Word count: 439
The empty forest stared at me silently through the living room window. Miles and miles of still trees, like a sad painting. Dry leaves clung as much as they could to the fragile branches, similar to the bones of lifeless bodies.
The faded grass seemed to take its last breaths. The sky was gray, but there was no sign of rain. It was dry. No saturation. So quiet that it was claustrophobic, as if the akinesia of the horizon sucked all the air out of the atmosphere, and only I was left. There, dying, drying like a raisin, but without aging.
Everything was heavy. Gravity wouldn't allow me to open my mouth or take a step forward. An unknown energy pressed its arched fingers against my throat whenever I tried to call for help. Not even my blood ran through my veins, such was the stillness.
Was this the end? What would my days be like, for the purging eternity in a sepia photograph? Staring unblinkingly with my eyes bulging, stuck in a single spot, having lost their lubrication? How had I gotten there? How much time had passed?
I no longer knew if my memories were really memories or just daydreams, dreams of a fabulous life. Had I been born? Had I lived? Have I always been here? Was life ever different? Was this even part of life? Was I in limbo? Could it be hell? Are these really my thoughts or is there someone here with me?
My cheeks atrophied in a smile that no longer hurt. If there was a God, they should have helped me by now; I prayed tirelessly so many times without ceasing that the words came into my head automatically. There was nothing else in my brain. There was nothing left, just emptiness, Our Father and the forest.
The forest! I had even forgotten it was there. Still as always in its dull brown tone. A fog, a blur with shapes that should be trees. Constant, no changes. Just me. And the forest. And my hypothetical God.
Once I thought I managed to call for help. But nothing happened. My voice echoed for a while and nothing changed. Then I was unsure if I had really spoken or if I was just asking in my mind to my hypothetical God. I must not have spoken. If I really spoke, someone should have listened, right? Yes. Someone should have found me by now. A non-hypothetical person, an animal. Anything should have found me. I did not speak. No, it was just my imagination. That was it.
If a tree falls and there is no one to hear it, does it really make a sound?
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