Chaos and Flight

With a sharp intake of breath, Naomi's eyes snapped open. The dusky forest around her would have been swallowed in darkness had it not been for the burning torches and the light from the bleeding moon above.

That was right. There was currently a lunar eclipse happening and she could vaguely remember stopping at the gas station to admire it with Victoria, but as she searched her environs, she noticed that her car and the gas station were nowhere to be seen.

There were only trees and more trees as far as her eyes could see. She seemed to be in a forest or jungle of the sort.

She was supposed to be en route to Silicon Valley. However, she could not remember the road to the valley being surrounded by towering canopies of trees of unfamiliar species.

As she slowly began to get her bearings in order, she tried taking a step forward but quickly came to the harsh realization that something was terribly wrong.

She could not move. Discordant notes screamed like alarm bells in her head, warning her to move her legs and arms, to run from the danger that she felt all around her.

She began to struggle, but the shackles biting into her wrists and ankles painfully held her fast against a thick, wooden pole that stood on a high platform of carefully arranged firewood.

She was trapped.

"Hello?!" She called out, her voice panicked.

"Hello?!" She repeated, this time louder than before. "Is anyone there? Let me go! This is all some sort of misunderstanding. You've got the wrong person, please!" She begged, her voice cracking as her eyes brimmed with tears.

Was this how she was going to die? Confused and scared?

"Where the hell am I? What happened to Victoria? Why am I in a forest?" These questions plagued her mind but there were no forthcoming answers.

Fear gripped her heart in a tight fist.

"Is someone there? I'm talking to you!" She screamed into the emptiness of the lunar night.

"Please if you are from the Los Angeles scribe, then I promise you can have the report on the president's wife. Just let me go. You don't have to do this!" She pleaded to whoever was out there. It wasn't her fault that the San Francisco Chronicle had been assigned the case of finding out the murderer of the president's wife instead of the Los Angeles scribe who needed the story to boost their ratings.

She was only doing her job and did not deserve to be kidnapped because of it.

She struggled fruitlessly against the metal shackles that bound her to the pole but it was to no avail. The shackles were fastened so tightly that the more she moved, the more they dug into her skin, and soon, her wrists and ankles began to bleed.

She bit back a sob as she concluded that her efforts were futile. She tried calling out again. "Hello?! Please! Somebody, help me!" She screamed.

"Anybody…" Her shoulders shook with the sobs she had tried so hard to hold back as she laid her head against the pole.

Suddenly, a raspy voice spoke up from the shadows. "Indah does not recognize you, child. Who might you be? You are not supposed to be here."

Naomi's head snapped up upon hearing the voice. Squinting her eyes, she tried to see where the voice had come from but she couldn't locate the source.

"Who's there? Please, help me!" She called out, hoping that the voice belonged to someone friendly and not someone who would wish her harm.

"Indah cannot help if Indah doesn't know who you are," The voice said slowly as the owner emerged from the shadows holding a hissing torch.

Naomi was perplexed. This woman was the strangest person she had ever encountered in all her twenty-five years of being alive.

The woman who called herself Indah, looked to be in her eighties though she was not bent with age. She was draped in a loose white cloth that merged with her wrinkled, pale skin and white hair, making her resemble a ghost from a horror movie. Her beady, black eyes made Naomi extremely uncomfortable.

"I must be dreaming," Naomi muttered in disbelief, shaking her head.

It was then that she finally noticed that her voice sounded different. Her deep, rich, and almost masculine voice was replaced by a silky but sharp one that sounded alien to her ears.

"What in God's name is happening to me?" She wondered. Was this all a dream or had she already been admitted to a psych ward and all this was just a consequence of her psychosis?

"Indah asked you a question, child. Indah does not like to repeat herself," The old woman said as she slinked closer to Naomi, bringing her out of the uneasy thoughts that plagued her mind.

"My name is Naomi. Where the hell am I?" Naomi answered, trying to be brave as she raised her chin and squared her jaw.

"Naomi…" Indah ran the strange name on her tongue, testing it. Either Nerina was extremely clever or this child did not belong on this plane. She did not care though, this body was full of corruption and it needed to be purged and destroyed.

"Well, child, Indah apologizes to you for this…error. You do not belong here, so Indah would send you back. All of you," The old woman grinned, her blackened teeth on full display.

"What? What do you mean by that? Hey! I'm talking to you!" Naomi yelled, beckoning to the old woman but she had turned away, walking toward one of the torches sitting in a bracket attached to a thin pole.

Naomi watched with eyes as wide as saucers as the old woman began to chant in a language that sounded like a mixture of various Asian languages, as she held the two torches in both of her hands.

After getting rid of Nerina for daring to plot against the prince of the continent, Indah had decided to get her attendants to strap her dead body to a pole, above a platform of firewood where she would set the body on fire with the aid of a spell that would leave no trace of Nerina behind.

However, to her greatest surprise, Nerina had begun to speak and struggle against her constraints. That was unexpected but it meant nothing as the shackles would withhold Nerina from trying to perform any magic. She would  destroy Nerina's cursed body.

"Towzar yanar valal ash rheynor yanib kula ak dhool jana," Indah chanted repeatedly as the fires in her hand crackled, popped, and glowed a fiery mix of blue, orange, and white.

Naomi's eyes widened in trepidation as the old woman moved forward, chanting all the way. Simultaneously, four masked figures poured out of the shadows, each holding a sizzling torch in their hands.

"No, no. Stay away! Get back! Don't come any closer!" Naomi cried out, trembling as dread crept up her spine.

The four figures moved swiftly, reaching her before the old woman did, and then set fire to the wood beneath her feet.

She started to feel the heat rising from beneath her legs. She tried to move, to somehow escape the growing heat that seared at the soles of the unfamiliar shoes on her feet.

She did not have the time to ponder on when she could have switched shoes. All she wanted was for the fire to be quenched.

The old woman finally got to her, smiling menacingly as the four masked figures stood behind her.

"Please, listen to me. Don't do this! I don't know what's going on but we can resolve this without fire!" Naomi begged, whimpering as she squirmed from the heat.

"Whatever trick you have played here Nerina or Naomi, this body must meet its end. Indah will not let your corruption fester," Indah declared as she slowly began to bring the fires to the stack of wood on which Naomi was standing.

With Naomi's terror came a powerful force, an energy that Naomi hadn't felt before; it began to bubble and thrum beneath her skin.

"Stay away from me!" Naomi shrieked; a blood-curdling scream that was proof of the terror raging in her body, mind, and soul. 

With a sudden clap of thunder, power burst forth from her chest and her bound hands, spreading in a circular wave as her eyes glowed violet.

The force of the power unleashed from deep within her disintegrated the shackles holding her in place, extinguished all the torches along with the fire already set to the wood beneath her, and threw Indah and the four masked figures to the forest floor.

Naomi slumped to the wooden platform, weakened and drained.

 Just as it came, the massive power which had poured forth from her was gone with the only evidence being the mangled and twisted bodies on the ground.

"How…" That was all Naomi could manage to whisper before the darkness consumed her.

............ 

Sunlight streamed in from the gaps in the canopy of leaves hanging from the branches of the towering trees of the vast, leafy forest. Small, blue-feathered birds tweeted their merry tune as they flew above Naomi's head.

The air was thick with the smell of smoke; the smoke from the fires which had suddenly been extinguished the last night.

The painful bite from one of the many insects buzzing about caused Naomi to jolt into consciousness; her eyes opening instantly but the minute they did, the bright light from the blazing sun above cast its full, hot glare upon them, causing her to squeeze them shut.

Her head hurt as if an energetic drummer had been pounding away at it for hours without mercy, and her body ached as if a school bus had just run over it.

She needed her coffee. Without it, she was not sure that she would be able to face the rest of the day.

She carefully opened her eyes again, squinting them till they adjusted to the sunlight. The world around her was a lush green, unlike any environment she had ever seen before. It looked nothing like the part of San Francisco where she lived.

Confused as to why she was laying on a hard, wooden platform in a forest, she rose to her feet to take in her surroundings, and that was when she saw the mangled bodies laying on the moist forest floor.

Upon beholding the horrific scene in front of her, memories from the night before flooded back in, making her fall to her knees and clutch her head in anguish. It was as if a hot knife was piercing through her skull without sympathy. Tears slipped from her eyes as she gasped, struggling to catch a breath amidst the searing pain in her head.

Abruptly, the throbbing ache ceased, enabling her to crack open one eye to gauge. One minute she was in a car heading to Silicon Valley with Victoria, and the next, she was tied to a tree with an old woman preparing to burn her alive. What sort of cruel trick was life playing on her?

The bodies in front of her were almost unrecognizable. If she hadn't seen the old woman's face with the aid of the fire burning from the torches the woman had held in her hands, she would never have guessed that the contorted and mutilated body right in front of her belonged to the old woman.

The old woman's long, white hair was the only familiar feature left. Her eyes appeared to have been gouged out by some brutal means, her limbs were twisted into an unnatural position, and her mouth hung open in a silent scream.

However, what was most discomforting was the absence of blood and how her mouth was open. It looked too wide to have been as a result of screaming. As Naomi cautiously stepped closer to the body, avoiding the bodies of the masked figures who may have been servants or attendants to the old woman, she confirmed her doubts. The old woman's jaw had been dislocated.

"What…the…actual…hell?" She whispered to herself. She remembered a surge of energy that she could neither understand nor control rising from deep within her till it burst forth. But she could not understand how it could have caused such irreparable damage.

"What in the world have I done? What is this? What have I done?" She began to hyperventilate, her chest heaving up and down as she tried and failed to remember something, anything, that could have made her become a murderer, even though they tried to murder her first. She was no killer. She could not even bear to kill the rats in her student dorm back in college, so how could she have brutally murdered these people?

She began to back away slowly, shaking her head in disbelief. "No, I couldn't have done this. It's not possible. No, no!" She yelled at the surrounding forest.

Then she bolted.

With no direction in particular or even an understanding of the geography of the land, she pumped her leg muscles, running as fast as she could; away from the horror behind, away from the memories of almost being burnt alive, and away from the sheer dread that kept trying to dig itself deeper into her bones.

Sharp branches scratched and slapped against her face as she ran blindly but with the adrenaline coursing through her veins, she could not feel the stinging sensation that they caused. All that mattered to her was to keep running till she would be able to find something or someone that could lead her back home.

Soon, her legs began to tire and her strength started waning. She was a fast runner, having been on the track team in middle and high school, but for some reason, she could not run as long as she used to, and soon, her endurance rapidly began to dissipate.

She tried pushing herself further but her body would not have any more of the pressure she was putting it through so after a few more strides, she crashed to the ground, breathing heavily as sweat trickled out of her pores in rivulets.

She panted heavily, her breaths coming out in puffs. She was exhausted. All she wanted was to go home, take a piping hot shower, and down a cup of coffee while chasing more leads that could bring her closer to finding out the truth about her parents if the Silicon Valley lead turned out to be a dead-end as she feared.

But she would never know now that she was trapped in this unfamiliar place. After catching her breath, she began to wonder what had happened after she stopped at the gas station at Victoria's behest to gaze at the lunar eclipse.

The last thing she could remember was Victoria telling her that she was going to the toilet and would get drinks afterward. When she tried to remember what happened next, she drew a blank.

No matter how hard she tried to recall something that could help her understand why she awoke in a forest with people trying to burn her, she could not. It was as if a block had been set in place in her brain, stopping her from recalling anything else.

Sighing heavily and resigning to her failure, she used all her might to push herself to her feet. Perhaps when she had a drink of water and a long rest, she would be able to remember.

She began forcing her tired limbs to move, putting one foot in front of the other as she commenced her search for a source of water. Surely, there had to be water in a forest, right?

A slow, fatigued trek later, she finally came upon a small, clear pond. To her pleasure, there were no impurities as far as she could see, so greedily, she knelt and began scooping the cool water into her mouth.

The water was cool despite the heat of the forest, and it was a welcome guest to her parched throat.

She gulped the water voraciously till she was satisfied and that was when she finally noticed it.

The night before when she was chained to the pole, she had noticed that she had shoes on that was different from the one she had stepped out with earlier in the day, and the old woman who repeatedly spoke in the third person, calling herself Indah, had said that she could not recognize her. She had seemed almost surprised and confused to see her so why would she want to kill someone whom she didn't know?

In the intense situation, she was in, there was no time to dwell on it but now, with the strange reflection staring back at her, the awareness that everything was not as it seemed became all too real.

Could she be stuck in a dream? Or a dream within a dream where she would sleep in a particular dream and wake in that same dream?

If she weren't dreaming, then why was there another face staring back at her instead of her own?

"I must be going crazy if I'm starting to see things," Naomi chuckled restlessly, shaking her head repeatedly as she rose to her feet. She began pulling at her hair, a habit she had developed as a child as a method to deal with her anxiety, and that was when she knew that she wasn't suffering from a mental breakdown.

Her hair was no longer the thick curls it used to be, rather, it had become silky straight. As she brought the hair over her shoulder and ran her fingers through it, she became even more convinced that this wasn't a dream. How could elements like this feel so real anyway?

Her actual hair was shoulder-length and a dark brown, but what she was touching was neither shoulder-length nor brown. It was long, flowing over her shoulder to stop at her hip bone, and was as dark as late evening. Her hair usually took a long time to soften enough to be styled but, this felt like no matter how she slept or how long she was in the wind, it would always be soft and silky smooth.

Naomi was both mesmerized and confused by the hair that now lay upon her head. But the surprises were not over yet.

"What the?!" She shrieked as her eyes eventually noticed the color of her hands. She let the hair she was holding fall from her hands as she stared at the paleness of her skin in shock.

Her skin which had been the rich color of dark chocolate was now startlingly milky. She rushed back to the pond in a panic to peer at the strange face she had seen earlier but had dismissed as a figment of her imagination.

The face staring at her was divinely gorgeous that if she were not currently panicking, she would have developed a crush on the true owner of this body simply because of the aching beauty.

The eyes were unlike any she had ever seen before, they were eyes that held a lot of power and some kind of deceit that did not belong to her. Where her normal eyes were a boring shade of brown, these were a stunning shade of blue.

She wondered who owned this unfamiliar body and why she was currently inhabiting it. 

So, this was the reason why she could not run as long as she knew she could. This was all too much. She needed to find out what exactly was going on.

Resolutely, she sprang to her feet gracefully, the folds of the long, silk black gown she was sure belonged to whoever owned this body, gathering about her ankles, she set out to figure a way out of the forest and find answers to the many questions burning inside her mind.