The Ravine

Six Months Earlier…

I was still there.
Not moving.
Somewhere between the path and the sign.

Time didn’t flow—it cracked.
Forward. Back. Then forward again.
Too slow to follow. Too fast to stop.

Each blink—
the figure.
Each opening of my eyes—
my head slammed down.
Hard.
Again.
Again.
Enough to flare the old pain, like splinters that never worked their way out.

The wall returned.
The one from the well.
The jolt behind the eye.
The taste of iron.
Not here. Not now. But still inside me.

Then the cracked path.
Breaking under me, vanishing.
The tree with no leaves, waiting at its edge.
The scrape in my shoulder—sharp, residual.
Pain without a cause.
Pain that remembered me.

The tripod blinked in.
No camera.
Just legs splayed, lens missing.
Still pointed. Still watching.
A warning. A memory. Both.

And always—
the figure.
Closer now.
Not chasing.
Placing me.
Each strike deliberate.
Like it wanted me to carry this pain forward.

Then—
stillness.

The fall ended.
Not with impact.
With arrival.

Cold.
Quiet.
Like autumn stripped of its color.
The bottom of a ravine.
Stone and damp earth beneath my hands.
No light. No stars. Just black pressing down.

I lay there.
Breath steady, skull aching.
The last blow still echoing inside me.

I reached around. Stone. Soil. Nothing else.
No sound but my own pulse.

I looked up.

The figure.
Outlined against nothing.
Its head—colored now. Wrong.

Pain bloomed sharp at the back of my skull.
Final. Anchored.
But no blackout this time.
I stayed awake.

The silence broke—
not by me.

But by it.

The laughter.
Not mine.
Never mine.
Filling the ravine.
And I had no choice but to listen.