The smell of stale leaves invaded his nostrils. Decay. Detritus. And him, left among it, alone among these silent but somehow threatening pines.

He did not know how he had come to be there, nor how long he had been there. In fact, he didn’t know much anymore. He wasn’t even sure he knew his name anymore.

Before him… was that light? Yes… it must be. A path leading out of this wooded prison. He took two steps forward. The light came closer. Yes! It must have. He was moving closer to it - moving closer to freedom. He took two more steps, the mulch pushing its way through his bare toes.

The light came closer still. He felt he could make out the sky in the distance. A world outside. Answers. A cold air prickled his skin and it was only now he realised he was naked, his legs and torso caked in drying mud, twigs falling from his hair as he moved his head. He suddenly became aware of a burning sensation in his right side: pain. A deep gash ran from below his underarm to the side of his abdomen, and his side and arms were sticky with coagulated blood. His head swam.

He took a deep breath and began to walk.

He stopped abruptly and whipped around at the sound. An unearthly shriek, somewhere between a scream and a hiss, pierced the silence behind him. Frantic, his eyes darted all around to find the source of the sound, but nothing had changed or moved.

He turned again and prepared to run to the light when he realised he could no longer see it. Instead, a dark figure in human form stood about 20 metres from him. Its features were not only indistinguishable, it was like it had no features at all. In his horror he thought that the featureless mass looked less like a presence than an absence: a hole in the air sapping up all the light around it. A black hole standing between him and the outside world.

Then, as he watched, the darkness split and two hideous yellow disks appeared at the top of the figure. Below them, a crescent shaped grin, also yellow, and wider than the maw of any terrestrial beast, stretched out in a jagged pattern, creating an almost farcical expression.

yOu ShOuLD Not hAVe CoME bacK

The sound came from inside his own skull. A hissing static that sounded like steel scraping on steel. He screamed as fear and pain overtook him. He had no idea what was happening or why it was happening. The pain in his side screamed in harmony with the buzzing in his head. And the figure floated menacingly toward him.

yOu DO noT bEloNG

The hissing intensified and he felt his vision blur. His knees buckled under him and collapsed into the undergrowth, his wound bleeding anew. As he began to lose his grip on consciousness once more, he saw the light above him extinguish, and three yellow moons begin to take its place. He felt terror, pain. Then nothing.