Tertius Gradus

The time had come for the evening stroll. Spring walks through his private wood were the most heavenly experience he believed could occur while on the broken world. The soothing smell of blossoming flowers, of lush new leaves, clean air being ushered in by the joyous season always enveloped him on morning and evening trips. The evening, he was sure, elevated the experience; something about a day’s worth of sunshine brushing down on the forest gave it an extra liveliness; instead of the rigid and dewy hours after the night, the evening hour offered a clean, relaxing satisfaction after a long day’s work. The animals seemed to enjoy the later day as well. Birds chip cheerily all around him, squirrels chase each other with incredible speed, leaping from branch to branch with supernatural precision. Turkeys would cross the trails, eyeing him, gurgling at him, and fluttering their feathers at him. Now and again, he would encounter a small mammal, like a skunk or a porcupine, who always left him alone after a few moments of fraternal stares. More often, a rabbit would come across his path; the excitable little rodents always leapt away and disappeared into the brush immediately. 

This day, he set out nearer to the close of his dinner than usual, giving himself extra time to enjoy the sights and sounds of his woods. He had worked hard to purchase his forest, labored and finessed his way through multiple corporate ladders for many long years to assure his ideal retirement. Secluded, calm, and natural. He knew as he aged, some of the natural aspects of his early retirement would need to be phased out. Wood cannot be cut by an eighty-year old, hunts cannot be dragged by an eighty-year old, his own body, eventually, would need help cleaning itself. The second retirement, a return to infantile dependency, may yet be enjoyable. He had a plan for it. But it would not begin to compare to the idyllic position in which he currently finds himself. On the trail, alone, free, and with a full belly. 

Curiously, being about a quarter of the way down his typical route, he has not heard any songs from the finches or buntings that typically fill the air with their lovely little tunes. No matter, the gentle rustling of young leaves in the breeze is a sound that offers his mind ease. The vibrant forest, the soft breeze, and the whispering leaves are hypnotic enough on their own. He smiles, closes his eyes for a moment, and carries on, taking a deep breath of the evening air which he loves so much.

His nose is filled with a pungent odor. Recoiling and instinctively grasping at his throat as if he’d been choked, his eyes snap open and he looks around. Collecting himself, he examines a few bushes more closely. Stepping off the trail towards one, he notices a furry little body laying there, not reacting to his approach. The stench is present. Changing his angle, he finally determines that this little skunk is dead. The old man sets a glove over his hand. The body looks intact enough to be moved without falling to pieces. It certainly smells fresh, too. He picks it up, respectfully, and carries it some way into the woods, gently laying it to rest away from his walking trail, hoping that the stench will be diminished by morning. 

Returning to the trail, removing his glove, and happy to be back on his way, he waits a while before taking another sniff of his surroundings. The sweet spring air should set his mind at—no! He gags, frustrated at the odor that clings to the woods. He looks around again, not finding any carcasses to blame. Pondering for a moment, his concentration is broken when he glances up at the sky. The vibrant blue of early-evening has evaporated, giving way to an orange, now yellowing, now graying late-evening, now dusking color. This should not be the case. He decides to turn around and head home. He must’ve travelled further than he thought after he disposed of the skunk. But, then, why the stench?

Suddenly the air around him seizes him in its grasp, binding him in biting cold wind, like a snowless winter gale. He shivers, then stumbles forward. The forest is no longer vibrant; the color is being drained out of the saplings, the tree trunks, the mosses, the flowers. The color, as the sun flees into the night, is soaked into the object to which it belongs and replaced with shades of gray. He looks into the sky. Black clouds with gray streaks swirl above him. These are the most charismatic storm clouds he has ever encountered, and they are brewing like a sinister stew in a witch’s pot. He picks up his pace and runs headlong into the stench. It sets upon him, stubborn before the chilling breeze that wraps itself over him. Instead of being reduced by the wind, it stuffs itself into his nose and mouth like acrid, fat fingers groping into his skull. Even his ears and eyes protest before the invasive odor. The putrid stench is worse than before, worse than a rank carcass, worse than burning flesh, worse than the decay of a battlefield, worse than any scent the natural world, worse than any scent man, can dream of rendering.

He begins to jog as the scent burns into his eyes, as the blackness of night mocks his vision. He flicks on his flashlight, catching glimpses of his trail in the pale light, creating skeletons of the trees shrouded in coal blackness. 

Then the world goes dark again. 

Stumbling forward, he mashes at the flashlight, desperate to set the battery straight. But he realizes he is not blinking. 

His eyes have been forced shut. 

He can’t breath. 

He must reach his home. 

He produces a pocket knife.

He sets the blade upon his eyelid.

He screams as blood rushes down his cheek, offering a warmth with a twisted welcome that fights against the blistering cold air.

Then the other.

He wipes the blood away,

and is yet blind. 

Concerned no longer with the insurmountable pain in his eyes, he gasps and breathes heavy, fast breaths, pulling the stench in and forcing it out as if he’d just run a marathon. Within his chest, the foul air rips at his organs and thrashes like an alligator with its prey. The sensation alone nauseates the man. Forcing the stench out is no relief; the stench burns his throat on the way up, eating at his esophagus like acid, dragging behind it bile, which he ejects with every breath. It joins the blood from his severed eyelids that cascades over his chin.

He stumbles to his feet, clinging desperately to the flashlight, tumbling himself forward. His head begins to imagine that he must be nearing the cabin, he must be nearing the cabin. At any moment, he’ll bump into it.

His arms reject the prospect. They touch nothing but the ground as he collapses, unable to trick his lungs into accepting the unnatural air any longer. The ground is cold and clammy, like a cement basement floor. The flashlight falls out of his hand.

He begins to crawl forward, then allows his body to drop to the ground entirely. He retreats within himself, offering his body as a sacrifice if only his mind be spared. 

But the odor is not contented with his body. It begins to pester at his consciousness. It consumes him, dominates his thoughts. He falls back so far that he is no longer uncomfortable—he no longer knows what the word means. He no longer feels the pain of the eyelids that once were. His organs no longer burn. He is not concerned with his breath, he has forgotten the place in which he lives. He withdraws further, forgetting everything. Unlearning everything. Now he does not think. There are no thoughts, but there is not nothing.

For there is something.

An emotion, a single emotion which has devoured his body, has seized his mind, and which is now penetrating his soul itself, inducting his soul into its own essence.

And the emotion is