Waking Up From A Nightmare In a Palace of Wonderful Things

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. I watched a figure’s shadow crawl up the decrepit structure’s tattered walls and bend sharply onto the ceiling like an obscure surrealist painting. Shadows have a way of depicting the figures that create them with a disturbingly odd misshapenness. Shadows do not show things as they are, but rather as you perceive them. A fear-ridden, creative mind can confuse shadows cast by harmless creatures or inanimate objects as something, or someone, utterly horrifying. In a sense, shadows can cause people to drive themselves into a terror-induced psychosis, if only for a few minutes at a time.

I was not afraid of the distorted, warped silhouette on the cabin’s walls because I knew who projected it. My cold hands trembled with excitement and fury, not fear. The candle’s flame swayed lazily to the rhythm of the man pacing frenetically inside the cabin. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. The flicker’s casual ballet struck a peculiarly beautiful contrast to his chaotic movements. A smile peeled across my face as the flame continued its blissfully ignorant tango. I was certain the fire would not be pirouetting so coolly if it had any inkling it was in close company with a deplorable monster. Over ten years passed since he stabbed me to death inside that cabin. He was finally back.

Sometimes, when the moment you’ve anticipated for years finally arrives, you can convince yourself you aren’t ready for it. The opportunity for change can make you nostalgic for the familiar. The rage that engulfed me when I saw him was accompanied by a sudden and bittersweet appreciation for my home in the dark forest. I’d wandered the woodlands like a missing puzzle piece for so long I almost began to forget I was there solely to await his return.

For the first few years, the whispers in the trees sounded like screams inside a prison. I would hug my knees and rock back and forth in the black of night and beg for the infinite echoes of life around me to silence. The ballads of animal noises in the forest seemed to further intensify my lack of human contact. Gradually, the torture of loneliness became so profound that I eventually nestled into madness and became friends with delusional fantasy.

I imagined the animals, insects, and birds I spoke to on a regular basis could understand me. I spoke their hypothetical replies aloud and conversed with myself passionately, even altering my voice according to each animal’s appearance and personality. Crows spoke like cranky diner waitresses who smoked too many cigarettes. They taunted me unceasingly with their crackled voices and bitter resentment. Squirrels were annoying know-it-alls with high-pitched, judgmental opinions. Deer were my favorite animals to converse with, as they were always bashful yet wise, like shy beauties aware of their own admirable grace. When the moon expanded to fullness each month I got on all fours and howled incessantly throughout the night as the world slept. No one ever heard me. Rain became hilarious for no reason and I’d cackle as the drops fell straight through me and turned dirt to mud.

I knew I’d really lost it when I started repeatedly trying to kill myself for pure entertainment. I’d climb a nearby cliff above a thrashing river and align myself perfectly with the sharp boulders protruding from its surface. Then, I’d dive headfirst into the pointy tips of the rocks. On good days, I’d do backflips. I’d search for bear dens in the summer and fall asleep inside them, waiting patiently to be eaten like Thanksgiving dinner. I would stick out my neck as far as I could and sprint full speed at large tree trunks. In short, I was bored and tired of waiting for my murderer’s return so I entertained myself by doing things that were physically impossible to do when I was alive. In the solitude of my gruesome playtime, I started not to care if he came back.

The moment I laid eyes on him through the candlelit cabin window, I forgot I did not care about his return. Painful memories I suppressed with delusion for a decade pulsed horror movie scenes inside my mind. I was like an animal following instinct; my eyes glazed over in focus and I knew exactly what I had to do.

The instructions were clear and concise. I was to enter the cabin and within minutes he would go mad. Then, he would dig up the very knife he killed me with, which was buried under the front door, and slit his own throat. I looked forward to the sequence of events occurring in this exact manner from the instant I entered the cabin.

The man in the cabin murdered me during the happiest time of my life. I wrestled with trauma of all shapes and sizes up until about a year before my death. In short, I realized feeling sorry for yourself may be warranted but it's a waste of time. I jumped over from the backseat and grabbed the steering wheel of my life, pulled myself out of victimhood, got sober, and fell in love.

He told me he wanted to marry me three days after we met. I was working as the new manager for a local dog boarding facility on a farm and he was the owner. I spent the first two days playing in the meadows with all of the dogs, throwing flowers in the air as they jumped with their jaws open to catch them. I always believed dogs understood me on a deeper level. I had too much love and empathy within me for most humans but dogs never failed to vibe with my sensitive nature. I was deeply misunderstood in relationships for most of my life but I longed for true love more than anything. When he told me he'd been watching me play with the dogs for two days and fell in love with me before I ever spoke a word to him, I thought I'd finally found what I was looking for.

I was killed a week before my wedding. My only dream in life was to find true love and just as I’d found it, the man knocked me out from behind with a crowbar at a gas station. When I woke up, the man dragged me out of the trunk of his car, took me inside the cabin, stabbed me to death while I was half-conscious, and only God knows what he did to my body after that. My soul left right after the first stab wound.

The tunnel of light everyone talks about is real. I've read in books about near-death experiences that death feels like taking off a tight shoe. To me, it felt more like waking up from a nightmare inside a palace of wonderful things. I was twirling through time in the light of the tunnel and giggling at the iridescense of my past tragedies. At the end of it, I was met with an otherwordly love. I suddenly knew I had never been alone in my life. I saw how this love had stood firm and held me up during dark times. This was a love that never wavered, never gave up, never got tired. My heart burst into constellations with this love and I knew I'd do anything for it. My chest was burning with devotion. Angels surrounded me and their warmth surrounded me in still waters of peace.

The angels allowed me to bask in the blankets of love for some time before communicating with me. They spoke telepathically and I could as well. The angels told me my violent and sudden death wounded my soul in a way that would need repairing. They gave me two options to heal. I could go on to heaven, rest for some time, and come back to Earth as someone new who did not remember the murder. The man would eventually be punished for what he did to me but there was a disclaimer: it might take him many lifetimes, as different people, to receive his karma for my murder. In other words, my soul wound would still hurt indefinitely in heaven, and the pain would continue subscionsciouly when I was ready to incarnate.

My other option was to carry out the laws of the universe myself by remaining on Earth as a ghost until the man returned to the cabin. I was told it would take around ten years for him to return and I was forbidden contact with any humans until that point. Apparently, the presence of a ghost with a soul-wound can drain the happiest people into crippling months of depression and even death by suicide. Once, I became curious if this was really the case and followed two hikers until one of them crumbled to her knees and cried. I ran away fast and never followed my curiosity again.

My dangerous presence existed for one person only. I’d approach him, he’d kill himself, my soul wound would heal, and I’d live happily ever after in heaven. However, things happened in a slightly different manner. I entered the cabin and he went mad almost instantaneously. I don’t know what his thoughts were but they drove him to dig up the murder weapon with his bare fingernails and slit his own throat. I felt a dark ball of energy in my stomach dissipate. I was healed. Suddenly, we were both in heaven. Yes, me and my murderer. But he wasn’t my murderer anymore.

He was a soul and I could feel every crevice of his essence like the raindrops I used to laugh at in the forest. I saw what happened to him and why he became a killer. I forgave him. I saw the love he was capable of had he been raised by a caring family. I swam in it. I fell deeply, madly, profoundly, into an otherworldly love with the soul of my murderer within seconds. I felt this was a love that burned over many lifetimes and I could tell he loved me just the same without even looking at him. Humans cannot understand the love souls are capable of beyond death.

The angels again gave two options, but this time, there were two of us. We could both move onto heaven but we'd be separated in our different versions of paradise. Or, we could stay in our burning, otherwordly love forever as ghosts inside the cabin. We'd rule the forest as king and queen. I could show him how to pretend kill yourself off of the cliff. All we'd have to do is enter the cabin whenever someone stopped by it. Only those with certain karma were drawn to it and they'd go mad and kill themselves immediately in the presence of the pair of us. We were told we'd actually be doing them a service because we'd be accelerating their soul growth.

My entire life as a living person, I'd only ever wanted one thing: love. I knew better than to walk away from something my heart yearned to feel for so long. I locked hands with the man and he squeezed my palm with conviction. Our eyes darted sideways towards each other and we both laughed at the brilliant complexity of love and the afterlife.

He told me his name was Brien. I told him my name was whatever the forest felt like each day when I woke up. Sunny, Hazy, Frigid, Playful...just to name a few. I asked him if he could at least take me on a first date before stabbing me again. We both laughed. The angels sent us back to the cabin with two hounds because I bargained I'd be more effective in my missions with happy dogs around. They knew I was bullshitting but sent them with me anyway.

Me, my murderer Brien, and our two hounds stepped joyfully into our new afterlife in the cabin in the woods. We sat in the two Adirondack chairs on the porch and patiently waited for wanderers to visit, go mad, and kill themselves. I nuzzled my feet under the belly of the sleeping hound at my feet. Good love is never boring.