Lost

He is lost, lost in a forest, a jungle, a sweltering teeming, haunted labyrinth, haunted by growls, chatters, whispers, goading him, mocking him, tripping him, tricking him, leading him. A path, a road, no, just trodden earth, an animal’s passageway, another trick. He stops.

He is lost, like he has been here forever. All he can remember is brown tree trunks, green sticky light and the sound of his breathing, rasping, grasping, searching, seeking, looking for the clear, clean blue of the sea. So long ago he can barely remember what it looks like, smells like, tastes like but he knows he must get to it.

He is lost, he leans his hand against a trunk, a column of strength, a hand hold, ignores the stamping of the little army marching over his fingers, instead he watches the streams of steam rising up to the prison’s ceiling where the sun peeks through the canopy like a great emerald eye laughing at him. He tries to meet it’s gaze but it stares him down, so that he looks on the moulding, writhing mass of the leaf litter on the jungle floor, then closes his eyes.

He is lost, he can hear something, a rushing, gushing, slashing, a pounding in his head, or waves driving up a beach, coming for him, calling him, enticing him from the toxic sauna, to the cool shallows of the ocean. He runs, leaps, climbs, clambers, crawls until his hand closes over the dry burning heat of sand, his eye’s burn in the direct gaze of the sun and he raises his hand so that he can see the ocean swell and surge. It whispers, hisses loudly as it breaks upon the shore, like an obvious secret.

He is lost, but he is free, he can smell the bitter scent of the sea salt and the sea breeze dries his sticky face and clears his poisoned lungs. The horizon stretches in all directions, a vast, rippling silk sheet only tearing as it reaches the seam of the seashore, fraying and twisting. He struggles up, steps on to the baking heat of the sand, like walking on a thousand needles, sharpened to infinity, until he reaches the sand cooled by the waves, oozing in between his toes.

He is lost but he keeps walking forward until the waves slap against his legs, reprimanding him lightly for not being here sooner. The baby waves bite at his knee-caps. The water looks invitingly shallow, he can see the shifting images of the sea floor as he walks further out, ripples in the sand through the water look like curls in golden hair, waving in a light breeze. The light falls as a web trying to catch the small fish that skim across the floor. He is in up to his waist and dives under. And as he looks up he sees the sun shimmering through the water like a clear, bluish eye smiling on him.

He is lost, floating carelessly on a crystal bed, his eyes lost in the intense blue of the sky. Everything is liquid; everything is light, weightless, bright. But there is a dot, a blemish on the perfect sky. Clouds close like eyelids over the smiling eye of the sun and as he looks back to the beach, it is far away. All is cold, the gentle roll of the waves become huge mountains, roller coasters he must ride again and again. The waves throw him as if he is a mouse a cat has caught, and plays with. They flow angrily beneath him, sudden, unexplained.

He is lost, he looks down to see a black, bottomless abyss. Into the ocean, the deep, dark, mysterious, deceptive ocean. Shades of blackness hide horrific monsters waiting for the storm tossed traveller. The icy waters draw his warmth; it reaches in and embraces him, deeper than the sticky heat of the jungle, like it’s taken his strength, to move, to think, to breath. He is numb. He struggles to stay afloat. He looks around him for something to cling to, but there is nothing, no supporting beam, no life line. The water is deeper than it looked and he is lost.