For as long as he could remember, he had been walking. The only items he carried were the tattered cloak draped over his shoulders, a withered and chipped double-headed axe slung on his back, and a small blade she had given him that had grown rusty with time. He had no destination in mind as he wandered between the trees. Not really. For the gate of hell is an elusive thing.
He couldn’t say for sure how long he had been in search of the gate. Years, decades, centuries, it didn’t matter. Time had lost all meaning to him. The sun rose and fell, seasons came and went, the stars danced across the sky in their endless pattern. He saw forests grow and mountains crumble. And yet his hair did not grey. His body did not wilt.
His memory was the one thing that was fading. He had always told her that her face had been etched into his mind for all eternity, that he would never forget her smile or the curve of her lips or the music in her voice. He believed it himself. Not one person had made as indelible a mark on his life as she had, and yet she became lost in the ghostly blur of time. He strained and he struggled to remember even her name (Was there an M… no… C, maybe?), but the fog had grown thick.
He remembered, of all things, a large heavy book with a pale blue cover he had as a boy. It was full of stories his father had compiled about giants and sea monsters and creatures with eyes that could turn you to stone with a single glance. He would linger over the details of the Minotaur’s hooves echoing through the labyrinth or the alluring songs of the siren drifting through the mist. As he read, he would run his fingers over the words, determined to commit them to memory. But the more he tried, the more his fingers slid over the pages and the stories were slowly rubbed away.
In his desperate attempt to retain her essence, her face had become a smudged blur. All he had left was the pain he felt as she was pulled away from him down the dark tunnel and the deafening rush in his ears as the gate to hell swallowed itself in front of him.
A harsh white light flooded into the cave entrance, pushing back the darkness. The smell of sulfur lingered in his nostrils and heat still emanated from the walls, but he was a few short steps away from freedom. He had done what no man could. He could not bear to wait a moment longer. In his excitement, he turned.
She stood inches from him. Her hair seemed to glow in the darkness and her perfume penetrated the acrid smell of death seeping from the bowels of the caves below. He could have touched her, grabbed her, held her if he had simply extended his fingers. For a single breath, he looked into her eyes and a strange expression of pain and love and forgiveness peered back. Her mouth opened, beginning to form a word he would never hear.
Jagged arms erupted from the walls around them and clutched her body, their cracked and broken claws digging into her soft flesh. Her eyes turned to anguish as they yanked her to the ground and dragged her away, but she made no sound. He stumbled back in astonishment, and in a rush of wind like a swift intake of breath, the gate was gone.
He felt the earth stumble beneath his feet as it had all those years before and grabbed a low hanging branch as his knees buckled. There was a time when he would have cursed the gods for abandoning his beloved bride, but his youthful arrogance in thinking he could defy their will had dissipated. They had given him one order: walk away and do not turn back until you meet daylight. The price of his foolishness gnawed at him, and he had been walking ever since – always forward, never turning back – in his quest for the gate. He searched in caves and around swamps, he traveled deserts and followed rivers, but he could not find a way to enter the one place every sad soul wanted to escape.
He took a few deep breaths, shook out his legs, and pressed forward, careful not to look back the way he had come.
The rusty blade bounced against his hip as he continued through the woods. He focused on its steady rhythm and placed his hand on the hilt, his fingers picking off dried blood from the old, cracked leather. His other hand went to his side where he had plunged the knife the night before. The skin was smooth and unharmed. He wasn’t sure why he had even bothered trying. He knew it wouldn’t work, just like every other time he had attempted to kill himself. Hanging, drowning, stabbing, every outcome was the same. His vision would blur, darkness would overtake him, and he would wake up in a puddle of salt water or covered in his own vomit or blood. His body did not ache; he bore no scars. Death had become as foreign to him as the gate itself.
He broke through some shrubs into a small clearing and immediately crouched down, steadying himself against a tree. A deer stood quietly opposite him, drinking from the nearby river and paying him no mind. The man’s eyes fixated on the animal, admiring its beauty and serenity. Lifetimes had passed since he had last seen another human being. He had learned to take comfort in the fleeting moments of connection he could find with wild animals. He didn’t need the meat. He had never felt a single pang of hunger since he had started walking. All he wanted was to run a single hand down the creature’s back, to feel the blood pumping beneath its skin. He stood up and took a hesitant step forward, wary not to make any noises or sudden movements.
In a flash, the deer was struggling for its life while a wolf’s jaws clamped down on its throat. The deer flailed and kicked at the air, but the wolf tightened its grip and flicked its head in a swift motion, snapping the deer’s neck. The deer became limp, and the wolf lowered it to the ground and tore into its fresh meal, its grey muzzle stained red.
The man never looked away during the quick battle. Instead, he studied the deer, watching the life slowly drain from its body as its blood flowed into the rushing water. And as the wolf tore flesh from bone, the man replayed the scene in his head over and over – the beautiful deer grazing in the sunshine, the crack of its neck landing with a dull thud in his ears – until the scarred and grizzled wolf ate its fill and trotted off.
The man approached the deer’s bloody carcass and knelt beside it. He ran his hand slowly along its back, the fur now thickly matted with blood and saliva, and stared at the ivory bones peeking out of its chest amongst the pool of crimson.
In all of the years he had been walking, he had chased hell and chased death. But maybe death cannot be chased, he thought as his fingers traced the frayed edges of the torn flesh. Maybe death cannot be met. Death comes so easily to the unsuspecting, to those who do not want it. As he stared into the now faded eyes of the poor animal at his knee, he realized that death must meet him.
He stroked the deer one last time between its ears, wiped his hands clean on the forest floor, and started up river.
He had never been one to live in the moment and he wasn’t sure he could remember how. Emptiness and loss had driven him since that day he couldn’t bear to remember or fail to forget. But as he walked beside the water, the grass cool beneath his feet, he felt a tinge of hope growing in his chest.
After a few miles, he came upon an area covered in reeds and brambles and broken, decaying trees. The sour smell of rotting fish clogged his nostrils and the air was dense with gnats and mosquitoes. But the sunshine perfectly streamed through the overhanging branches and the river was quiet and gentle. He unslung the axe from his shoulder, measured its weight in his hands, and began to chop.
Over several weeks he chopped down trees, fashioned windows, constructed a door. He used his knife to cut the reeds as they billowed in the soft breeze. He even carved himself a new lyre, a relic he had given up long ago. He fashioned it from the strongest, most beautiful tree he could find. At night, he played quietly to himself beneath the stars, singing old songs of love and passion. He was still mindful to never look behind him, never to turn around and retrace his steps; the ground was soon covered in intricate patterns of large, looping trails with no beginning and no end. But when he sat down and sang his ballads, the whole world seemed to listen. For those few moments every night, he felt peace.
Before long, the trees became a house and the house became a home. Slowly, the thought of his lost love and an unearthly gate left his mind, until all he was left with was nothing but the notion of the present.
He stood in front of his new home, the lyre replacing the axe on his back and his knife resting on a tree stump nearby, and he admired his work. It was rough – the walls were uneven, the door was crooked, and the roof hung a bit to the left – but he had come to love it, rotting fish smell and all.
Gnats droned lazily by his ear and he swatted them away. The buzz persisted and he shook his head and pawed at his ears, a cloud of small bugs scattering about. But the sound grew steadily louder and deeper, until his chest began to vibrate from the thundering roar. He pressed his hands to his ears and his whole body tightened. The sound lasted longer than anything he could remember, and for a brief moment, he couldn’t remember a life without it. His heart pounded and raced, feeling like it was going to explode, until–
It stopped. Silence engulfed him. The river did not babble, birds did not sing, the wind did not rustle the leaves. And then he heard something he had not heard in ages.
Her. Only it was different, strained, like her voice had been physically torn from her body. She was calling his name.
He stood still, afraid to move, afraid of what he would see. She called him again. And again. And again. He could not make himself turn around. It was another trick, he thought, another ruse to fool him into turning around, into losing her once again. He waited, his whole body stiff and unmoving, and, slowly, his name drifted into nothingness. His muscles began to relax as silence overtook him once more.
Her screaming voice echoed through the trees, ragged and guttural. His mind clicked and he abruptly turned, calling a name he had not uttered in centuries.
Flames licked his arms and legs as he looked out at a sea of people he knew and loved and people he had never seen in his life. He watched as they burned, as they had the flesh slowly peeled from their limbs, as they came back to life, and as they suffered again. Gurgles and shrieks far beyond human capacity rang through the chasm suddenly before him, and still her scream tore through to his ears.
His body trembled as he moved to follow the voice, to finally be by her side once more. But as a wave of heat rushed to his face, he hesitated, his right foot floating in midair. He pushed himself to move forward into the vast desolation he had sought for millennia, but his body resisted. He focused on her scream and pictured her face clearly for the first time since he lost her. It was pale and haggard and contorted in pain and anguish. He staggered and dropped his foot behind him.
In a flash, it was gone. The violence, the heat, the shrieks, all of it flickered out in an instant. The doorway had shut.
His breath caught in his throat as he fell to the grass, tears welling in his eyes. He tore off his cloak to wipe his face, but the strong smell of sulfur lingered in the fabric and he tossed it into the river. He wept onto the grass for some time until he could cry no more. And slowly he began to drag himself towards the river. He grabbed the knife she had given him from the stump, turned onto his back, and dangled his head over the rushing water.
As he plunged the rusty knife into his neck, sawing the blade through his throat, he stared into the blue, cloudy sky, wanting to do nothing but admire the beauty of the world around him. But her awful face was forever imprinted on his mind. He hacked and he sawed until his head floated quietly down the river, forever singing songs of mourning.
Standing in the Corner at Parties 