Page 6 of Synodic

His dark presence in these familiar woods sent a jolt against my ribcage—a painful reminder that my constant state of numbness had parameters.

I knew I should run far from these delusions that were sure only to bruise and scar me later, but I ignored my own advice and moved towards him. I had no thought beyond one foot in front of the other, no plan of discerning who he was or why he was here. Just pure unbridled curiosity driving me forward—but after a few determined strides, it became apparent I couldn’t get closer to him no matter how hard I tried. He may have been moving towards me too, but the mist was too thick and cunning and kept us apart until my alarm went off, jarring me with a gasp back to reality.

I frantically searched for my phone, lost within the sea of sheets, scrambling to shut off the incessant alarm that grated on my frayed nerves. Lately, I’d been setting my clock earlier and earlier as a failsafe to escape my never-ending nightmares, but now I was practically waking before dawn.

Beyond exhausted, I kicked my way out of the sheets. I was never one to eagerly jump out of bed, but after another long and fretful night, I needed to keep busy, stay distracted—anything to keep my mind grounded in reality.

4

Night after night, I dreamt of the mysterious stranger, and as my darkness retreated in trailing ribbons, his blurry image sharpened into hard lines, rugged edges, and cut muscle. I hated that he was turning out to be beautiful. It only made him more dangerous.

His shadowed eyes were watchful and attentive, always warily taking in our surroundings, as if at any moment something would emerge from the black recesses of the forest. However, if he was overly concerned, he didn’t show it. In fact, his veneer of calm assurance never broke, and I guessed not much went undetected past his steely gaze.

Occasionally he would try to talk, call out to me from the distance that stretched between us. His lips moved with an undaunted grace, but the sounds were swallowed and swept away on the warped drafts of the night. Nothing could be heard but a warbled echo.

Even when I tried to respond, words that held no meaning fell from my lips like ancient coins drifting lost at sea.

After a while, we realized the futility of communicating in any way and relegated ourselves to slowly circling one another. Our movements, however guarded and apprehensive, were smooth and measured like an old-English Regency dance that swept up the fog around us.

A part of me was grateful he couldn’t get to me, I still had no idea what his intentions were, but I had to admit the curiosity about what he was trying to tell me drove me insane. So much so that throughout the day, I would bite my nails down to the quick, wondering, worrying, speculating as to why he visited me. Was he the catalyst for my dreams returning? The one who summoned the darkness upon me, or the one who released it and left it lingering like the smoke from a candle?

Thankfully the darkness cleared, and as the terrain slowly awakened into a pale-glowing phosphorescent wilderness, I knew I was nowhere within the observable universe. The vegetation peaked and stretched as buds opened into glowing blossoms and vines unfurled into shimmering cords. Silver-white veins ignited inside paper-thin leaves, and currents of light traveled up the trees like synapses firing in the brain.

The myrtle forest became alight, creating and reflecting pools of petaled moonlight. And even through the lingering film, it was the most beautiful place I’d ever seen.

Seeds of dusted light swirled around me in a twisting helix, blowing the strands of my wayward hair about my face and the light hem of my camisole across my abdomen. My skin pebbled under the weight of a familiar gaze, and I twisted around to see the man of the woods nearby. He watched with questioning interest as if I were the mysterious puzzle to be solved.

His audience roused my lethargic blood in ways I wanted to revolt, and I wished he’d leave me in peace. I wanted solitude in the luminescent forest that sparked my own tired tendrils.

Two weeks passed this way, with the same disorienting dream that consumed me while I slept and preoccupied my every waking thought—each moment the taste of another life teasing at my tongue.

Though I knew these blurry interactions were just deceptively real dreams, I woke feeling warm, flushed, and heavy. The line between reality and reverie was blurring, dangerously so. To the point where when I opened my eyes, it was my own room and the life beyond its four walls that felt like the dream. Not the other way around.

Lying in my bed, I tried to rationalize my feelings, put my thoughts into neat, organized piles that made them easier to comprehend, but I found myself buried in more questions than answers.

My fixation over this handsome hallucination, and the glowing forest that encompassed him, was absolutely absurd. I was a fool for letting it hold any power over me whatsoever.

Feeling too big and too small for my body all at once, I decided I was well overdue for a proper run. I quickly dressed in my black practice gear, grabbed my drawstring bag, and did a slow mile warmup to my old track field. The sun had yet to rise, and the gates were locked, but I jumped the fence anyway. If I were caught, I would be arrested for trespassing, but seeing the red rubber laneways, I knew how badly I needed this.

I only meant to do a few light practice drills, but stumbling upon a stray starting block, I opted for a different approach. I changed into my spikes, adjusted the block, set myself up at the hundred-meter line, and ran myself ragged.

Race after race, I timed my sprints. I even beat my personal best, but there was no victory, no celebratory dance, just another race to follow it, and another, and another. I ignored the sweat dripping from my body and the painful stitch in my side and ran until the sun rose over the cement horizon.

All this brutal labor was in hopes I would finally get a good night’s rest, a full eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. A part of me desperately wanted that, but a louder, more prominent desire whispered through me. Perhaps tonight would be the night my strange visitor explained his presence and released me from this spell.

But an unnerving question shot through my mind like a reverberating shockwave—would his words be a good omen or a dark prophecy?

* * *

During my cool down, I completely bypassed my house. I wasn’t ready to go back there. Not yet. I still hadn’t told anyone about my recurring dreams—would barely even admit them to myself. I couldn’t go home, not until I dealt with this. Who knew what kind of an irreparable psychotic break I was having, and there was only one place I knew I could go to make it all stop.

“Darling? What’s wrong? You look like you’ve been running from a ghost,” my mother said, opening the wood and wrought iron door of the Tuscan-style villa she and my father had built several years ago.

“Well, I did run here, and…” I trailed off, unsure how to continue.

“You ran here? That’s miles, and you don’t have water on you. You engaging in these acts of self-neglect is troubling,” she said in her even alto, already seeking to apply psychological theories onto me before I stepped through the front door.

She ushered me inside and offered me ice-cold water, pouring herself a glass of her favorite red wine. It was a little early, but I bit my tongue as we sat at the high-top kitchen counter

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