A boy stood staring out at a field in the night. The cold night air beckoned him to walk across the twilight-soaked field into the black forest on the other side. All of his life he was told never to enter the forest, never to step over that pristine-appearing white fence at the end of the field, yet all his mind told him to do was to put one foot in front of the other and go.
In the past he was too scared to even go near it — it was just the rules, and he never dared challenge the rules. He stepped, slowly, closer to the bare trees. It was a cold winter night, but he wore a jacket that kept him warm well enough to be alright. The forest called to him, and he yearned to heed it. Slowly stepping closer, stepping towards that forbidden fence, stepping closer to his freedom. His parents slept in the home behind him, unaware of what he was doing, and they wouldn’t support it if they knew, it was them who taught him the rules after all. A new, unknown world lay before him, an escape from his current one. To step into the forest would be something he could never undo, something he would never be able to turn back from. He would be tainted, for tasting that freedom is ravenously addictive, and people who haven’t can never understand what it’s like.
As he drew closer to the fence, so very close, a wolf called in the distance. The boy did not feel fear, he only felt welcomed by the wolf’s melancholy howl. A single, lonely howl, from a single, lonely wolf, calling out to a single, lonely boy.
He stepped away from a world strange and scary to him, a world full of pain and scrutiny, a world less welcoming than the foreign one before him, less welcoming than the bitter cold of the night which was becoming more and more bitter in the field. He stepped away from a world that hurt him and beat him down, a world that found amusement in pain, a world oversaturated with greed and sex, a world he would never find happiness in. He looked at the people that thought they had found it, but he didn’t know if it was truly real happiness they had found or just a mirage, something they created to find some kind of comfort in the darkness they had lived in their entire lives. Maybe it was real, but he knew he would never find anything real for himself in such an artificial place. If anything real was left, it had all been found and kept hidden away, hoarded by those on the top. They didn’t keep it for themselves, just away from everyone. He had to go where no others dared to in order to find it.
He felt the old, splintery wood of that fence he stared at from afar moments ago. He pushed against it to climb, but it fell away before him. He stepped over its rotted wood, hidden by a new coat of paint, and the field behind him fell away into nothing. The stars in the sky glared, growing brighter and brighter as he drew closer and closer to the twisting trees before him. Once he stepped into their dark shadows he would be taken, unable to find the cruel world he was leaving behind ever again, for he could see its evil clearly as he entered the forest. Such a place couldn’t accept him ever again, for his mind was open and his eyes could finally see — if it let him peer into it, he would destroy it. The sex, greed and overindulgence that that place’s people held so dearly would be lost to them, and they would never allow that.
He felt the cold bark of the dark trees as he walked into the forest’s depths. He should have been scared, terrified even, for he didn’t know where he would end up. He was trapped in a new land without anyone to help him, yet he felt no fear. He wandered endlessly; his eyes finally opened but not sure what to see. Just as he began to tire, he heard a rustle of leaves and the snapping of twigs. He searched for the source, and his eyes found a wolf staring into his eyes, past them even, staring into him. The boy stood there frozen, not knowing if what he saw was real, but when the wolf ran the boy followed. He knew deep down that everything he had thought he had seen before that night was fake, but here he would never be lied to again. The wolf ran to a clearing where it stopped and stared at the boy, suddenly dissolving into nothing, just a cold wind that pushed the boy to his knees. He looked up at the stars once again, no longer as bright as they were but now slowly dimming and going out. The trees around him fell soundlessly, all falling towards him but none striking him, and he was surrounded by an unscalable wall of cracked logs and splinters. The moon was all that he could see in the sky, and it grew larger and larger, or perhaps drew closer and closer.
The boy cried, icy-cold tears silently rolling down an even colder face. He wanted to escape the world he was born into, the world that didn’t care for him at all. He didn’t know how, but he had to leave that place behind completely, and he still felt it nearby. All around him he suddenly heard screaming from outside the walls. He also heard scraping and the cracking of the sticks around him, and he knew his world didn’t want him free.
They wouldn’t let him live in their society with what he had now seen, what he had felt, but they wouldn’t let him live apart from the disgustingly putrid evil that took everyone in his world. He saw no escape. Suddenly, the moon was all he could see in the sky, everything else covered by the tall walls around him. Its pale milky glow drenched around him, and a beautiful woman floated just above him. He had never felt so warm and safe in his life as he did when he gazed at her. He felt the darkness that he had been engulfed in all of his life retreat, and he only felt happiness. And not the fake happiness his world marketed to you, but real, pure happiness he knew not many would ever feel again.
As the screaming grew louder and the scraping was almost at the top of the walls, the stars tried to push past the moon. These weren’t the stars he had seen in the sky when he would lie in the field and stare into the never-ending space, they felt artificial. A harsh fluorescent light that flashed in nauseating pulses. The woman held her hand to him, and as he looked around the scraping, screaming sounds were now descending the walls towards him and the flashes grew brighter and steadier. Hands reached for him from all around.
He took her hand and felt himself jerk violently up, and he saw the clearing, the walls, the forest, and his world speed away as he went into that night sky. He flew up past what he thought were stars, away from the evil he had been forced to live among all of his life. He looked at her smile, and everything went white around him, and he closed his eyes, feeling the warmth of real happiness, of peace.
Stepping on what felt like clouds, still with his eyes closed, he knew he was safe, and he would be for eternity. With his eyes closed, he couldn’t see the woman, but he felt her all around him, for this was her world. He was a bright soul raptured from a cruel and sadistic place, taken into an eternal paradise.
Austin Allan is a computer science major at University Park and is from Pittsburgh, PA. As he said he does not have a lot of writing experience, this is the first time he has submitted any writing for something other than a class. He writes mostly for fun, and as it has become a bit of a hobby lately, he is excited to share his work. He can be found on Instagram @austin2102x.