3st SHORT STORY: "The Old Μan and the Forest"
The forest looks dark
like the night sky from where the old man is sitting. The trees grow close to
each other, reminding of lovers in an endless embracement. The light is passing
softly through the foliage crowning the huge trunks, falling and disappearing
into the dense low vegetation of the soil. The old man can really understand
why his uneducated and faithful to prejudices grandmother, was telling him -
when he was a little boy - to stay away from this particular part of his
village.
He still remembers,
in his late nineties today, and after all the years he spent in the psychiatric
clinic, his grandmother talking about fairies and elves, for fellow villagers
who had entered the forest and never returned. As a child, of course, he was
afraid and never crossed the boundaries made by the huge trunks. Later, by the
time he reached puberty, before he became ill, he began to believe that the
forest was a dangerous place for young children and that, this was the reason his grandmother was
telling him no to go there...
by ©James Antoniou 2018
