Chaos Inside A Pen

  Arnold dreamed that he was in a garden with Emma.   They run across the acres of hundreds of flower-like little children savoring the years of their innocence. The breeze smells of life and all its zest and sweetness as they fling themselves in a bed of technicolor; dipping their body into the pools of petals with laughter that made the birds in the birds in the sky appear and dance above them.   It was the kind of dream that everyone, even Arnold, would wish will never end until something just shatter than a breakable wall between dreams and reality.   And for Arnold, that was when one of the flowers suddenly flaunt a red eye right in front of him the moment she looks at Emma. It gave him the look that will eternally haunt even on his waking life.   “Arnold? Arnold?”   Pain shot right through the skull or Arnold upon opening his eye with his heart skipping some of its beat upon his awakening. The first to greet him is their ceiling and the voice of Emma ...

  We know our guns are enough only to take down any beast in this forest but something that is way beyond beast nor human is somewhat a suicide for all of us.   Yet we insist to track down the source of the unholy scream since it was actually coming from the direction where our meeting place with the other campers is located. We got a box full of ammo and a 5’7 brawny man in the form of Jonathan whom we need to drag along the way despite his whimpering since we can’t leave him all alone in our campsite.   That’s all we have against whatever we might encounter as we tread the darkness and thickness of this forest that every second we continue going deeper towards its heart, the more we get the feeling that we are plunging ourselves in the entrails of a beast. And at the pit of it lies the doomed that promises the torment that even death will try to evade.   “No! Let’s get out of here! Come on, guys! Please!” Jonathan has reverted into an amalgam of a deranged child as...

  “Target at 12 o’clock, Welkin. It’s a damn fine brute.”   Jonathan’s voice can’t hide the adrenaline that now pulsing in his vein as he spotted first our game for this evening. We are lucky that on our first night in this secluded forest, we can actually relish quickly an easy quarry in the form of a handsome stag deer exhuming a regal presence along with the emerald leaves that surround it as if it is his royal carpet in this verdant kingdom he dwells upon.   “Ok. Take it easy. Let’s approach it silently. Check the forest floor and avoid those dry leaves or twigs.” Gilbert instructed with such a hushed voice that I didn’t manage to catch up with his last few words. Between the 3 of us, Gilbert has only the patience to pore over thick manuals about animal hunting and proper handling of rifles. He serves as our “encyclopedia” that provides essential information when it comes to tracking down our game as well as our go-to guy on how to survive the forest. Jonathan, on the...