The Ritual

by Adam L.G. Nevill

You cry because this is the end. Your life closes this way, in this dark and stinking place that makes no sense. There is no justice in this and no way to escape. But your anguish does not penetrate it at all. Sitting there on its haunches, on that wretched wooden throne, the long horns rising majestically to the ceiling like some crown, as it watches you, without mercy, empowered by your disgrace on these dirty planks.

It is letting you know that you can wait for it here and watch it come fast from the trees, or you can try to run on slow and strengthless legs. Flee out there, through the spikes and snares of ungroomed woodland. Into the heaving army that will not let you pass easily through its rows and ranks.

Inside the crumpled mess was pain and bleeding. Something Luke wanted to run from without seeing.

No one spoke from the shock of it all. They were numb with fright and sick at the colossal thought they each tried to comprehend, then accept. Something that would keep rearing up in their minds and hearts when they were too tired to suppress it and were caught off guard. Something impossible, something consuming, something choking.

He would not go quickly or quietly. He swore this to the oldest forest in Europe.

He’d lived ten years of his life in London amongst people whose entire vocal output was a public relations exercise, who spun the truth of their existences into scenarios designed to provoke envy. People who couldn’t face the idea that things weren’t going right for them. By not speaking of something negative, or allowing themselves to even think about it, the problem no longer existed.

He’d always analysed the crap in his life forensically. Perhaps the attitude held him back, ruined any chance of real and sustained happiness; this refusal to delude himself.

Everyone is fucked up, Luke. Damaged. We’re all messed up, underneath. Doesn’t matter what kind of house you live in.’

They had come together when young. Were drawn to each other as curious attractions formed permanent bonds amongst all of those people at university, at a time and in a way that can never happen again. They listened to music together and talked for days without pause. They woke in the morning to see each other. They occupied each other’s physical space and head space, and wanted each other’s approval and needed to make each other smile. They had been good together until life and women and work and urges for new places pulled them apart.

His friends had been destroyed for no reason he could think of. They had been destroyed like most people were destroyed. By just being in the wrong place. After all of that development and growing and cultivating and caution and survivable self-destruction and failure and regeneration and struggling and coping, they had just walked through the wrong bunch of bloody trees. And that was that.

Because what was the point of reason? You lived briefly, died, were forgotten. Just to glimpse this was enough of a cause to go insane or to put yourself away. Out here you were butchered and then tossed into a sodden crypt. Piled up with the mottled bones of strangers and dead cattle.