A work of fiction created as part of the #vssPhD project. Short story created and published : Feb to March 2024
For details of the project click here.
This is the second #vssphd story (as released on social media).
The story tense was selected by an anonymised poll. Both present and past tense scored highest. Which left me with a creative problem to solve.
(c) 2024 Mark A King. This is a work of fiction. All names, places, characters and events are fictional. Any resemblance is purely coincidental.
The Swaying Towers of Rendlesham
The future, they say, is unwritten.
Our long-dead past buried so deep by time that daylight should never reach it.
The recent past is a shadow from which we can run, if we run fast enough. Or forced to disappear if we throw enough positive light at it.
The throbbing pressure in Chester’s head the last decade made him believe a cure was as easy as taking a pill. Or a few. Or alcohol. Pungent smoke. Needles. Powders. He’d tried them all. Temporary fixes from which the sinus pressure dulled, only to return fully charged.
After the incident in the forest, he’s not even sure he is fixable at all. All he knows is that he must try. It is that, or giving in. Running from the dark spirits hasn’t worked. It’s time to fight. He’s realised he’s had to do this his entire life.
Sure, some have judged him for his bespoke Italian suits, tailored exquisitely to accentuate his gym-toned and steroid-enhanced body. Green eyes have gazed upon the special edition cars, un-used, sealed from the caustic elements in his custom private glass museum.
He’s always known he’s judged. But who isn’t, really?
People see the headlines. The hostile tech acquisitions. The helicopters. A new woman every few weeks. Identikit female aesthetics, like they’d rolled off some playboy billionaire factory he’d had commissioned. If only he could. But none of them came close to… her. That’s numbness, that’s pressure, that’s pain right there.
This early 30s crisis he’d been inflicted with was worse than any illness he’d suffered. Harder to fix than daily affirmations, more ingrained than CBT could touch. Self-help books promising every day resets were nothing more than digital junk clogging up his eReader.
Still, now he has this chance to fix it all. He has the forest to thank for that. It’s remained with him. Every time he’s blinked since, he could see the colours, the decay, the death of everything.
Each time he forgot to breathe, he knew it was the forest stealing his breath and using it. It retains this power even though he is faraway on the distant edge of East Anglia. The place of tall dark shapes. A world of hidden noise in the lullaby hush. The single living entity that connects all living things there, and possibly everywhere, has followed him, become part of him.
Before he can consider accepting the invite, this magical gift which could fix everything, he has to face the terrors one last time.
The time for running is over.
He pops some pills. He hopes for dreams but knows nightmares will come.
He has to go back, before he can move forward. Transport himself back to the place he fears the most. Almost fears the most.
The towers of Rendlesham sway in bare vertical lines from spongy floor to confetti-punctured night skies. The foliage of oak, pines and ash carpet this landscape.
The ground itself feels like a quagmire of stories, legends, embellishment, and mistruth.
Which it is. Always has been.
Somehow, in the frosted autumn bleakness, there are tree branches that snap and crack underfoot from some creatures Chester can’t yet see.
Heartbeat races. Breathing comes in erratic bursts. The ethereal, frigid air is all he has to cling to.
The east knows the cold. It is a reluctant parent to unruly frosts, blizzards and dark coastal winds. The easterly chill steals Chester’s breath with every gasp. Inhale. Gasp. Gasp. Gasp. Exhale.
He knows the plants take our breath and use it, returning oxygen as a gift—but right now the balance seems to have shifted in favour of them, rather than him.
Nocturnal creatures stalk this dense forest caring for nothing but survival. Oblivious to stories of UFOs and aliens — credible accounts from 1980, from air force staff, police and other people that would not lie and had no motive unless they count being mocked.
The RAF base sits only feet away from this forest. Two landscapes of nature and concrete, separated by a thin road that keeps these worlds apart.
Chester’s phone is grafted to his hand, as it is with most people. He is partially responsible for the addictive tech. Chester is not mindlessly scrolling feeds nor obsessing over social media pretence of a happy life. No, he left that addiction long ago. And what an addiction it was. It still calls him. Though he knows what it has stolen. What it continues to steal. It’s what makes him rich.
He opens the app.
It visualises the sounds of data, carried in the waves of mobile towers, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth.
The app Chester created is augmented reality. It displays the signals in undulations of blue, green, yellow, amber and red. The signals here are as clear as he’s ever seen them as Chester raises the screen and scans the treescape.
They slowly stream through the hungry tree spines in wavy lines, right here, right now, only in faded single streams of cornflower hues. The noise of this data, this invisible information, manifests itself as low rumbles from his phone’s vibration setting.
The rumours of the atmosphere in this place are whispers. There are no monsters here. No signs of anything but peace and solitude. Nothing alien, apart from his presence in this oasis and the low levels of data from which there is almost no escape anywhere in this modern world.
Life has been a sinkhole. An emptiness with no escape. Everyone wanting something from him. Chester no longer feels himself. But here, in this place miles from anywhere, he starts to become aware of the world outside his head once more. Thoughts intrude. Visions return. He replays scenes of self-doubt and foolish things he’s said and done. He is supposed to be strong, a tech founder and pioneer, a person who exudes confidence. It’s a façade for his audience, his women, his customers, and investors. The thoughts creep, stain, push and dance for his attention, even in a place like this.
He returns to his training. These thoughts are just clouds. Chester remembers they pass. Focus on being in the moment. The enveloping darkness. The absence of synthetic noise.
Some would call it mindfulness. Others forest bathing.
To Chester, it is just… being.
His backpack contains a folded tarp, a rolled sleeping bag and a flask of something warm and comforting. Chester lays the plastic sheet over the ground and the whoosh of sound it makes triggers something base and animalistic in that sits between bone and skin in his body.
Muscles tense.
Eyes wide, alert, scanning.
It sounded like the earth itself breathing a resonant cry of pain. Through his bespoke organically and ethical sourced boots, he imagines the ground tremor in response—but it just his brain making something in the absence of anything to worry about.
He waits. Pauses. It is simply physics, mathematics, acoustics.
Invasive thoughts of this nature kept our ancestors from being eaten. For a new-gen, beefed up billionaire tech god, they are as useless as quantum mechanics to an earthworm.
Above, between the jutting spears of trees, the sky swarms in colours of sage, cherry blossom, indigo. The Northern Lights in deepest Suffolk. He never thought he’d see the day.
He takes his phone out. It should be cold.
That smooth glass and expensive metal has always given him the most pleasant of icy tactile pleasure. But it’s so hot he almost drops it. He wants to take a picture before it’s too late, but his hands are numb, the device hot, and he’s fumbling.
The indicators flare. A single path, ahead, snaking through the trees. No longer an individual colour, the screen is going full-tilt spectrum. The colours seem to match the sky above, yet it is no reflection. He’s sure they will coalesce some place, deep ahead, into the dense and dark forest. There is something in the colours that is peaceful, welcoming, warm. It calls him instinctively. The thrill of substances, of cheap hook-ups with strangers, of spending ridiculous money on things he didn’t need—none of it matches this. This, this is what heaven must be like.
This beauty, this pureness of being.
He only becomes aware he’s walked a dozen feet towards the colours when a frosted twig snaps underfoot. It’s like he’s woken from a coma and is now fully aware of the horrors of the light.
The phone’s pressed so tightly in his palm that it’s almost part of him.
Rumbles — intense and persistent, as if he’s holding a Geiger counter near uranium. He turns the vibrations off. It’s then that the sounds kick in…
The screams, the torture, the agony.
Through his ear canal, the pain spikes, stabs, slices. Somewhere deep in his memory, he feels a time long before now, before he was a frightened and bullied child. Before he was even born. The smell of excrement and vomit floors him. On his knees, his disorientation is so real, he’s not sure if the overwhelming smell is all around him or from him. The world tilts like bed-spins after a heavy night of substance abuse.
He’s somewhere between the terrifying visions of alcohol poisoning and the reverence of visiting a cathedral of nature, a truly sacred place.
In the colours of the radio signals, the data tells stories he doesn’t want to hear. The dreams of strangers, their fears, their mundanity, their excess, their illicit desires, their hidden failures, their infidelity, their waste of resources and time, their inhumanity.
Their cruelty.
In the colourful flows of their data patterns. He can hear their texts, feel their images, smell their debasing fall from humanity.
He runs away. Stumbles. Springs. His legs are ripped from the scattergun shrapnel’s of wood, his lungs burn. But all the time, the colours do not chase him, they simply snake away from him, his phone, his being. Back into the dark heart of Rendlesham Forest.
Near the exit he knows the remains of the RAF base sit as hunkered domes and curved silos. He now knows why these places coexist next to each other. These forever shadows watching, guarding, protecting this ominous place. And as he nears the perimeter security fence, he looks at his phone and everything has disappeared. There are only the haphazard lines of background radio waves and data that he’d expect to find anywhere.
Fear of this sort is a portent, a gift, a chance to confront yourself. A blessed intervention. Damascus in Suffolk. This is his Saul to St Paul conversion. His chance to be blinded by… his own darkness. His opportunity to become closer to the man people think he is, than the man he has always been.
He vows to be better. He promises to change. It is within his power. It is, and always has been, his responsibility. He sees this now. Feels it in every fibre of his soul. He will wake tomorrow and start again. But then he remembers the surprise invite. The resort. All the things it will bring.
He remembers her. And what he has always desired, but could never have.
If only he could repeat his time again. Relive the same year. A month. He’d take a week, a day, or even an hour at a push.
An HOUR would be enough.
He wants it more than anything. Whatever the cost.
And, somewhere, below the autumn decay, a rustling sound. The animals pause and know to remain silent to a force older and greater than they are. Chester is sure he can hear it. Nearer. Closer. Creeping.
The subterranean sound of a thousand unconnected roots moving in harmony. Then, a deep resonant frequency (a bastard child of vibration and famished whisper), issues from the ground.
~one hour~
~can~
~change~
~everything~
The end (for now)
Metropolitan Dreams 