Free The Lanyard by Jake Carter-Thomas

only leave through the gaps in the trees where the last of the sky was, and the smell of all this began to overpower him, and he could sense his skin turning green. The urge to rub his face free of dust accelerated but he could not; if he did then the green would only rub in deeper, and it would itch harder, and the scratch would never stop until he bled.
    His idea of the straight line started to disintegrate, and he viewed it now like some almighty stained glass window he had once worshipped only for the pieces of glass to fall free and shatter until all that was left was the lead skeleton, poisonous and filled with grey, glowing gloom. He thrashed out either side and hurt his hands against trees become a hundred soldiers in a line with bayonets ready to jab. He could do it. He had made it so far already. If he didn't think on it. If he just focused on moving, keeping hold of that line as best he could and not giving up, pushing through each wave that tried to push back, that tired.
    All at once he pierced the edge of a large clearing, a clearing whose edge was nothing but air. A break in the trees. Another pile of rocks in the middle, another cairn, before the next wave of forest came, like he was passing through the eye of the storm, as if the whole landscape wrapped itself into a maze and he was trapped inside. He rushed across, picking up speed to crash back into the forest, then out again, then in, until he found something else.
    The last cairn he found was on the side of a small hill that peaked with a floppy grass haircut rather than a rocky spike. It was here, at the top of the hill, that he came across not just a pile of rocks but a girl, just standing there as if frozen, staring off towards where the sun would later fall, her hair twitching in the wind as it wound around her neck. Did she know he was there? She didn't seem to have heard him approach, and he dare not move now for fear of scaring her, wondering if she was the same girl from before.
    By the back of her sneakers were two dead bees joined together that distracted him, wings useless and beaten back, albeit with that strange silver within them still, twisted veins visible that might be mined, the band of black on them as well, gold that would kill for a king, the stinger, the barb, the button of their souls undone, now consumed by the question in his head of whether the spikes at the end of their bodies, their stings, tore off when used. He was sure they did. So sure that her legs seemed to vanish from view, for a moment as he stood, as did the faint hairs on those legs, down where the tops of her socks turned to unwinding thread and then finished. Didn't the spike have a life of its own once it had torn, a heart? Didn't he? A life from his father, from his mother, filled with green toxins. Had he read that somewhere, or imagined? A heart for it, a heart for him, for them, that pumped poison, a lung that shrugged and puffed, and the pain he'd experienced of his arm burst into flame the one time he got stung?
    Was this just another sign that told him all that he needed to know? That there were patterns in everything around him if he cared to look, as bees joined to bees might lead to his dream of cars joined to cars along the road, making chains. Animal chains. People chains. Chains of metal and rubber. Piles of rocks. The road out to the peaks that they had come, lined with death, as the sun in the side-mirror had seemed to catch his eye and dazzle, as it did now, even if it was darker than before.
    He couldn't be sure if he made a noise, or if she could hear his thoughts, or feel his gaze lapping around her feet, but without a word she turned to face him stuck in thought. He looked up. She smiled. He looked back. Another pattern, like he felt he must have walked since the day he was born, like they all had. He suddenly felt like he was shaking, forced his gaze to return.
    At this range her eyes gained the appearance of two drip pools surrounded by