“What now?”
After unceremoniously barging into my office, Ven handed me his video camera.
“Go.”
***
A monsoon fell tonight.
Without his trusty umbrella, Ven cursed underneath his breath.
“Why..-“
In the distance, thunder crackled with solemn menace, cutting him off. The trees around him teetered, hesitantly absorbing the minute rage of the powerless winds. A beautiful moon illuminated his surroundings in wistful light, painting a grand scene demanding my attention.
Yet, right now, he definitely looked pissed.
“Why now, damn you!”
After his short tirade, he continued to wobble on the slippery ground beneath, seemingly trying to find any lead that could hint to any place other than this enchanting forest. However, the earth had other plans. Tenebrous mud and jagged stones stood unavoidably in the way of his feet, distorting his already irate-looking face.
Somewhat lost and definitely damp, he was searching endlessly. For what, though? I have no idea, the thoughts within this man are almost always in pure dissension.
Ahead of him were trees, countless in number. Each of them swayed beneath the radiance of the blue moon and stood terribly tall, all of them dwarfing Ven in size. To his right were even more trees, just like before, but apparently there weren’t enough a few seconds ago. Impossible to navigate and covering the ground with insurmountable shadows, he turned to his left, where surprisingly, were more trees. Behind him, however…
The leafy bastards had covered the area as well.
Maintaining this type of momentum was definitely grueling, seeing as how he has slowed down by a considerable amount. Ven just kept going straight, walking through a clearing. Two clearings? Four? I started to count how many times he crossed paths with the identical clearing, before Ven had suddenly stopped, finally noticing the same thing I already have.
“Aha!”
Ven turned right, facing the sheer cluster of trees and marched through. Forcing his way against the tens of leaves and branches prickling his body, he entered the rainy clearing once more, his shivering visible from the cold.
Slightly turning the camera downwards, Ven had noticed an abyssal puddle that easily eclipsed all else near.
“Uh..”
Could we even call this a puddle?
In the sixth time he had met with this particular clearing, the moon passed the skies and streaked the ground with a ghastly; yet enchanting glow. Shrouded in moonlight was Ven, currently in the process of trying to squat, positioning himself slightly above ground. With his inflexible ankles and the wet ground, he slipped over and over again, his rage obvious from the amount of times he kept clutching at his hair.
‘Should’ve just kept walking, Ven.’
This time, seeming to base his direction on the position of the moon, he headed south from The Mother of all Puddles, forcing his legs to continue on.
In the seventh time crossing the same particular area, this time at the northern edge of the clearing, Ven had sighed deeper than I had ever heard him before. The rain, however, kept feeding the puddle with its nutritious spoils of water.
He tried peering down the mysterious puddle, but not even the bleak moon dared to shine upon the abyss that the puddle had become.
But, no matter how impregnable the dark, there was something we could see clearly.
One bulbous, bloodshot eye.
‘What the fuck?’
At the same time, Ven jerked back in surprise.
“What the fuck?”
A split second after, the luminescent eye rose from the depths. Rising with terrible speed, it made Ven recoil from shock and fear.
Slowly erupting above the dark water, the eye ate each and every droplet of rain that was unfortunate enough to hit it with jovial glee. Where anywhere else in the clearing there would be the dull pitter-patter of the rain, the ones caught by the eye were perfectly silent.
Transfixed by the unbelievable sight before him, Ven, with his bottom on the ground, didn’t even try to stand up. Opposed to him was a black, dripping mass of void with an eye at its center.
When it started to take humanoid shape, Ven jolted into motion. Retreating back to the northern parts of the clearing, the camera did not move as he stared at the beast for what felt like an eternity.
Illuminated in ghastly, pale light, the somehow solid body of the water beast exuded more and more droplets of the black water. More eyes grew on every part of its body, cloaking it with a radiance of regal menace.
My eyes widened after Ven picked up the two sharpest rocks in his vicinity, because the moment he finished, each droplet of water, including those spotting the leaves, covering the great oaks that held them together, and even the feeble, pitiful ones on his trusty rock had turned into eyes. Scaling with the previous size of the water droplets, the eyes on Ven’s rock were infants compared to the ones that dotted the water beast.
The puddle turned into one, ginormous eye as well.
Seemingly in defeated awe, Ven had unintentionally dropped the rock.. And I saw two of the poor eyeballs burst into the black liquid.
As soon as the small eyes on the jagged rock hit the ground, the mouthless water beast immediately let out an ear-piercing screech.
The terrifying sound echoed all around, carrying with it an intense shockwave that crashed into Ven and his surroundings.
The leaves and branches parted from each other, baring a bleak patch of land from beyond the clearing Ven was standing on, before inevitably intertwining with each other once more, and overshadowing his escape route along with it.
“Bastard!”
With a wicked cackle, the water beast lunged at Ven, each eye in the clearing piercing his body with eerie stares.
Shame, though. For how many eyes it had, it didn’t notice his second rock.
Ven outstretched his right arm backwards, bending it upwards and then down once more. Rock in hand, he flicked his wrist and halted in thundering succession, catapulting it straight to one of the numerous eyes that covered the water beast.
After several twists and turns, enough to make me want to puke, he started to run as fast as he could. Though the pain assaulting his entire body in the form of dull aches slowed him down, he made sure to step on each and every eye littered on the ground and poke the ones on the trees.
‘How shaky can this damned recording get!’
Immediately, a shrill and ungodly shriek followed after him, along with an even stronger torrent of wind. Nearly getting swept off his footing, the best happened right after. Suddenly, all the water droplets in the air had turned static, and the leaves had once again parted, dissipating each and every shadow on the ground.
Never looking back, Ven weaved through each obstacle with great difficulty yet renowned speed, proven by the amount of times he nearly slipped.
What most likely kept him going, though, were the horrible sounds that threatened to catch him from behind.
Hastily crossing the forest, a bruise built up for every mistake Ven had made. The trees around him slowly got fewer in quantity and smaller in size, but in a moment so close to victory, the urge to give up was just as close to winning too.
Finally, in the distance, I saw the end of the forest nearing.
Ramming through, he was met with a striking meadow, tremendous in size.
Stepping foot in a land where the rain had already stopped, Ven finally looked back.. Just this once.
A few meters away was..
A continuation of the exact same meadow, the previous forest nowhere to be found. And this time, the sun was streaking the horizon.
***
“All I’m saying, Krows, just start bringing a fucking umbrella with you at all times.”
I gave Ven a skeptical look, and handed him his video camera back.
”..I don’t think umbrellas are enough to ward off eye demons.”