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existence. When I get close enough, it will destroy me with its rolling fat or a stray feeler, unintentionally, not because I’m not worth the intention, but because I’m unperceivable.
    Still, I step forward.
    And then I’m alone again in the forest.
    Or so it seems at first.
    Even before I see the eyes on the trees, I feel them. They look at me from every angle and judge me. The problem is this isn’t one of those righteous situations where you feel empowered by their critical stares. No, I know I’m in the wrong. I know that these trees and their immobile lives are more deserving than I am of respect. I want to curl up and make a sindoor on the forest floor, and I never want it to be opened.
    Still, I step forward.
    In the distance, a dark form swings from a tree branch. It moves as if rocked by the wind, but I don’t feel any wind. Closer, and it’s obviously a body. Closer still, and it’s obviously Krow.
    She’s still alive. A python, hissing with laughter, dangles her by her neck. I need to stop. With one hand, I can hold her. With the other, I can peel the snake off her. The tail wiggles at me, taunting me, just below Krow’s chin. I spot the snake’s head, and realize that this may be the reincarnation of Krow’s penis. Out for revenge. Or to take her with him. Or it may be lonely.
    All I have to do is stop walking.
    But still, I step forward.
    When I pass her, I’m breathing through my mouth, so I can’t smell her.
    It’s no longer just screams trapped in my head, but tears and snot and simmering blood.
    “Oh god,” Aubrey says, beside me now, in hiking gear. “It’s already started, hasn’t it? I didn’t expect it to begin so soon. I shouldn’t have left you on autopilot. I’m sorry.”
    I try to open my mouth.
    “Just think it,” she says. “I’ll be able to hear you.”
    So I think, “Krow needs help! You have to go back and save her!”
    “There is no crow, Bernard.”
    “No! Krow! She’s a person and she’s dying back there!” But even as I’m saying it, I don’t believe it. This can’t be real. But I can’t take the chance.
    “You’re sleepwalking, Bernard,” she says.
    Now they’re laughing at me. Squeaking at me. I haven’t been afraid of clowns since I was a kid, but that doesn’t seem to matter here. “Keep them away from me, Aubrey. Please.”
    She points her walking stick at me, and it looks like a petrified version of Krow’s snake. “Your mind is attempting to regain control of your motor functions by shocking your system. The problem is, it’s not going to work.”
    I see now that the trees are hollow. Hands and faces and oversized clown shoes stick out of the cavities in the trunks. They’re packed in the wood the way they pack themselves in clown cars. “Aubrey, there’s thousands of them. You have to get out of here.” I don’t know what they want to do to me. But it’s something much worse than death.
    “You have to stop fighting me,” she says.
    The flowery limbs thrash about and it’s only a matter of time before the trees will split down the middle.
    “Run away,” I tell her.
    “Give yourself permission to keep walking. Otherwise this nightmare isn’t going to end until you and I are face to face.”
    “What are you saying?”
    She’s in front of me now, walking backward. Somehow she manages to step over every rock and avoid every tree in our path. “Repeat what I tell you. Will you do that?”
    I nod.
    “Say, ‘I’m happy to walk.’ Say it.”
    “I’m happy to walk.”
    “Again.”
    “I’m happy to walk.”
    “Keep saying it.”
    “I’m happy to walk. I’m happy to walk. I’m happy to walk…”
    The clowns stop moving. They stop laughing. They stop existing.
    “Don’t try to stop walking anymore,” she says. “This forest is safe. You’ll be fine.”
    I believe her. Or I want to believe her, and that’s enough. “What’s happening to me, Aubrey? I don’t understand any of this.”
    “And you’re not going