Abel awoke in the early evening to a soft bed and blankets pulled tightly around him. He was cozy and wanted to sleep longer but his bladder ached. It would need to be emptied and soon.

As he attempted to adjust under the blanket he realized he couldn’t move at all. At the last slow departure of sleep, his eyes fluttered open. He concluded this twilight place was not his room, for if it was, there would be a ceiling, and he discovered he did not like coming to such a conclusion.

It was the strange sensation of waking out of doors, mixed with the confusing sensation of waking from a knockout.

He tilted his head, still restrained, and saw that the blanket was no blanket at all. From what he could tell, in those first foggy moments, he was buried under a mass of thin vines that looked like ivy. Not just buried, entangled. The color of their leaves was deep red.

“Huh?” he whispered, finding the vocals chords dry and unwilling to lend tone to his voice. His eyes had yet to adjust to any great distances, but he reasoned the broad purple haziness above him was the sky.

What is going on? He wondered. His last bit of sleepiness fled at the first hammer of panic’s drum.

In the following clear moments before panic arrived, he felt soft grass under his back and a gentle warmth in the air—nothing of chill, gray muddiness, or early autumns other lamentations. He pulled against the entanglement of vines, he was doing this when panic arrived, and it obliged to help. The maze of plants did not relent and panic softened into fear.

“Calm down,” he commanded himself.

He examined his shoulder. Shoots from the vine had pierced his skin, as though they were growing into him.

“Ahhh,” he groaned, but there was no pain.

Then he remembered the accident.

The vines moved on their own. He watched as small shoots withdrew from his skin. In moments, the red mess had squiggled away, leaving him motionless on the grass.

His eyes were now completely adjusted. He saw ahead the start of trees. Enormous trees. They seemed to be sequoias, or oaks more stout and tall than any oak should ever be. The trunks of the trees were padded by lush undergrowth and he could see no easy way in between them. He was enclosed by these behemoths in a clearing. There was only the most meager song of insects and the occasional reply of a few restless birds.

He took a deep and frazzled breath.

Above him was a purple sky of too bright stars. The stars were unfamiliar and colorful beyond anything he’d witnessed in nature. Clouds, here, there, sailed the expanse. If there was a moon, she hid.

After becoming free of the vines, Abel’s fear allowed him to sit up.

What had happened? He recalled few details of the accident. Only that he’d hit something, and: The pain. Where is it?

There was no conceivable way he could have recovered so soon. Hadn’t it felt like his back was splintering apart as he pulled himself through the wet and hateful forest? Now, there wasn’t even a hint of soreness.

And this was no forest he’d ever seen before.

I’m gone, he thought. Gone. Finally dead. This is heaven. The smell of lilacs and other fragrant flowers hung everywhere.

He began to laugh, softly at first, then harder. The birds and insects became still. The laughing quickly withdrew to sobs—though these sobs ceased just as quickly.

If this was death it was surprisingly pleasant and he felt relieved to reach it. It was a bumpy and difficult ride, especially right there at the end, but no matter. You’re being foolish, he thought, though it was a memory of Brittany telling him so. She wasn’t right about many things, but she was at least right about this. He knew, the way a soul just knows, that while he very well may be in heaven—he certainly wasn’t dead.

He recalled his many nights entering the arms of the forest and felt, if nothing more, this as heaven was appropriate for him.

That feeling lulled his fear into a light sleep.

He rose fully from the soft grass and thought to inspect those strange red vines. They were hidden now, so he examined himself. Other than being coated in muck and slightly torn clothes he was in absolutely no pain. There weren’t any bruises, no signs of injury, only dozens of tiny marks, like flea bites, trailing up and down his arms.

The ‘bites’, where the shoots had punctured his skin, were most prominent at his wrist and the areas where his clothing had been ruined. He felt the small of his back and discovered a garden of bumps there as well. The marks diminished on his arms even as he watched. Soon there was no trace of them at all.

He felt the fear stirring awake, but had a small amount of time to take better stock of his surroundings; that, and attend to his screaming bladder. In the meantime, he reached for his cellphone, finding it waterlogged and useless.

Other than tall grasses, a multitude of colorful and aromatic flowers called the clearing home. A few feet from him he saw a pile of dewy fruit glistening in the starlight. Melons of some kind. Beyond that, the trees, primordial and of every type he could imagine reached toward a lavender leafy twilight.

Confident of the nature of the world at his feet, he examined the sky, seeing that which filled it with such otherworldly brightness. It was a galaxy. Tilted and spiral, like the milky way, clothed in a rainbow of subdued colors as it spun through a space he’d never imagined. It nearly brought him crashing back to the cool ground. Fear was awake and crying.

Concerns came into clearer focus. Where am I? How did I get here? Where is the road? My car? Most importantly: What in the hell is going on?

“You’re awake?” A female voice asked from behind. Startled, he turned. She was young, dressed in snug dark attire. He caught sight of a backpack. Perhaps she was a hiker. The thought allayed some of the fear, gave him the fleeting impression that he’d been mistaken about things, that he’d hit his head and all of this alien beauty was a hallucination.

“Who are you? Where am I?” Abel asked quietly, his eyes wide with wonder and confusion.

“Beyond where you were,” the woman said.

“What’s going on? How did I get here?”

“You were hurt when I found you, close to death.”

A new sense of what had happened, was happening, began to close around Abel like cold strangling fingers. Apprehension rose greatly in him. He took a few steps back from the stranger. He had more questions than he had words to speak, but he had no idea who this person was, or what her presence might signify.

“I’m going to look for the path. We can leave on it as soon as tomorrow if you’re ready. You seem fine.”

“Leave? The path? What are you talking about?” Abel wasn’t so sure he was fine. “Look, I think you should call help. I might have a concussion. I’m hallucinating. I was in an accident. I might be dying. He looked to the enormous trees that loomed overhead. They had rid themselves of their wonder, replaced it with a sinister oppression, making him feel helpless and small. “Hurry, get me some help, please.”

The stranger stood there silently for a moment. She seemed bewildered.

“What are you talking about?” she asked. Abel heard a sigh and sensed a slight change in her demeanor. “You’re fine,” she said, “Everything’s alright,” then sighed once more.

“B-b-but—” Abel stammered.

“If you’re hungry I left you some fruit. It grows here everywhere. Nothing poisonous. Just stay away from the city until I get back. Not that you could make it anyway.”

“Wait,” Abel managed. Who was this person? Why was she being this way? Maybe it was all a part of the dream and he was mumbling gibberish as he drowned in a pool of blood.

He tried to speak, but fear held his tongue. His knees lost their strength; he staggered comically toward her.

“I don’t have time for this right now,” the woman said. Abel could now see she was slender and long-limbed, with tight blonde curls. Quite beautiful—but a sculpted beauty—the type of beauty he recognized to be common of fashion models; an almost unreal perfection, as if she’d stepped from an airbrushed page. But apart from the beauty, she was tired, with deep valleys of darkness under her eyes. He also noticed some kind of firearm holstered to her side. Apprehension became outright terror.

“What are you going to do with that?” he asked, pointing to the weapon.

“Shoot someone,” she said.

His expression became ashen.

“Why don’t you just lie down,” she snapped. “I’ll come back soon, maybe in as little as an hour. Relax. You’re fine. Take my word for it. Don’t leave the clearing though and stay away from the city.”

Abel, now dizzy, sat back again on the soft grass.

The stranger walked into the trees.

“Wait, please don’t leave me.”

Abel heard her sigh once more and mutter something.

Moments later she was gone, shuffling through the woods and he found he didn’t posses the courage to follow.

“What am I supposed to do now?” he yelled and immediately wished he hadn’t, for he reasoned that he was completely alone, and he shrank at the thought of what might be lurking in the purple darkness of that monstrous forest.