They flickered from tree to tree, coming to rest on the pointed tips of his right hand. He moved it around in front of him. It didn’t look like his hand. The five spindly white digits moved at his command, but he refused to believe it. He pushed the palm into a nearby trunk. The thin, fleshless fingers slipped between the cracks in the bark. He could feel the wood against his skin. Every crevice, every bump, and every groove taunted him as the hand stroked down its surface.
A tall skeletal man lay withering between the trunks of a dark twisted forest. Black brambles strangled the thick violet bark of an oak behind him. A pale flicker of light pushed through the mesh of spiny branches that tangled together into a canopy. It danced across the man’s face, revealing a distorted monstrous sight. Blood ran between pointed teeth. Shards of bone littered the floor around him, and he held a splintered femur in his left hand.
How could this have happened? He balled his fists. A pang shot down his arm as his new claws drew blood from his dwindling wrists. A loud crack sounded in his right hand. He turned and the fog that hung on his memories began to melt.
He saw the white stag. Felt the thrill of knowing he would catch it. He remembered his anger as his arrow slid past the beasts neck. He felt the rage of the injustice. Saw the creature’s impossible escape. He heard his Da’s yell and realization dawned. A tear ran down his cheek as the ghost of an insatiable hunger clawed at his stomach. He pressed his fingers into his eyes, pleading for relief, but the memories continued. He turned and dived on a deer. He could taste the warmth of the blood. He could feel the metallic zing on his tongue. He felt the hand touch his shoulder. Saw eyes filled with fear and clutched all that remained of his father close to his chest.
Michael sat beneath the twisted oak, curled up and shaking. Another snap. He blinked. Bone splinters fell from his mouth as his teeth clamped around what was left of the femur. His hunger was no memory. It was more than the mere shadow of recollection. It had never left. He looked at the bone. Saliva hung from the corners of his mouth. His stomach screamed in agony. Every fibre of his body was commanding him to eat the last fragment of his Da. He wanted too. He needed to. Yet he knew, if he did, it would kill him. He closed his eyes, held his breath, and lunged, plunging his teeth into the trunk of the gnarled oak behind him. The pain subsided.
“You are stronger than I thought.” A voice rose out of the gloom, snaking its way between the trees. Michael’s eyes darted towards it, but his teeth remained, gnawing at the bark. “Anyone else would eat and die of starvation before they thought to try the wood.” A figure stepped from between the trees. It stood seven feet tall, white as paper, and stripped of everything but skin and bone. “You moved on to timber before you’d even finished the real food.” It smiled. A sinister, lipless smile, and reached out an arm so brittle a butterfly cloud snap it.
Michael glared at the figure. To say it was thin would have been a lie. Michael was thin, abnormally thin. Every rib in his chest was highlighted by skin that clung to each bone in his body. This figure was beyond emaciated. It was transparent. A bleached skeleton was visible through its skin. Where a nose should have been, instead, a gaping cavern fell into its head. It looked at Michael through two sunken hollow pits. “That bone must be pretty special.” A hand sharpened into five bone talons reached out for him. “I think maybe I’ll just be taking it.” Michael swallowed his mouthful of tree and snapped at the figure.
A shrill soulless giggle burst out of it. It flung itself forward and wrapped its fingers around his mouth. “Fine! You can keep your trinket.” Its voice was laced with glee as it gripped his bottom jaw in both hands. “But aggression will be punished.” Michael screamed as the creature pulled. The sound of snapping bones and ripping flesh infected the silence of the twisted forest. Blood gushed from his face as his jowl was torn neatly in two.
The figure smiled as it examined the limp mess hanging from Michael’s face. “Welcome to the otherworld Michael O’Faich” It jeered, then vanished back into the trees.