The Nothing

“There was once a small village filled with happy, joyous people. They were normal, in fact, they were as normal as they came. On a beautiful, sunny day, the day after the solstice, the children began to play a game. They called it “The Nothing.” There were no rules that they could actively explain. Except for one: every day, one of them had to go into the forest and after a while, they would come out. And then they started to come back... different. One of the girls came back with an eye at the tip of each of her fingers. She insisted they had always been there, no one believed her, of course, but what else could they do when the child themselves believed so?

“After that, one of the older boys came back with another face, completely different from his, like a parasitic twin, between his shoulder blades. He also said it had always been there. The next day, his mother found him drowned in a shallow, mystical and murky looking pool, lungs filled with mud and thick clots of spores, as well as a thicket of yellow-brown mushrooms growing from what had once been his sparkling moss green eyes. His mother could not bear seeing her beloved son in such a state yet she could not explain what had happened. So with a terrifyingly eerie shriek she ran to tell her husband that their son had been eaten by wolves. The village people mourned for the boy's death but as the seasons came and went he was soon forgotten. The children continued to play “The Nothing” as they had ignored and neglected the horrors that game brought.

“It was a beautiful, sunny day, the day after the solstice. The villagers found a hillside that had been empty, an ancient rotted stump surrounded by the same shallow eerie pool the mourning mother had found her son rotting in. Not only was it surrounded by the shallow pond, but also by its assumed children with things misshapen and half eaten scattered everywhere. A small void opened in the crusted cap of a mushroom, dark mists crawling out as if trying to escape. And then, one by one the villagers collapsed into piles of tangled flesh. The Nothing was hungry, and it had caught its meal.

“What else might emerge from that decay?” Mama slowly caresses the beautiful, elaborate yet precise curved lines of the cover as if recalling something. She gently places the book back into its reserved spot in the library, careful not to damage it.

“Hey mama, why do you always read this story book to me?” I’ve always wondered why we would have such a peculiar book in our library, it looks very old so I assume it was mama’s when she was younger.

“Well darling… It's not a story book. It’s based on real events. It happened long, long ago.” She smiles tenderly and elegantly gets up from the pink polka dot cushioned chair beside my bed, but I hurry to grab onto her apron.

“But mama… there's no way something like that could ever be real.” I let out an awkward laugh, trying to convince not only her, but myself as well.

Despite my laughter, she didn't respond. She did not laugh with me.

“Oh my precious darling,” she pats my head gently. “Why else do you think we would forbid everyone from going into the woods?” she tilts her head slightly with a small, confused frown as if I was asking a stupid question.

I hurriedly glance up to her, then the small pond outside my window, its glimmers in the moonlight, mystical and murky, just as described in The Nothing. I move my head to glance up to mama once more but she is not there. Slowly turning my head back to our little pond, behind it, the forbidden forest, I feel my throat clog up with a strong urge. An urge to go into that forest.