Elias stood in the late afternoon sun for a moment. The concrete path that terminated at the old facility’s entrance was weathered and broken. Dirt had caked up around the edges of the doorway behind him, and a layer of moss blanketed the ground. He took a deep breath, allowing his diaphragm to stretch his sore abdominals. That agonizing stair descent had taken much more core strength than his mind had anticipated.

  Atop the building, he had been far enough from the vegetation to have only gotten a faint whiff of nature reclaiming society. Now that he was at the wild doorstep, he could smell the damp, earthy petrichor of wet stone and thriving grass. It was pleasant, but also overwhelming to his nascent senses. The tang of oxidized metal and the faint saltiness of the sea breeze mixed with blooming flowers and thick pollen filled his throat and lungs.

  He sneezed. The sensation rocked him, and he stumbled backward. He sneezed again, and a tickling in his nose hinted at a potential third attack. He waited, anticipating the violent uncontrollable spasm. The itch in his nose grew more fierce. He tensed his shoulders, gripped his walking stick.

  It never came. The itch died slowly, eventually ebbing to a dull warmth. He took another deep breath, releasing the tension in his shoulders. Once again, he chuckled to himself and found the experience cathartic. A thought formed, and he considered it for a moment.

  Spring. The word brought the feeling of grass under foot, a shining sun, and freshness in the world. In his mind he was sitting in the cool shade of a tree at the side of a small brook. His bare feet were partially submerged in the running water, and he could feel the cold crispness of far-off ice melt rush between his toes. He was holding a bundle of flowers, recently picked. Their pleasant scent coupled with the grainy texture of their stems in his fingers brought him a peace he could not quite place.

  That place, he could feel it, see it, smell it. But he did not know it. Dissonance grew in his mind, threatening to overwhelm him once again. It was a phantom pain, a reaching in his brain for context that simply was not there. He allowed the vision to pass, returning his consciousness fully into his present world. His limbs remembered their fatigue, and suddenly he felt the weight of the task before him.

  Words on a page had knocked him unconscious. Just getting down to the ground floor had strained his body and used up so much of his energy. Exposure to fresh air had sent him into a sneezing fit. His stomach grumbled, and he realized for the first time that he was hungry. So, so hungry.

  He felt his instincts kick in, reacting to this realization of hunger. The same drive that had pushed him to bind the rat bite also pushed him now to find food. He clutched at the small knife in his pocket, and he could envision himself using it to hunt, to set traps, to clean and prepare a meal. The knowledge came as easily as if he had spent months training and honing survival skills.

  The cognitive dissonance grew as he searched himself for why he knew these things. He could not let it go. He needed to know who he was, where he was, why he was. Another part of him recognized that he was spiraling. He needed to move, to get out of his mind, to return to the world. This part of him felt helpless, though, as the rest spiraled into the same existential void that had swallowed him before.

  Pain cut through the void, and he was finally thrown back into the present. In his momentary panic he had shifted too much weight onto his right leg, and the small wound stung.

  He shifted his weight off of his right leg. The warmth of the sun returned as his skin began to pay attention to the world again. He laughed at the sudden sensation, and suddenly he felt much better. He was still tired, still scared, but at least he was out of the spiral.

  Looking around, he saw a raised mound of moss-covered concrete a few feet away, to the side of the building entrance. It may have been a bench long ago, but time, weather, and nature had cracked and chipped at it. It was now more boulder than bench. He hobbled over to it, his body aching for a rest. As he sat, he was surprised to find it not uncomfortable.

  The smell of this place had momentarily silenced his other senses. Now he could feel the wet sliminess of the moss as he allowed his hand to pass over the empty section of bench to his side. He looked up and took in his surroundings. Above the treeline the tops of three other buildings suggested the borders of a large courtyard. The concrete paths between these buildings were buried under the brush, only obvious due to the occasional overturned block and faint jagged cracks pushing up through the leaf litter. The trees were dense, but not omnipresent, allowing occasional breaks in the canopy such as the open patch of sky above his head.

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  He sat for a moment, allowing the peaceful scene to wash over him. A few squirrels darted among the trees, and he traced their movement with amusement. He felt stored tension begin to dissipate throughout his body.

  This is going to keep happening. The thought formed suddenly, but the underlying feelings had been building for some time. He was going to keep oscillating between visceral experience and internal dissonance. Whatever had happened to him, whatever was going on, it was not going to change any time soon. Until he arrived at the marked destination, he would need to find a way to deal with this.

  He pondered this thought for some time. No answers were readily apparent. How could he deal with the internal dissonance? He did not even really understand it. Clearly it would come back. So, how would he deal with the spiral? Part of it was definitely out of his control. He could not stop those visions, those not-memories, from coming. His mind would reach for context for every instinctual action he took. He needed those instincts, though, if he was going to survive.

  His stomach grumbled again as he thought about those strange instinctual skills. He would need to act on it soon, but he was not going to let it take him away from confronting the problem. His physical experiences were overwhelming him, that much was clear. Once again, he had the strange feeling like his body had never experienced these things before. That would explain the violent reactions to small stimuli. He was not sure how that could be, but he chose not to question it. He had to create a set of truths that he could accept. He needed something grounding.

  The first truth he had to accept, he figured, was that he was hypersensitive to the physical world. That was causing his brain to retreat inward due to the sensory overwhelm. Second, he knew how to do things with no context for how he got that knowledge. Within his mind, that was creating a contradiction that hijacked his ability to deal with consciousness. Third, allowing himself to spiral into that contradiction would do nothing to help him find answers. He needed to make it to the place marked on his map if he was going to learn anything, and collapsing after every action was doing nothing to actually get him there.

  That felt right. He had to accept his reality, to stop fighting it. To do that, he would need to take control. The part of him that had recognized the spiral earlier, he would need to strengthen that. He needed to stay consciously aware and make purposeful decisions. This reactionary loop was the problem.

  His stomach grumbled again, and he decided it was time to act. He would get himself something to eat, and then he would determine what to do after he had filled his belly. The increased energy would do him good and would hopefully help clear his mind. He got up off the bench, and strangely his leg bothered him slightly less. Finding newfound strength in his determination, he allowed his instincts to take over and take him into survival mode.

  ---

  A beautiful medley of orange and yellow danced across the sky as the sun set. Elias admired it for a moment, and then turned to his small campfire. A small squirrel hung over the flames on a crude wooden spit fashioned from stripped fallen branches. It had been flayed, drained of blood, and cleaned. He hadn’t known what to do with the innards, so he had buried them a few meters from his camp. Now a light sear was forming on the flesh directly above the fire. He turned the spit to even the heating, and then settled back into observing the sky.

  His mouth watered at the scent wafting from the fire, and his stomach ached at the patience required of it. Elias was unperturbed. He traced the lines of the clouds and marveled at the intricate color and detailing of each one in the waning sunlight.

  He turned the spit again, then pulled out the notebook. A part of him lamented that he did not have a pen, though he did not know what he would write. It just felt odd to have a notebook with no pen, for no reason beyond that is what his instincts expected.

  As his thoughts turned toward trying to determine why he wanted a pen, and what a pen was, he quietly directed them back toward his meal and the painted sky. I will eat soon, he deliberately thought, and that helped him avoid falling into the inward spiral. It is fortunate that it is not windy. Cooking will be more even, was another thought that formed alongside it. He chose to let that thought come and go.

  The pungent smell of burning flesh alerted him. He had left the squirrel too long on one side and the flesh had blackened. He quickly turned the spit so that the burnt section was furthest from the flames. He watched the fire more intently this time, avoiding slipping back into his thoughts.

  As he continued to tend the fire and prepare his meal, a curious sensation washed through him. There was a peace to this world, a quiet awe that pervaded the elongating shadows of the twilight woods. In the stillness he found hope.

  For some reason, he had the tools to survive in this wilderness. Based on the map, he could be no more than half a day’s journey from his destination. He would get some rest tonight, and then tomorrow he would find out what was at the end of his path.

  As the sun finally set and darkness filled its absence, Elias decided the squirrel was ready and finally gave in to his hunger. He ate with a ferocity that surprised himself. The meat was bland and unseasoned, but to his starving body it felt like nectar from the gods. He could feel some strength returning almost immediately, and soon the squirrel was reduced to a pile of bones and cartilage.

  Belly full and mind quieted, he curled up in the dirt by his small fire and drifted off into a deep and restful sleep.