Chapter E, as in a Greater Sense of This Path

I awake but my eyes are still closed. I’m afraid they will hurt when I open them, and I don’t know why, but they have to come open eventually, so they do.

I’m sitting in a wooded area, somewhere different than where I was. The sun might just be starting to rise, or maybe it is just setting, I can not tell. My sense of direction is not always sharp, and it certainly is a bit confused right now, as is the rest of me. The ground below me is wet, and it has soaked through my layers to my skin. I feel cold, which is a feeling I don’t get all that often in these parts. Or at least the parts where I used to be.

I blink my eyes to try to get a better sense of space. All I can see are trees, branches, very little on the ground, and very little light coming through from above.

I don’t have much on me; I mean, what I typically carry with me, which is not much, and it’s nothing worth mentioning (here it is: lighter, cigarettes, sometimes a pack of matches but not today, sometimes a wadded up napkin but not today, othertimes a penny and today I have two). Then again, I don’t need much out here, looking around, seeing nothing, especially nothing to spend my two pennies on.

And the quiet. Not quiet quiet, but that woodsy sort of quiet; there are noises, I mean, but not they’re eerie in that the are accompanied by this sense of loneliness.

After my ears adjust, they detect a kind of wailing noise coming from the same direction as where the sun is coming from, whichever direction that is, but it doesn’t sound like road noise. And even if it is, this road or these roads are multiple miles away, and I’m not even sure how to get there. The winds, albeit light ones, are swirling up the sound so that it sounds like it’s coming from everywhere.

I mean, not that I really care that much, but since I don’t know where I am right now, I’m wondering if those people do.

I slowly kneel down next to a small pile of sticks — not much to sit on, but at least something to associate myself with. I then slowly reach into my pocket for my cigarettes, and shuffle one towards my mouth and fire away. The wind gives me a bit of a fit, but on the fourth launch I’m rolling, just blowing and thinking what I’m going to do next. And I do have to say, I really don’t know.

I have a bit of bearing now, and I turn full-circle to really judge how I’m fitting into this space, and how I got here. I look down and see no noticeable path to get to where I am. Then again, the floor of these woods looks the same in every direction, and only if I was bleeding and leaving a trail of my own juices would I be able to see where I came from. Looks like undisturbed nature to me, at least to my untrained eye.

I take the last pull and stomp the remains into the ground. They go down without a fight because it’s a bit damp down there.

I’m pretty sure I’m alone, but see, I’ve been through this before.