The forest was endless. Rain fell in sheets, blurring the outlines of trees and roots into one continuous shadow. He walked without direction, his hands brushing damp moss, his feet sinking in mud. Lightning split the sky, revealing nothing but wet, empty trunks and his own wide, staring eyes.
He spoke aloud, a thin thread of sound. "What am I doing here? Is this a dream?" His voice was swallowed immediately by the storm. He had no answers, only the persistent drip of water from his hair, the pounding of his own heart.
Somewhere in the mud, he found a shirt. Blue. Wet, stiff, and covered in dust. He picked it up, examining the strange weave, the dirt, the way it had been left. A question formed on his lips but did not find its way into words.
The forest thinned, and he emerged onto a barren plain. The rain stopped. No wind stirred. He should have been relieved. Instead, a deeper unease gripped him, a cold certainty that he had crossed a threshold.
At the center of the plain, he saw them. A market. Invisible to the casual eye, yet now fully visible: men with hollow, dark eyes and ears unnaturally long; women, silent, keeping to themselves. They moved among stalls, traded goods, sang faint melodies that were not quite songs. Their clothes reminded him of Baghdad, though the air carried none of the scents he imagined.
He approached. "I am lost," he said. "Can you help me?"
A figure emerged, impossibly tall, bowing his head slightly, as though acknowledging an old sorrow. "You are here," it said. "As all who wander here must be."
It led him through a narrow doorway that opened into a room impossibly large. Rows of books towered over him, dust motes drifting like tiny specters. The figure gestured. "You will see. You will remember."
A book appeared in his hands. Trembling, he opened it. The pages were filled with his own sins: the lies he had told, the youth he had corrupted, the lives he had shattered. The words were simple, precise, and unrelenting. His stomach churned. He wanted to look away. He could not.
"You will understand," the figure said. "You will bear witness to all that you caused."
He felt the chair beneath him vanish, or perhaps it was the floor that shifted. The figure grew larger, impossible, monstrous. He spoke, calm, detached. "Shall we begin?"
Time ceased. Pain was no longer measured in moments. Memories of every crime returned, sharp and vivid. He saw the faces of those he had harmed, their suffering folded into his own. It was not a punishment of flesh but of mind, of soul. And yet, it was unbearable.
When at last he spoke, admitting every lie, every misdeed, the figure nodded. "You see now," it said. "The weight you carried is nothing compared to what you refused to see."
And then he awoke. The forest had returned, the rain still falling, the mud still clinging to his shoes. The sky was grey, the trees endless. But inside him, something had shifted: a memory of horror, absolute, eternal, a knowledge that would follow him as long as he lived.
The forest whispered. He understood, finally, that he would never leave.