THE VALLEY OF VIKIDLEK

I was feverish from the night’s before lack of sleep, and when I opened my eyes in the morning, it was only to realize the sun hadn’t come up yet. I couldn’t stay in bed, I was feeling half dead; my whole body was giving up on me and so was my mind following… but I couldn’t keep still anymore. Every muscle of mine was under tremor, the images of what was around me were driving me to madness, twisting and pitching in every way, I was hallucinating my demons awaiting in the shadows, yapping at my distress.

I could have vomitted the rest of what was left alive of me on the floor right where I was standing, but instead I dragged on with a heavy heart to the door, and locked it after me. For the first time in weeks, I was feeling the wind blowing on my face, sharply… the season of fall had already arrived and transformed the surroundings in a bucolic celebration. I was stepping out into a marvellous nature, barely lightened up by dusk, yet so colorful that even the lack of rays couldn’t blind me from it.

* * *

I didn’t come to perceive until it was too late & I couldn’t recognize where I had walked to, but the woods were encircling me. I had gotten lost after probably walking across fields and the valley of Vikidlek — from what my weakened memory could remember of the maps I had looked inattentively upon, fueled by a dying curiosity more than actual interest, that would have been the most appropriate way.

For a brief moment I got my senses back, only to feel panic studding to my spine, making me as dizzy as if I was standing on a cloud and were about to drop from this earth’s atmosphere into the space’s void; I knew worse things than wolves were haunting these woods, and the notion that I had managed to unconsciously cross after a thirty kilometers walk, up and down hill, to get there, terrified me.

When finally my legs gave up on me, I fell to the ground on my knees. It was as if something had pulled me here, against all the will I had to stay away, crippling my body until I entered a trance from which I woke up only when I arrived to the place I feared the most… where I got my first encounter with a creature with such dreadful features, that I couldn’t believe was real.

I remembered running away from it, but it caught me in a single jump and scratched the whole left side of my back. I laid here for hours, thinking it would come back to kill me, but it didn’t. I gathered all the strength I could to get myself back home, and heal my wounds, but by the time I got there, they had disappeared. I thought I was going mad, the fever started tangling me and I couldn’t trust my memories anymore… It has been a month exactly. I can’t explain myself any of this, but something is telling me, tonight the creature will meet me again.