Slide 18: Off the given path

That night was just beginning. The sky had finally turned purple from it's red Hugh, soon within twenty minutes it would all turn into pure blankness and you would be able to see nothing in the whole land. The land itself was a series of tall hills across a flat canvas moving about. The grass was a muddy yellowish green and the trees where a rich orange color, the forests far off in the distance away from the hill plains where a thick deep blue. Patterned all across the grass where little mushrooms. Right at this critical hour when the world was calm for one moment for the terror of the night fully set in, a man walked alone in these plains. His arms held each other and he looked all around the darkness, his long pink suit muddy and his bog of brown hair aloft on his head. His facial hair looked like it was infesting his face. He saw spiders walk along the ground, when suddenly a woman in the distance was shown to him, her yellow dress flowing in the wind along with her dark orange hair, her face both young and old she calmed said far off. "What brings you here old man?" The man was suppressed for he appeared young, how did she know? "I am lost my good woman of knowing! Ha... Sorry is this your land I trespass on? I do not know where I am. See I am a follower and I have- accidental, stumbled off my path." She seemed to think, and still many feet off she turned and said. "This is my concurred land." The man in pink felt the call to follow, and with a short pause he did but kept a good distance as she surely wanted. They walked for only a while in silence, keeping almost a fully straight path. Then they reached a little browning cabin around a patch of orange trees. They walked inside and the woman seated the man beside a little one chaired table by the window. She stayed on the other side of the room cupping her hands together and keeping her expression blank. The inside of the browning cabin was quite dull but rather bright and light orange inside, there was little viles and cups on shelves and counter tops, all where messy and had green and purple dying floured inside, and the man could have sworn there was mold inside some of them little white fuzzy bits coming to the top, but he tired not to look and moved his eyes from those unsightly things before him. He looked at the woman and smiled. "My name is Rinpoche, I am a wonder who helps people." He waited for the woman to speak and finally not giving her title or name she spoke. "Who do you serve?" Rinpoche frowned, he didn't quite want to tell her in case she had a profoundly negative reaction, but he wasn't allowed to lie so he went on. "I was inside a village by a blue forest, I was there for a whole year! I hadn't ever been anyway that long before! But when the harvest came round again I known I had to leave. I was- eh, shown to go somewhere else. But I thought taking a different path would be easier. And that's how I ended up here. I do not want to bother you- unless you need my help of course! So can you show me the way out of here and back to the path leading to the sky lands?" The woman looked out for a second to the door and said. "I could. Are you alive or dead? I feel death in my house." Rinpoche frowned and looked away deadpan. "... Ah... Yes. I grow into this." He gresured allover himself. "Naturally, but I wasn't alive per say. I was once alive, but I was..." "Sacrificed?" The woman offered blankly but Rinpoche shook his head speedily. "No! Not like that. I was- eh, you know, murdered before my body was pulled out. I think I was bleed to death maybe?" "Then why are you alive now?" "My master brought me back, he said I was suppose to grow into a grand general, but that ended when I died. So I was brought back to do good deeds, and then someday my master would lay me to rest once more." "Why don't you just die if you have already done good deeds?" He blushed. "That's not for me to know. I'm not a smart man my lady can-" "Do you have human needs?" She said dryly and Rinpoche rubbed his neck. "Yeah?" The woman just looked at him with her old dead eyes, there didn't seem to be much human behind those portals but there was something old and deep and very much so well and all knowing by all means. Under those eyes Rinpoche felt he had something to hide which was not something he normally felt at all. He was under her careful watch now, not his master's. "Let me tell you a story." The woman spoke slightly more aggressively. "Once upon a time, in a land long forgotten by all the people across all the time and all the plains, there was a little boy. A little boy who was lost and alone, he cried everyday and was always alone, even if he didn't think he felt those things. And he thought the one who loved him best cared for him, but in reality he didn't love him, and was just USING the little boy. And one day the little boy realized that nobody loved him for he was unsightly and dim and unchained, and no one can love someone who isn't loved by anyone else. And then one day he stumbled into a deep dark whole, and he ran and ran but he could not find a way out. And then after a while he gave up and let himself be taken.." As her story moved on her tone changed, because darker and more masculine. And her skin turned blacker and her eyes lost it's color. Wetness and panic where reaching at Rinpoche's own eyes and he started backing away moving out of the chair, but when his back touched the wall he gasped and swerved around to see that the door that was once there was now gone, vanished, no trace of it ever being there. Worse the windows where gone and when he swerved around the rest of the room there was no more furniture or any other objects. Only the world around the woman at the other end of the room turning blacker. She started walking to Rinpoche and he gasped. When he turned back to where the door once was there was now a hallway, he didn't need to think about it, he swung his arms back and started running as fast as a leopard. He felt her chase after him flouting, and finally when they where chasing down the halls she screamed out "And she lived happily ever after!" They ran and ran and ran down the halls, ills of dark brown flashing before his eyes he was like a tiger in pursuit of her living prey only it was his very life he was chasing. The thing behind him moaned out for him and Rinpoche could feel her smile onto him, ever ever there. Everything moving twenty mile per hour everything was a blink. He pounded his body forward and screamed out into the halls and it echoed past him. The chase never seeming to end. Suddenly he eyed a window covered with thin brown bars, the 'woman' eyed it too and she screamed in rage reaching her arms out and buggy eyed seeing her pray flee. Rinpoche sucked in his breath and leaped into the air with the force of his body breaking the bars and smashing blood all over himself, he barely fit the size. He slammed into the grown hard and laid flat only for a few seconds before looking up, seeing he was laying on the grass surrounded by darkness, and the cabin was gone. He frowned, stood up and started following a little path in the woods, he felt naked and ashamed, but he, most importantly, is alive.