Between (part 1)

It's not too often you wake up on your back inside a

lifeboat staring up at an ashen sky. I suppose thats 

the most normal part of what I'm going to tell you. 

There is nothing particularly normal looking about

this place, wherever the hell here is. Once I began 

to look around all I could see was water and trees;

large, gnarled, dead trees jutting from the water like

a field of skeletal hands begging the sky. 

I'm not sure how long I sat there at first as I drifted

through the trees. It was a strange and terrible beauty

being there. I didn't want to chance getting out of

the boat and into the water because I had no idea

of what could be there. From what I could tell

there were no creatures moving about to speak of. 

I couldn't see into depths. 

In the boat I did have a pair of oars along with an

old note book full of missing pages and a pen.

The note book didn't look familiar but I assumed 

it was mine, otherwise why would it be there? I 

didn't bother rowing for some time because the

water seemed to know where I was going. It was 

good enough for the time being. 

The sky never broke from its one color palette. 

There was no sun to speak but there was no moon

either. I assumed there had to be a sun since there

was enough light to see around that place. If I had 

to say what time it looked like it was, I'd guess it 

was somewhere around 5p.m. at any given time. 

That's just a guess. 

I had a lot of time to think then. That's really all I

could do besides watch the scenery. Even the 

strangeness of the place became boring after a 

while. It just goes to show that we can get used to

just about anything. 

What I began to notice was how mutilated and dead

all these trees seemed. They were shorn of all their

leaves like an endless winter, the bare branches 

lonely without their adornments. Some of the trees

looked utterly dead, others looked like they were

struggling to maintain the flicker of life. 

There was a lonely silence that was only broken by

the sound of the boat slowly pushing through the

water. For all the trees around there were no other

signs of life to be found. No small creatures scurrying,

no birds nesting, chirping. Just a perpetual loneliness

that held on tight like a mother to her newborn.