Come and See

"A man must know his destiny… if he does not recognize it, then he is lost. By this I mean, once, twice, or at the very most, three times, fate will reach out and tap a man on the shoulder… if he has the imagination, he will turn around and fate will point out to him what fork in the road he should take, if he has the guts, he will take it."
                                    General George Patton



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“Come and see” the voice flowed gently on the wind, a slight whisper of impossibility. Judd’s head turned into the air as he tried desperately to hear it again. He needed to know in which direction it was calling him towards, left perhaps? His gloomy eyes beamed into the woods, trees swaying angrily in the storm’s warning. Yet Judd did not care that the storm was coming. All he wanted was for the voices to end. For three weeks now he heard them night and day, of course he had seen a psychiatrist who labeled them as ‘stress.’ He laughed at her before calling her an idiot; of course he had stress. Who didn’t nowadays?  But these voices and the words that repeated felt like a tug at his soul. He couldn’t deny that it sounded crazy, but he needed to go to them.

So here he was at 2 AM in the start of one of the season’s worst hurricanes following voices. “God, I’m pathetic.” Judd said as he stalked towards the forest, arms held close to his chest. The words repeated themselves in a hissing sound that seemed to ride on the branches that struck out at one another. The hair on Judd’s arm rose instantly. He shouldn’t be here, this was all wrong yet the tug inside would not let it go. His body took over when his mind refused to go further. Something was pulling him further into the woods, where the dark was all he could see. The lights of home lost beyond the woods as the voices begun to get louder, “COME AND SEE”, Judd felt the urge of panic that comes with the dark and unknown. Yet his body would not stop moving, he had been gone for what seemed like ages.


The wind picked up, branches scratched at his body as if they were trying to stop him from going any further. The animals of the night cried together as if a symphony had been called to order right then. The wind beat so hard against Judd’s chest that it felt as if it were going to slice a hole through him, yet the walked on. His throat tightened as a branch whipped across his face and the warmth of blood trickled down his cheek. His hand moved to wipe the blood away when yet another branch smacked into the opposite cheek. Judd shudder in fear, his head turning to look at the way he had come. Once he had done it, he knew he had made a mistake. The voices spoke until he could no longer hear the storm. The voices had become a run on of one another, a constant stir of words until they were unrecognizable. Judd stumbled as he clutched his head, screaming in agonizing pain. Coming to his knees and curling downward, Judd's hands still cradled his head. Tears of pain mixed with blood as they flowed heavily into his hands. Just as it felt as though his skull would split in two, the voices stopped. The gnawing feeling his stomach loosened and the storm ceased.