The Hunter appeared from the road that led from the village to the strange, great forest. He could see the sun grow on the horizon, grow so putridly large in the sun. The great sky ballooned in the world... And clouds crackling, spitting upon the blue...Very great, very beautiful, like a cracked mirror, filled with blue and orange lines, reflecting upon itself.
He continued with his pack and his pistol. Into the deep rainforest, among the animals and wild men, and a great strange stringy animal, or so he had heard from the old man... The homeless man with a pistol and a bike, with such a strange, wrinkled face.
A familiar face, like his own filled with pockmarks and scars, and a great gash from a chemical spill. But he did not need trivial knowledge, for the forest he knew by heart... The entire vastness of the channel and the rivers. The whole blue of the world. The sun, grey and lifeless against the dust.
He knew the swath of burnt sticks, fire, and the stone webbing rising from the cracks and lines in the dirt. From the ancient earth, a humongous concrete labyrinth forming, like a spider's web... Somewhere in that deep place, where mysteries unfolded, lay Bharat Singr like some great wounded animal, dying... A boar hunting by itself, then the great guns firing in the distance, and it was running away quickly into the deep brush. Just as a revolver pounded into the sand.
He had heard of the name on the news, heard of the bounties, the years of fame, and his mind, burnt and frayed, had built a memory, remembered the familiar jungle, the familiar webs and paths, and a maze built around a complex system of minds... A brain festering, growing rotten, insane, yet bold, had sought the Enigma, Bharat Singr, building a labyrinth... He had known... From little, unimportant clues... From strange statements, and strange dreams... Built himself a memory of a great rainforest.
"The clue... The place..."
His words echoing across the place, empty of any meaning.
He walked, across the frozen valley, across a place of a blue emptiness, solemn, quiet, barren, all except for a trail, like a great winding snake, burnt across the ground, like a serpent's trail, winding, crushing the trees, burning away leaves and sticks, until there were thousands of stumps... And the faint lingering of smoke from flames untold and unseen.
Like a finger separated from a hand, and blood rushing down the palms, like a serpent biting through twisted sinews, veins bubbling... And then, the bones separating ever-so-slowly, ruthlessly, until only a bloody mess, a heap of bubbling muck remained... And growing from this, green trees, growing and growing, building animals, and roots running through the deep center of this blood. Through the mess of a world, through the absurdities, tiny little things...
He placed a twine of thread, buried it in the dirt with a stake, tied it to his wrist, and walked forth into the darkness. Holding the thread tight in his hand, it grew looser and looser as he continued across the plains, across the echo and the wind that grew soft... Across the horrible fiery earth, across the heat of the scorching sun, underneath the emptiness, loneliness, the infinity that continued across the horrible place... Forever and ever... Like a house burning and burning, one by one, ornaments melting, all alone, the happy house, fading away to time...And a great wind blowing by and by, through the endless place...
As he continued, he forgot more and more, and memory faded, and there was nothing he could remember, and the pictures in his mind, the locations, the place, blew away slowly like ashes in a photo, until there were only fragments, and a shard staring into the soul... With crimson dripping off the frame, and footprints leading into the kitchen... Like a mystery underneath the rotting wood... And a piano spitting out the last few keys from the dying song...
There was always crimson red.
Running under the Venetian streets.
Water growing thick, in a slurry.
And a face lay there, pale, motionless.
And something strange, tossed away, lying in the water...
But there was only a slight blurriness, a forgetfulness... Nothing in that strange face. No remembrance, only the slight bend in the skin, the gauntness, the worms eating away, decaying away that face, ripping apart the seams and the fabric, the bones slipping away until there was nothing... Barely anything to see, only a colorful picture taken from a broken camera. And words whispered from a tinny speaker... wealth, knife, crimson, Venice, water... The only things sticking in his mind.... And the name Bharat Singr, echoing in his mind...
And words...
Wonderful words...
Words repeated and repeated whispered again and again into his ear...
He said it quietly to himself, smiling...
"Wealth, knife, crimson, Venic, water. Water running smooth, clean, fresh..."
Occasionally new things, new thoughts, new dreams, but there was always a gun. A gun peering out of the trees, and him rotting on the ground... The trees form a dark, great shadow, against a strange figure, arching against the silhouette of the sun... But he did not remember where and when, or even why it had happened, what had happened. Only that it was him dead... Always him dead... Strange visions coursing, like a throbbing heart, a river that continued down and down the mountain... Dreams continually stirring in his mind, going again and again around in his head... A journey up a strange, dark, twisted mountain, up onto the scores of stone and rock, into his strange memory, into a forest that infinitely dwelled upon itself, thought from grey seas, up into itself, probed around in an empty mind, alone....
Yet, only occasionally before, and now, growing worse and worse, as headaches split his mind, and he grew restless and dull. Focused on his strange, stupid world... Desiring freshly spilled blood from the wide wound, the black and grey of rot and filth...
From the glass, the policeman drank it all. Drank the entirety of the contents, drank from the filthy, disgusting bottle, it tasted like slop, filth, all that beer, the drug, a little spilling onto the dirt... Trying to drown those bad dreams, bad memories, away... Away and away... He hated it all... Was disgusted by all of that rot... But it dulled him, made him happy again, allowed him to walk up mountains, carry himself up all day, travel into the deep heart of the forest. Into that darkness, full of burnt weeds, full of warm fires, and strong smoke. Full of a blurry green mess that filled the mountains with a cold loneliness, an emptiness, a silence that echoed throughout the world....
But he was forced, with his revolver, his badge, and nothing else but some ragged clothes from the slums of Peru. Forced away from his position of power, disgraced, then ruined into dishevelment and decay, into a strange place in his life... Kicked out for stealing! Stealing! With thousands and thousands of slums! Thousands of thousands of people were stealing from the police... Thousands... Into strange darkness, into a moral void. Where he remembered nothing, sought nothing, yet continued to live. Sheep grazing, a brick home, and a pencil scraing against wet stone, restless, broken as it fell into the ocean, then a lonely old man carrying a gun walking into the deep, lost in himself, lost to time...
He remembered a dream, a dream from the deep depths of his mind had told him of another Brother, another resolve, another future, a new Him, formed from the depths of strange beauty, and built of the greatest, most plentiful futures, filling himself with strange memories... A strange new world
He remembered strange, blurry images in his mind, Of people, native Brazilians, worshipping an idol, and whispers constantly drilling into his head. Some sad, bleary-eyed man stared at him, watched him sway and drink from the infinitely shifting, changing bottle. The boredom of his reality constantly swaying and swaying...Like the ground, shifting, moving, watching his movements... Waiting for him to walk, to strike upon the ground, to lay dead and still, asleep, across his empty, barren valley... His home, his place of peace and rage...
"Oh... God"
His head hurt, as he groaned and stopped... Stood up again afterward...
He walked along the thin line, into the streaming heat, and the forest that wished for him to stop... The trees that reached toward him, and a strange shadow walking silently against the ground, watched him from afar.... A great whisper echoed his mind.... Droplets fell from the sky... He watched the red creep into his mind, blood spill across his gash in the forest, rain, red as a ripe, blood moon spill, run across the sky, with clouds billowing across the entire shape of the forest, the feel of the mountains...
The GPS beeped, once, twice, twitching as it noticed the red rain, the radar fizzling out static and buzz. But they were only faint sounds to him, looked like strange objects, placed by something unknown, he could only remember slightly about them, forgetting about the more intricate parts of the past...
He remembered of his place, of the past, of where he always stood and watched, continually walking... Walking and walking, in the same familiar forest, from when he was young... And faint memories of stone rising from the ground, but they were only hallucinations to him, nothing special at all...
And thoughts of a strange tank, a cage, filled with water, green lights endlessly swirling, him floating in the water... A cardboard box, a record... A tape...
Some strange voice...
A great raspy voice...
Whispering into his ears...
He wound the tape on his finger, wound the record, held it upon his hands like a cat's cradle, and shifted the buttons, listening to the raspy voice.
"A man on a bridge, with a gun and a hostage. There's a sack on the hostage's head. A gun...pointed at the man's face. The man says something unintelligible to the police, the police can't hear. Why?"
The footage buzzed, the voice shifted, more serious...
He walked, continually walked, to find a man with no face... To find a man he had no memory of... To find a strange hunter in the forest... Hated the man, hated everything... Hated how he had to walk thousands of miles deep into the forest, wearing ragged clothes... Tired.... So endlessly tired...
But their was something... Something faint... Something about honor... Something about the man with no face... He was too drunk to remember... Too dizzy, forgetful...
Going deeper into the forest.
Into a bittersweet end...
.....
.....
A dream, a deep, deep dream, as he slept, could not remember how he slept... Only that he slept... Slept and dreamt great beautiful dreams... Vivid dreams, about flesh unwrapping from a body, peeling away like skin, but muscle writhing and writhing underneath. He stared at it from a strange eye, drank the meat, the blood, the... The great, beautiful head....
...
He screamed aloud, screamed a great scream...
....
He woke up from his strange little nap, in the middle of the sun-baked forest, drank more from his nearly-emptying bottle, drank and drank... And collapsed backward, trying to forget his horrible, horrible dream... His horrible nightmare...
All fading away... Fading like a sweet, serene little dream... Fading back into his mind...
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