NEW FICTION: the circle.
He woke as if from a deep, dark dream. His head hurt, thumping as if from something he couldn't quite catch hold of, but it was the other end - his feet, that hurt the most. He looked down. He was lying in a shallow pool of water. He tried to find his feet, but his knees were in they way. He lowered them, slowly and painfully, and glanced near myopically at his feet. Through a blur, he'd lost his glasses again, he could make out that his feet were bloody, blistered. What the fuck had happened to him? Where was he? And more importantly, where had he been?
He turned his feet - outward and inward. They hurt like hell, but at least they seemed intact. It felt and looked as if he had walked miles in naked feet. Wouldn't be the first time, he snorted to himself. He'd woken numerous times recently, half-naked, sometimes fully. Not knowing where he was or how he'd got there. Sometimes he'd been beaten, sometimes he'd been systematically cut. He had at least five small tattoos he couldn't remember getting. One had been hidden on his left ass cheek. It took him a while before that one was found. He smiled at the memory, and the finder.
It took him a while before he realised that he was staring up at the palest of blue skies. It must be early morning. He could hear trees around him shiver in a slight, tight breeze. He closed his eyes and mentally strobed over his body, feeling for cuts, bruises, breakages. He sighed with relief - just the feet. He kept his eyes tightly shut as he attempted to sit up. He failed twice, but managed it on the third. Three is good. He sat for a moment, then opened his eyes. He shifted his head around. Trees, some shuffling in the undergrowth, nothing unusual. Good.
He made an attempt to get up. He wobbled, cursed, wobbled again, but he could stand. He looked back down at himself. His legs were a little shaky, but he'd manage. His bloody feet were now lost in the pool of water that he'd been lying in. It was milky white, which was strange.
He moved his body around, shuffling his painful feet as he went. He thought that perhaps he'd been lying on a path, or trackway. but he was actually standing within a small and perfectly formed circle. Dense trees and brambles formed the perimeter, while the the circle itself had a dust white floor, and where he was standing was dead centre.
So this was a first. He hadn't woken up anywhere like this before. So where was he? He shifted his body around again. Nothing. His left hand itched, just at the bump below his thumb. He glanced at his open palm. One of the tattoos he couldn't remember getting, a sigil, visibly throbbed. He scratched at it vacantly. He stood for a moment in the near silence of the early morning sunshine, and then he heard it, someway off to the left, and wish he hadn't. And where the fuck were his glasses?
