A quick walk through the woods. With each step brittle leaves crunch resoundingly like fragile hearts. You are surrounded by trees, bare and vacant. The epic transformations of age and time amplify with every pace. Don’t waste time looking at what’s around you—because before you know it, it will be gone.
Steep houses sprout up on your left and right. Dirt, once loose and free, becomes compact and hardened.
The leaves around you begin to dry out and disintegrate, one by one, vanishing into the beaten path below you.
Walk on.
Dirt turns to rocks. Little hairs sprout up on your arms, on edges of your face. A brisk walk becomes a gait, a staggered one-two cadence. Knees stiffen. The rocks underneath your feet melt together, forming blocks of gray concrete.
A gray cloud cover barrels across the horizon, destroying everything in its path, swallowing up the bright blue sky. No mercy.
You pull your tattered jacket closer to your body, protection against the biting wind.
And then you stop, arriving at your destination.
The steps wind high. The distance seems farther and farther each time. You used to gallop up these steps, skipping one step, maybe even two if you were in a hurry. Soon they will become an insurmountable mountain, but for now, you look down and go, one at a time. One foot up. Stop. Then the other. All the way up, to the top.
Take out a key, hold it tight, make sure it doesn’t fall, because you know you won’t be able to bend down and pick it up. Slide it into that oiled-up metal lock; gasp as you struggle to turn it, hear the click, and grasp the knob with the warped fingers of your left hand. Turn, open: enter, but don’t look back. That would be too hard.
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