You are in a forest. The scorching sun has pulled itself laboriously over the thin horizon and the last shreds of red-orange light have climbed in after it. A handful of stars still twinkle dimly in the far reaches of the cosmos and you can just barely make out the new moon crested in the corner like a toe-nail cutting discarded on a dark carpet.

A pale glow lingers in the darkening sky like a wound on the verge of healing scarlessly. A few seconds more and all the traces of the majestic, dictatorial sun will be wiped clean and the stones and grass will forget that there had ever been such a ferocious yet malevolent ruler and divulge themselves blissfully into the lethargy of the night.

There is barely any light remaining but you can clearly make out the dense canopies of the trees towering over you. You don’t recognize the trees; they have broad trunks, beefy, rounded leaves, thinning branches, and mossy climbers clinging to them like wet clothing. Their roots are ancient, gnarled and dig deep into the face of the earth like a leech insolently sucking out all the nutrients of its host.

The soft and incoherent hum of the forest envelopes you like a cocoon made out of vibrations. Like pupils dilating in dim light, your ears slowly accustom themselves to the cacophony of indistinct rustles and mold them into discrete verses of a grand but largely improvised orchestra.

The owl hoots from deep within the heart of the forest and is answered by the faint crumbing of twigs and dry leaves as a serpentine form slithers over them. A brook babbles incomprehensibly and is joined by the insects beating their transparent wings against the rotting bark of the trees. The wind flows through the small gap between two trees, whistling in consequence, and is met by the rustle of the annoyed leaves that it disturbed.

You have a spot on the orchestra as well and it is high time to play your part. You pluck a young, green leaf off the nearest low-hanging bow, roll it into a whistle, and bring it close to your eyes for inspection. It’s bright green, rather rubbery, and not too springy; a bit short, but that doesn’t matter much.

Straightening your back, you inhale a lungful of fragrant air and curl your lips around the stem-end of the leaf. You have never whistled before, were never taught how to, and most certainly have never done so with a leaf, but the sound you make as you exhale is sweet and harmonious.

The orchestra readily makes room for the coveted stranger and your notes assume the limelight. One by one the rest of the singers exit the stage. The wind dies in its unending journey, the owl takes flight for the dingy city in hopes of catching a rat fattened on refuse, and the serpent retires into the many tunnels of its lair.

Your thin, piercing whistle grows in volume and is soon a cry, then a scream, then a roar, then an ear-splitting explosion, then, crossing the hearing range of humans completely, a banshee shriek that reverberates through the forest floor and provokes canines around the globe.

Your lungs run out of fuel and the whistle dies abruptly. A still, suffocating silence hangs over the forest like a heavy blanket on a strong clothes line. The forest and all its creatures are at a complete standstill. Time seems to have paused its eternal vigil and bent down to appreciate a budding primrose.

You turn your head skywards and behold the full moon in all its sickly glory as it blesses the earth with borrowed light. The pale queen of the sky had been hiding slyly behind the folds of the sky but could not resist the intensity of your whistle. Now, with all her seas and spots exposed, she sits haughtily in a prominent corner of the sky, no longer shy, and openly and intensely returns your stare.

You try to keep the staring contest going for a while longer but your pride quails under her glare and you bow your head, abashed. The sky has grown darker, murkier, more secretive. The stars have stopped twinkling and only are now white, non-luminescent specks. The toe-nail moon has disappeared altogether.

You look at the tree directly in front of you and instead of a tree you behold an old gipsy woman with a deeply wrinkled face, white wispy hair, and deep, maternal eyes. She is sitting on the stump of an ancient tree felled by lightning and holds a string of beads in her hands.

You try to take a step towards her but your feet behave oddly. It has been a tremendously long time since you last walked and your legs have forgotten how to. Instead of your right foot moving forward, your left foot slides back. Now, it would’ve been perfectly excusable to move left, right, or even diagonally, but backwards was never an option.

Your dream breaks and you die for the first time. The forest folds up on itself and melts into darkness. The final image captured by your retina just as you are engulfed into the awning abyss is of an homely, old dwarf in eccentric clothing sucking toothlessly on a long, mahogany pipe.

***

You wake up in your cell. Your eyes are affixed on a pin-prick of yellow flame burning motionlessly in a small wooden smooth lathered in oil. The flame is hollow, like all flames are, and has a blue bulbous base.

You are staring at the flame with the utmost concentration and had been staring at it unblinkingly all the while you were dreaming. Your field of vision is the yellow flame with the blue, bulbous base and the yellow flame with the blue, bulbous base only. Nothing else exists, not even peripherally.

Your heart rate is low. Your ventilation is at a minimum. You notice these things in the form of breathlessness and move to mend them subconsciously. Yet, even this tiny, homeostatic change puts a dent in your concentration and the flame flickers just the tiniest bit.

Foreign objects begin to intrude in your field of vision: the wick of the flame, the gelatin oil on the spoon, and the spoon itself. Your peripheral starts to clear. You try your utmost to ignore these intruders but even overlooking takes effort and that effort causes the flame to flicker still more.

Your concentration breaks completely. The flame recedes to a tiny bead of fire and threatens to extinguish all together. You move towards the spoon, hoping to restore the fire, but the flame lurches back up mirthfully by itself and continues to flicker artlessly.

Your strained eyes roll back into your head, exhausted. You pull back your head, slowly massage your eyes, and coax them back out. You’re sitting stiffly on a tough wooden bench with your back straight as a ramrod. Your spine creeks something awful as you shift your weight and your muscles cry out in dull agony.

Your tired eyes roll over familiarly over your cell which you don’t recognize. The entire unassuming room is a square box carved into the earth. The ceiling, floor, and three of the walls are earthen. The fourth wall is formed of eighteen dull, dark, metallic bars running uninterrupted from floor to ceiling. There is no gate, vent or other path out of the cell except a small, stinking pitch black hole with a shaky circumference that you take to be the lavatory.

The air inside the cell is dingy and dehydrated; not a tinge of moisture exists. The thirsty air sucked in by your diaphragm steals the dampness from inside your throat and leaves your trachea parched and ailing. The walls are cracked, fragmented, and granular and exude an unspoken threat of disintegration at the slightest disturbance.

The cell is practically bare. The few objects present include the spoon with the now dancing flame, a torch handle penetrated into one corner of the ceiling, the wooden bench attached to the very back of the cell, and the two people occupying the bench.

The two people occupying the bench include you and an old, wrinkly man with a kind, reassuring face and a large wart on his left cheek just over his unkempt white beard. The old man is sitting slightly to your left with his fungal feet propped up on the bench. He is staring apathetically into space, his careworn face carefree, patiently waiting for something to break the overhanging silence.

His eyes are two, bright emeralds dulled by the joint weight of time and life. His sparse hair is thinning yet long, white, and silky. He has only seven teeth left in a mouth that is perpetually wet, five of which are already rotting. He wears two heavy metal cuffs on each wrists that connect him to the wall with a stainless steel chain. A heavy, ancient iron key  hangs on a necklace strung around his frail, leathery neck.

You don’t look at him and he does not look at you. The silence overhanging the cell starts to become suffocating by degrees, yet somehow it feels inappropriate for you to break it. Your back is still wailing in agony and your spine cracks like a glow stick with every attempt you make at movement. Ever so slowly, you ease yourself on the bench and massage your back as best as you can.

“Dreams all done, lad?” the old man whispers from beside you.

“Y- yes.” You stammer.

“Azriel, how is she? Is she doing well?” He inquired nonchalantly.

You open and close your mouth quizzically, unsure of the question.

“Azriel. Mother Ma. The old woman, is she well?” He clarifies graciously.

You begin to tell him how you didn’t get a chance to talk to the old woman sitting on the stump of that ancient tree but clamp your mouth shut before the words can exit your mouth. You are convinced your explanation is improper, somehow, and is best untold.

The old man wearily turns his head towards you and says with great fatigue, “You went past her, did ya? When I wore a younger man’s clothes, that would’ve scared me right off the bench; but I’m a hundred and six now, and it doesn’t bother me much anymore.”

“Past her?” you asked innocently.

The old man sighs, fumbles with the key hanging around his neck, slips it off the necklace, and unbinds his wrists. He moves his quavering hands over yours and envelopes them gently. His hands are warm, wrinkled, calloused, and unhappy and you take great comfort from them.

He closes his eyes and reads your dream from your hands. A second later he comes awake with a livid excitement. Jerking his hands violently away and half rising from his seat, he cries, “Why!”

“Why what?” you ask meekly and respectfully.

“Why! Why indeed!” he exclaims, “do my old hands see wrong? Do they?”

You bow your head down and do not answer.

“Why!” he exclaims a third time, “Why, did you really not talk to Azriel?”

“No,”

“And the new moon, it disappeared!”

“Yes,”

“The hatchet! The wolf! My dear boy, you saw nothing!”

“No, I did not.”

“The dwarf, who was the dwarf?”

“I don’t know.”

“Hm,” says the old man, “hm.”

He sat back down on the bench, his excitement outlived. His eyes grew dull again and he seemed to put on a hundred and six years all at once.

“Hm,” he repeats and proceeds glumly to replace the restraints on his wrists. “Never,” he muses, “never in my seventy years have they not seen the wolf.”

“I’m sorry, who is this wolf?”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter, does it?”

“I don’t know.”

“No, no it doesn’t,” he sighs with his wrinkles contorted into a frown.

You open your mouth to speak but are stopped by the infuriating sound of metal grinding against rusty metal. The bars of the cell  have lifted slightly to create an opening of about four feet at the bottom. A tall, burly guard, who you didn’t notice approaching the cell, stoops and crawls in through the opening.

The guard is immense, almost six foot seven, and as wide as a bison. He is dressed in mock Indian fashion: a brass chest plate, an open drum of a stomach, a colorful skirt, several skeletal wristbands, and a great feathered headdress. His bronze skin is polished and oil slick. His eyes are simple and circular. His face is rigid, overbearing, yet not completely unfriendly.

“Ready?” He says in the way of a greeting.

“Shouldn’t have tied him up, John,” the old man butts in, “seventy years and you’d be baffled at the mistakes we make.”

The guard looks at him quizzically, “Aye?”

“Oh! Nothing!” the old man laments, “it doesn’t matter. It never did matter.”

“I guess not,” the guard says, bemused, and repeats, addressing you, “ready?”

You are unsure of how to respond and an awkward silence assumes. The guard idles for a moment and, taking your silence as affirmation, pulls you up to your feet. His arms are as large as tree trunks and twice as strong, but his movements are gentle and soft. He gives you a light tap on the back and nods towards the opening.

You resist and take a step back. The guard shoots you an annoyed glance and gives you a rough shove. All rebellion goes out of your body and you scurry along like a tamed mouse. Having given your cooperation once, you will never be able to revolt again in the future.

You pathetically crawl out of the narrow opening and the guard slides out lithely after you. He slings a hand around your shoulder and your knees buckle under the added weight. Propelling you gently, he leads you away from your prison cell and towards a narrow, winding tunnel with cobwebs hanging off the walls.

The tunnel is dark for the most part and the air is foul-smelling and humid. The floor is bumpy but not enough to trip you. You can make out flickering light casting dancing shadows beyond the tunnel. You move deeper into the darkness and head towards the light.

Absence.

***

You feel weightless. A misty cloud of fog rolls over you.

You are not in the tunnel anymore. In fact, you are not sure where you are. You strain your memory and come across a stark emptiness. Not just a blur or haze, but a complete absence; as if your conscious memory had ended abruptly in the middle of your sojourn across the tunnel and you, somehow, had been transported here.

The room you are in is frosty and cavernous. The lighting is minimal and significant swatches of the room are concealed behind dusty shadows. The ends of the room are lost in gloom altogether. Gigantic, ornate pillars are placed at random increments around the room to support the cobwebbed walls. Nailed to these pillars, suspended from the ceilings and staked mercilessly on the ground, are desecrated human bodies.

They are thin, sad, tortured bodies, barely more than skeletons. The majority of them are covered with gaping wounds and gashed revealing ghastly red flesh inside. Otherwise their skin is burnt black, almost charred, and is peeling away.

Their limbs have been distorted into odd shapes and gestures and the bones are, no doubt, broken. Their persecuted faces are grotesque and garish. Their lips have been punctured and plastered onto their skins revealing blackened, sickening gums and no teeth.

You are sprawled on the ground on your back over a complex geometrical shape composed entirely of circles, triangles, and hexagons of varying shapes and dimensions. The shape is etched in blood-red against a sea of violet and is surrounded by eight ignited candles and behind each ignited candle is a hooded figure garbed in a purple robe.

The figures are all silent, ambiguous, and indistinguishable from one another. You peer into their faces but your eyes are checked by an impenetrable emptiness. The hoods of their robes cast deep shadows over their faces and the flickering orange glow of the candles is too feeble to illuminate such gloom. Their heads are bowed in silent prayer, and in their hands the candles burn as still as the candle that lead you into the forest

You attempt to stir and are made aware of the restraints that bind you to the floor. Multiple lengths of strong, metallic wires criss-cross across your body forming a tightly wound mesh and, issuing tautly from under your legs and shoulders, disappear into the hardwood floor.  A cotton gag is jammed deep into your throat and itchy cotton balls block your nostrils.

You cannot breathe and don’t feel the need to. You cannot budge yet feel comfortable, snug even, in your present position. The blood flow to your hands and legs are cut off. Your head feels bloated and oppressive. Your heart is not beating but you are definitely alive.

A gong sounds in the distance. The preluding meditative prayer over, the ritual commences. The roped figures take a silent step backwards and elevate the candles. Their faces, suddenly flooded with abnormal orange light, take on a ghastly appearance. Their breathing disturbs the stillness of the candle flames and your trance breaks.

Your heart restarts pumping with a painful, forceful kickstart. Your lungs, rejuvenated, start craving for air. With the demand for oxygen renewed, your diaphragm and intercostal muscles grapple to reinstate ventilation but do not possess the strength, fuel, or air pressure to thrust out the gag and clear the passage.

You endeavor to flop and flounder but your restraints refuse to slacken by even a millimeter. You feel yourself suffocating and would have soiled yourself if your bladder or rectum had possessed any amount of waste whatsoever.

You gag, choke, and begin to swallow your own tongue. The clammy sensation of your tongue slowly sliding down your narrow throat is awful enough for you to wish to hasten the dying process. Your face swells up and your eyes begin pulsating. Your wrist and knees grow numb and blue.

In some far off land, the gong sounds again. The eight robed figures surrounding you are joined by you. They are joined by the you who had stepped into the tunnel outside your cell with the guard’s burly hands across your shoulder.

You are dressed in exactly the same fashion as you were in the cell, except that now you have a robe hastily thrown over your garments. The hood is upraised but does not cover your face. Your walk is tired and grating and your face shows clear signs of fatigue. Your eyes, however, are empty, uncomprehending, and soulless.

You walk demurely up to the circle, bow down, and produce a candle from the folds of your garments. You hold the unlit candle aloft and the rest of the priory raise theirs in return. The muted gong sounds a third time and last time. The ninth candle ignites with a spark and the flames of its eight brothers weaken by an infinitesimal amount.

Two minutes have elapsed and you, the current you, are but an inch away from death. Your senses have dimmed to non-existence and a gray haze thickens around your thumping skull. You let your eyes roll up into their sockets and fall into death’s embrace when all of a sudden you can breathe again.

Your eyelids snap open and you behold yourself in front of you. It is a strange sensation to see yourself in the flesh. It’s like staring into a mirror but the reflection has somehow found its way out.

The other you, is kneeling with a beautiful, ornate dagger clasped in their left hand. They have just used it to create an opening in your air passage and are now cleaning it against your forehead. You can’t see the dagger but feel its blade against your perspiring skin. The blade is cold. The blade is sticky.

Your lungs retch out the stale, stagnant air from inside your body and sucks in fresh oxygen that burns your throat as it enters. The opening in your windpipe is small and unsuited to its office. The flaps of skin in your newly sliced throat oscillate with each inefficient inhalation and each exhalation sends out geysers of fresh blood flying over the room.

The oxygen in your system, insufficient as it is, rekindles your brain processes allowing you to numbly register the pain of having your throat slit. You gasp through your open throat for a few seconds longer then slip into a painful coma. Exactly two minutes and forty-two seconds later, you meet your second death.

***

You open your eyes and realize that they are not your eyes. You are not in your body; nor, either, in the dream body or in the body tied to the ground, but in one of those hideous, desecrated bodies you saw nailed to the pillars.

Your soul settles into the many cracks and fissures of its new host and you are promptly bombarded with a billion heinous thoughts. Thoughts purely evil and atrocious; accompanied by vile, alien memories of intense, unmatchable agony and violation. Most prominently, the thoughts and memories are of fire.

Your new fingers have all been denailed exposing ten small snatches of flesh that have blistered and festered and give off an odious stench. Your spine has been broken at eighteen different places and poke into your grilled flesh. Your femur has been crushed to a fine powder and your intestines have been removed and tied around your legs.

You open your mouth and expel a revolting breath of air. You long to die and command your soul to exit this mutilated body. Dying purposefully is a bit like attempting to forcefully fall asleep. You strive and strive and nothing happens for an excruciatingly long period of time. Then you start to doze, or, in this case, die; first by degrees, then all at once.

You exit this body from the mouth feeling very much polluted. You frantically swirl around for a new host to inhabit. You attempt to enter the previous you who slit your throat but are blocked off. You ooze into one of the torch handles in one corner of the room but find no solace in its wooden interior.

Ultimately, you begin to fade. In dying three times you have lost the greater part of yourself and are now only dimly aware that you exist, or had once existed. Your soul is in fractions and is paper-thin, almost transparent. You are barely a being anymore.

Your soul dissipates around the room into non-existence. Such a fractured soul cannot ascend the ethereal plane nor be cast into the demented plane. It cannot be reborn or reincarnated. It cannot return to the single point of consciousness nor transcend into a higher plane of being.

Such a soul that has experienced death thrice and has roamed the mortal plane unsanctioned is doomed to gust along the high skies in a vortex; almost a non-entity, only infinitesimally aware of itself, or maybe even unaware completely. It is condemned to exist eternally in a state of utter confusion and chaos, balancing precariously on the border separating the living and the non-living and veering exponentially closer towards the latter.

You are no longer a soul but more and more an innate gust of wind. Unseen, unheard, unnoticed; except maybe by the knowing, white clouds or by the menacing storm clouds; or maybe, just maybe, by some indifferent mountain girl gazing over the edge of some mammoth summit contemplating over some mortal trouble that cannot interest you any more.