Free Monochrome by H.M. Jones Page A

the soul, right? The blacker your soul is…” He didn’t finish the gloomy sentence. He shook his head at her and pursed his lips.
    “What are you thinking about?”
    “I’m not sure yet.”
    She guffawed. “You’re not sure what you’re thinking.”
    He scratched his short beard and a distant expression stole across his face. “I’m not sure what the change means. But you’ll be the first to know if I figure it out. As it is, we need to find a place to sleep. We can stay in the woods, but it’s far from safe, and not just because of the Snakes.”
    Abigail frowned. “What else?”
    “I know it seems like this place is never light, and it isn’t, but it gets much darker when nightfall hits. And strange things happen in this place at night. The fog,” he shivered, “is alive and it bogs sleepers down. It can create some very real nightmares, and Nightmares walk in Monochrome.”
    He paused to see if she wanted to ask any more questions, but she decided she’d heard enough for now.
    “So what’s the other option?”
    “We keep walking until we reach an Inn and stay there. Only, if we do, you’ll have to give another payment.”
    Abigail chewed her bottom lip nervously. “What kind of memory will I have to give?”
    He put his hands in his pockets and examined his feet. “It depends on the Inn.” Clearly, neither decision was a great one, but she didn’t relish the thought of giving more memories than necessary.
    “Weighing the options, I guess I prefer to find a cheap Inn, as cheap as they come.”
    He grimaced, but nodded in agreement. “Making decisions here is like this, Abby. You always have to choose between two shitty options. Having stayed in the woods only a few times, though, I think this is the best route. I’ll pay for me.” He played with something in his pocket, probably the strange rock-like currency. “So you’ll just have to take care of your room.”
    “Well, let’s get started. We’ll walk for as long as we can today. As long as you think it’s safe. And we’ll stop at a cheap Inn for the night. Hopefully we won’t have too many more nights ahead of us?” She watched the brown-green sparks dance in Ishmael’s eyes and asked, “How many nights do you think it will take to get to the border?”
    “It’s difficult to tell. We have a couple hours of the silver light left tonight and, if we start early tomorrow, we’ll get through in…,” He scanned the forest, seeing past it, bringing up a map in his mind. “Maybe four or five days.”
    He noticed her dismay and laid a hand on her shoulder. “It’s longer than you thought, I know, but you’re doing great. Let’s just take this a day at a time, okay?”
    She forced complacence onto her face. “Let’s get as far as we can tonight.” He took his hand from her shoulder and walked away. She sighed, dejected, and followed.
    They walked for what seemed like a couple of hours. Ishmael said it was fine to go back on the path and either ignored or refused to answer Abigail when she asked why the glassy black path only showed itself for him and the Snakes.
    She, again, found herself amazed at the sameness of the landscape of Monochrome. It was as if they were walking through an oil painting, made with variations of blues, greys and blacks. The landscape shimmered with the eerie silver light, like the gleam of a wet oil painting. Each blue tree and grey twig seemed like the twin of another they’d already passed a hundred times. Like usual, Ishmael was pretty quiet during the walk, but he seemed much less morose than when they started.
    Since he figured out Abigail was a literature major, he sometimes spun around and quoted something, quizzing her knowledge of his favorite poets. If she answered correctly, he asked her when she’d read the piece and what she thought of the author.
    Sometimes they would argue about which poets expressed themselves more beautifully, more fluently, and so on. When she answered incorrectly,