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SHORT STORY: "2:53"


© Jonty Cornford 2018
2:53
By Jonty Cornford


I



I had more dreams last night. So many of them I remember without actually being able to see them, and that troubles me more than the dreams themselves. I am no stranger to unsettling visions and hallucination, as I have suffered from these as long as I can remember, but I have an unshakable feeling that these are not merely manifestations of my sleeping consciousness. There is something so horrid and so disturbing about them that I can only assume that I am not the dreamer. If I were, the psychological implications of such sordid dreams would be immense and incredibly confronting, I would suggest.
            What is more, every time these dreams arrive I wake up in genuine distress at 2:53am. The first time I did not take notice of this, but each cycle I now dread to look at the small digital alarm clock that sits on my nightstand, for I now know exactly what it will say. These dreams come in cycles of ten days. Every ten days I lie in bed afraid of what waits for me on the other side of sleep, and every ten days I am wrestled awake by something at exactly 2:53.
            I don’t know what to make of that.

  
II



I can hear the train in the distance; I wonder where it’s going. I’m standing at the edge of the woods, wind whispering through the trees, the words they speak I am unable to make out. I’m not exactly sure what time it is, but the sun is going down and it is rapidly getting colder. Despite the layers wrapped tight around my body, my chin buried deep in my scarf, I am compelled to stay. I am drawn to the woods.
            Perhaps it is the smell – those rich scented pines that salt the crisp air, and the earthy smell of leaves, dirt and undergrowth. The edge of the trees is about twenty feet away, but the smell is as if I am already in the heart of the woods. As the sun descends over the edge of the valley behind me, the trees almost instantly are blanketed in darkness. The mystery of what lies behind them is what keeps me up at night.
            I love to walk the edge of the woods at dusk. I have done it every day since moving in to my new home, and it has since become the most stable part of my routine, around which everything else is fixed. There is something magnetic about those trees, so tightly packed and so abruptly halted by some invisible boundary at the edge of the clearing that forms the setting for my everyday life. The way the lowering sun from the west plays in the pine leaves, so still in the windless valley yet so alive with crackling energy, it is something to behold.
            I guess it’s a writer thing. I wish I could use words to explain how the woods make me feel, crippling cold starting to descend on the already cool afternoon, the openness of the valley bordered by such dense, inscrutable darkness that seems to repel and attract at the same time.
            Once the sun goes down I am overcome almost completely by a desire to venture forth into the woods. Yesterday it was almost too strong to resist, but the sound of the train in the distance broke the odd compulsion. Not five minutes ago I would have succumbed were it not for that same train. During the day the same desire, only less potent, follows me around. While I am sat in front of my typewriter, pages piling higher around me at erratic and irregular intervals, sometimes I have to get up for a cigarette to get the thought from my mind. These days I normally end up smoking half the packet.
            Tomorrow I plan on driving into town for the first time since moving here. There is only one road in, strewn like spaghetti along the bottom of the valley. I have had no need to visit since moving in as my supplies have been more than ample, and I have been largely focused on my work. Mingling with other people, I have found, is a fantastic way to break any focus that you might have built up over a couple of weeks’ solitude.
            With one last cursory look at the woods I turn and start back towards the house. It is small, made from wood (from the woods, I suppose), and built to house no more than one. It is in almost perfect condition, and ideal for a writer looking for quiet and separation to focus on their work. The real estate manager I spoke to a few weeks ago before moving in had said that the townsfolk of the neighbouring town have always shown great interest in this house, and that I was lucky to snatch it up so quickly. Something tells me that they will come looking for me sooner or later, regardless of whether or not I visit the town. So I have that to look forward to, I guess.


III



This morning I found a finger. I have been here almost a month, and it is worth noting that on my sole visit to town last week I came across not a single person, other than a filthy-looking homeless man who always seemed to be in the distance, just down the road or behind a corner shop. He must have been avoiding me, but I was sure that he was always looking right at me. There must have been some event on that I was not invited to. I have received three letters (although I can’t explain when they were delivered – they must have arrived in the dead of night) from townsfolk, expressing their eagerness to finally meet me. One is from a Ms Emily Jones, who “wishes to give me the tour of Pine Valley after as trip to the best coffee shop in the northern hemisphere”, while another was from the Chief of Police. After initially being concerned, I was relieved to read offers of warm hospitality. The third, however, was not signed and simply had a yellow capital T, cut from a magazine, pasted onto an otherwise blank page of thick drawing paper. I am still focused on finishing my novel, however, and so I did not pay much attention to them.
            Distraction did come this morning, though, in the form of the aforementioned severed finger. I was changing the sheets from my large double bed (I’ve never had a better night’s sleep) when I knocked over an empty whiskey glass off my nightstand. When I reached under the bed to clean up the shards of glass with a dustpan and brush I brushed what I thought initially was a cigar into the dustpan, only to be thoroughly disturbed to discover that it was indeed a severed finger. After throwing it into the bin with the broken pieces of whiskey tumbler, a curiosity not unlike that which draws me to the woods overcame me and I retrieved it from the bin with great caution. It was rough skinned and without nail polish, and so assumedly belonged to a male, and upon closer inspection I was sure of the existence of a ring that belonged to it. It had been severed roughly, the skin at the cut split and uneven. I couldn’t find any evidence of blood underneath my bed, but there were small spots of it on the second knuckle.
            This unsettling discovery distracted me almost entirely from my work, and has also seemed to make me more vulnerable to the unbearable curiosity eating away at me about the woods that are staring at me through the kitchen window as I brew a fresh pot of liquorice tea. I hope that perhaps I may receive some inspiration out of all this, though. It is not every day that you happen upon a severed human appendage in your home, and the novel I have been writing has become very dry to my taste. Perhaps it could do with a murder – I have never written a thriller, or a murder mystery, or anything wrapped in genre, for that matter. I have always considered myself a writer that leans towards the literary, and I am very resistant towards the cushioning of genre, but beyond great unease and curiosity, I sense a willingness to give my writing over to these new sensations. 


IV



I drove into town again today for more supplies, and the experience has left me completely rattled.
            The other week when I drove in there were no radio stations on the air so I just listened to the static through the valley. Every so often I thought I heard something – a voice maybe – but when I turned up the volume there was nothing but the grainy crackly of empty airwaves. Today, though, there was something very strange going on. I remember reading about things called number stations when I was a child, and I can only assume that’s what I was listening to; a computer-generated voice repeating the same five numbers over and over, occasionally broken up by a short burst of artificial-sounding music. It came on abruptly when I had the volume up to listen to the static and I nearly veered off the road in shock. They frightened me as a child, and it frightened me even more this morning. I think it is partly due to the fact that no one really knows exactly what they are or what their purpose is, despite theories of Cold War spies and the like.
            4, 1, 2, 1, 2.
           But anyway, I met some people in town today. I bought milk, food and writing supplies, before walking around talking to some of the pleasant people who approached me. It strikes me now, though, that I don’t remember ever introducing myself to anyone – word must get around fast in this town. I must be exhausted because I can’t remember any of their names for the life of me, but everyone I talked to was kind and hospitable, not at all how the real estate agent made them out to be. I did have a number of conversations with people who were interested in how I was settling in to the house, most of which included questions about how I felt being so close to the woods. I repeated the same answer about enjoying the serenity, and got quite good at delivering this line by the time I had a moment to myself to go to the diner for some lunch. To be quite honest, while I am somewhat grateful for everyone’s hospitality I essentially view anything other than a devoted friendship as a distraction to my work, and so I was relieved and almost excited at the prospect of a meal at the diner in a booth all to myself.
            While I was waiting to be waited upon I was approached by the homeless man from the other week who had been watching me from a distance. Up close his skin was almost black with dirt and grime, and his clothes were completely drained of any colour, I’m guessing from years of exposure to the elements. He wore an ushanka, which lent a sort of absurdity to his off-putting appearance. Before I was even aware of him being in the diner he was sitting across from me. Initially I looked up and smiled politely, assuming that he had mistaken the booth for empty, but when I realised that he had not I opened my mouth to find I could not speak. Waves of crippling vertigo and nausea washed over me, forcing me to close my eyes tightly. This didn’t keep out the smell, though.
            Once my eyes were open again he told me with a voice like gravel that he needed to catch a train and asked me what the time was. I glanced at my watch and told him that it was 2:53, and that there weren’t any trains leaving this town, maybe he was confused. As soon as I said this he started coughing violently, making no attempt to cover his mouth in front of me. I turned my face from the spit and phlegm, and could only listen in shock as he started screaming at me all manner of obscenities at me, and repeatedly telling me to “fuck off back to sleep” (I use such language for the sake of accuracy). Strangely, none of the other people in the diner, not even the employees, paid any attention to me or the homeless man as this was going on. He finished by yelling “pick up the train” over and over again until he collapsed into another coughing fit, this time actually hacking up a great deal of phlegm and spitting on the tiled floor. After this he left, again apparently unnoticed by anyone else in the diner. I got up to leave, but noticed something on the seat the homeless man had been sitting on. It was a ring. A golden ring, with a rich, dark stone attached to it. The stone was very odd to look like, almost like it was gradually draining light from the room, and the longer I looked at it the darker it became. Something told me not to touch it, so I told one of the employees that the homeless man that was just in here had left a ring in the booth. She said that there hadn’t been any homeless people in the diner, and when I looked back in the booth the ring had disappeared.
            As I have been thinking about this in my home I have made my way outside to the woods, and I’m now standing within touching distance of the trees. I reach out and touch the bark, feeling the contours between my fingers and against my palm, sending prickles down my arm right to my shoulder. The desire to venture forth into the woods is almost unbearable now, and the anticipation is nothing short of ecstasy. The sun has just gone down, and my body is covered in goosebumps, my genitals tight against my body. The more I rub my hand on the bark, the stiffer I feel myself getting. I expected the woods to be alive with noise – the breeze, some birds, some small animals maybe. But now I’m this close I realise that it’s quiet. I can’t be sure of whether or not it is my head, but in the distance I can hear that same tune from the number station in the car on the way into town this morning.
            Fully hard, I enter the trees.


V



I had more dreams last night. Mostly of the woods, in which I have a terrible sense not that I am being followed, but that I am following something. That there is something waiting for me at the heart of the woods. There is never anyone else present, but there is the constant awareness that I am not alone, that I am part of a collective, somehow. Even now in wakefulness, whenever I try to understand what my head is telling me in my sleep it slips away and I am left with nothing but the mystery.
            The mystery of what? That is what I constantly find myself asking of myself in my waking moments. I am sure that there is something in the heart of the woods that I am being drawn to, but I don’t know what it is or why I am drawn to it. Not knowing is what frightens me the most, as well as the notion that whatever it is that is calling me has access to my subconscious. In moments of apparent clarity, I am filled with dread at the thought of what might be waiting for me. Why, then, am I so infatuated with those damned trees?


VI



More letters arrived in the mail this morning. Again, I couldn’t tell you when they arrived or who delivered them. One is simply signed “Mallory”, and implores that I come visit her in her home with her husband and two children for dinner some time. Were it not addressed to me I would have assumed that it had been delivered to the wrong address, given that the way it is written implies years and years of close friendship and history. There are ten completely blank envelopes, each filled with equally blank writing paper. Finally, a small package wrapped in unrolled cigarette paper. It contained the ring from the diner, and a small scrap of paper on which was scrawled: don’t lose it again – T.
            I have placed the ring under my bed and thrown out the packaging and message it held, as I never wish to see any of it any again.
            I am under the constant impression that something catastrophic is going to happen to me and I have no way of stopping it. My health has been rapidly declining over the last couple of months, and I don’t sleep. When I do, I dream, and I desperately try to put aside the horrifying thought that my dreams are just as real as my waking nightmare, that my life has somehow been splintered into something I can’t define. My writing has gone largely untouched, and I have been trying harder and harder to ignore the unavoidable magnetism of the woods. I have boarded up the windows, so I don’t have to see those trees all the time, but whatever is driving my infatuation with the unknown increases it in direct response to my attempts to resist it.
            Two other observations; I’ve seen the homeless man at the edge of the woods, and the clocks all stop at 2:53 in the middle of the night.


VII



I feel like my flimsy grip on reality is slipping. Nothing seems to make sense to me anymore, and I am filled with a sense of complete powerlessness in the face of all this incongruity. When I woke up this morning the ring from the diner was on my left ring finger, despite it being where I had left it under the bed three weeks ago. My wristwatch was stopped at 2:53 as usual. I have decided to take the ring into the woods, because a part of me knows that that is the only way that I am going to be able to get rid of it, and the only way that I am going to make this stop. I want it gone, and the more I think about it the more I know that this is the only way.
            I am about to venture into the trees, to what – or indeed when – I do not know, but I do so with a strong sense of finality in this troubled, spiralling timeline of mine. I hope to return, but I suspect that will not be the case. I hear the train, I must hurry.

© Jonty Cornford 2018

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