26/02/2025
The Great Beyond
When I was little, just below a teenager, my mum would take me on evening walks across the fields of the plateau. It was heaven, and I knew it. I can still feel the evocative fragrance of the towering grasses and the golden hue they wore when the hour was right. I’d always stop in my tracks to watch them sway. It was the most perfect choreography nature ever bequeathed my juvenile eyes. A few moments of awestruck wonder, and then my mum’s gentle hand on my shoulder would pull me back to reality.
She would tell me stories of the mountains. She said the grasses were believed to be the souls of the fallen—those who had sought freedom even until their last breath. Her tales sent a somber shiver down my spine, a fleeting sadness that was soon drowned by the cries of egrets fluttering in their skewed formations. It was a beautiful sight, and noticing my shifting attention, she would weave yet another story. Where she came from, everything had a story—the wind, the stream, the woods, even the fireflies.
At the last breath of God’s fiery ball, we would hold hands and race through the fading light, our laughter and footsteps weaving together in perfect harmony. That was the fall of ’76—a time when everything smelled different.
It was also a time when war wept like a grieving mother. The growling blast of rockets rumbled in the heavens, shaking the very bones of the earth, sending shivers upon thunder, forcing lightning to hide in the fiery arms of riveting gunfire. Our streams turned red with the blood of the fallen, and in a desperate bid to stay alive, my mother took me far from the chaos, to the cleaves of safety in the plateau.
Dad had been drafted to fight in a war that wasn’t his. If he still had breath in his lungs, I could never tell. But I remember—every night, my mother would guide my sleepy head up the creaky stairs to my bed, and for the rest of the moonlit hours, her silent tears would fall like prayers for a man she’d never set eyes on again.
I was too young to understand pain, but I knew that when she smiled at dawn, it was a mask.
If life ever gifted me anything, it was a parcel of memories.
On a sunny morning in December 1977, I made up my mind—I was done being my mother’s child. I wanted to see the great beyond. I thought it was a place beyond the empty vast land we found solace in.
Mum had told me nerve-wracking tales of the woods, and she made me swear never to stray beyond the great boulders that marked the boundary. But that day, I was determined to do everything I was warned never to do. I ran off like a butterfly fluttering for the first time. Like a bullet, I aimed for the woods.
What was running through my mind, I could never tell. But I knew one thing—I would either find freedom or become a stalk of grass searching for it.
I don’t know how long I ran or walked, but I knew that soon, the sun had crossed its zenith. Above me, a thick blanket of darkness began swallowing the sky, and a million rays from the setting sun cast dappled shadows on the moist forest floor.
The rustling of leaves, the snapping of twigs, the distant calls of birds, and the unnerving silence merged into something deeply unsettling.
My heart began to drum. My breath grew heavier. Thoughts raced wildly through my mind.
Should I turn back?
I asked myself, but my childish ego, too stubborn to lift the weight of my fears, answered for me. I was steadfast. I would find the great beyond.
The forest was alive with whispers. The rustling leaves, the distant hoot of an owl, and the rhythmic hum of unseen insects wrapped around me like an eerie symphony. I had been wandering for what felt like hours, the weight of the unknown pressing against my chest. Then, amidst the thick silence, a voice rose—soft, haunting, and beautiful.
I followed the sound, my heartbeat quickening with every step. The trees thinned, allowing slivers of golden light to spill onto the damp earth. And then, I saw her.
She stood in the clearing like a vision from another world. A lone figure draped in crimson, her sweater hugging her slender frame while the high waist of her faded jeans accentuated her form. She exuded an effortless elegance, one arm resting on her hip as if she had been expecting me.
Her face, shadowed yet radiant, bore an intensity that rooted me to the spot. Dark curls framed her face, a single ivory flower tucked behind her ear—a contrast so striking it seemed almost unreal. Her lips were parted slightly, the last note of her song still lingering in the air, her gaze piercing through the misty dusk as if peering into my very soul.
The grass beneath her feet glowed faintly, kissed by the fading sunlight, but behind her, the jungle loomed deep and dark, its secrets pulsing in the spaces between the leaves. I should have turned back. I should have run.
But I couldn’t.
She had seen me now.
My throat was dry, my pulse hammering in my ears. She tilted her head slightly, the ghost of a smile curling at the edges of her lips.
"Are you lost?" she asked, her voice smooth yet chilling, like the whisper of wind through hollow bones.
I swallowed hard. "Y-Yeah," I stammered.
Her smile widened, slow and deliberate, revealing teeth too sharp, too perfect in the dim light. The shadows behind her seemed to pulse, the trees bending ever so slightly as if leaning in to listen.
"Oh," she breathed, taking a step closer. The ground beneath me felt wrong—too soft, too yielding, as if the earth itself wanted to swallow me whole.
"You're never going back home."
The air thickened. The forest held its breath.
And then—
The singing started again.
But this time, it was all around me.
THE GREAT BEYOND
PHOTOGRAPHED BY
IN FRAME
