He draws breath and pauses on the path with deliberate precision.
The ground is dry leaves with patches of deep snow beneath the boughs of mighty oaks.
The forest is a maze of shadows.
Branches reach out like spikes to stab the unwary.
Cold wind whips through the trees, cutting and slicing into his face.
The darkness is deep and dense.
Sunlight barely seeps into the cracks of the natural canopy.
It offers neither comforting warmth nor illumination.
Tom clenches his teeth and imagines the crying of children, the wailing of women, the moaning of men would be better than the sombre silence of the forest where the only sounds are the breaths he takes and the footfalls his feet create.
Oh, to be back in a world where birds beckon and flowers flirt and one’s heart is filled with song!
But Tom does not want to sing songs here that would echo hollow in the solitude and silence of the woods.
Withered leaves rustle beneath his boots.
There is a poverty of perspective in these woods.
Shadows limit his view.
He stumbles about, cautiously, trying not to clumsily crash into the trees.
Night draws ever closer as daylight fades.
There is the cloying scent of rotting wood.
Stumps and fallen branches promise accident and injury.
Fear is a fog knawing at his heart.
He stumbles into a clearing where somewhere in the silence, deep within the darkness, Tom sees a faint glimmer of light, a tiny glow from beneath a door of some structure that is difficult to discern in dimension or design in the darkness.
As he draws closer to the wooden door, Tom begins to see the outline of the building.
It is a courthouse in the clearing in the middle of the forest.
Tom doesn’t know where he is, but he senses why he is here.
He is here to be judged.
He is here to justify himself.
If he can.
It is a Romanesque building, three storeys lofty with massive pillars predominant.
Ivy stretches up the side of the structure.
A white flag, a colourless expressionless pennant, disapprovingly droops from atop the edifice.
Etched in stone, like divine handwriting, on the front wall of the courthouse are the words “TRUTH AND JUSTİCE“, suggesting that this is a place of peace and purity, a sanctuary of safety and serenity, but this is not what Tom feels.
Tom creeps inside the frigid muted mausoleum of law and order.
There is a clammy cloistered condescending feel to the place.
He descends a passage of abandoned offices and portraits of unidentifiable, unrecognizable non-entities.
At the end of the corridor there is a framed copy of a constitution, a mission statement of purpose, ancient and illegible, old and obsolete, open to any interpretation.
Farther down the hall, Tom hears a voice, achingly familiar, an eerie echo he cannot yet identify, but knows he should know.
He follows the voice into a general court in session.
On the assembly pews is an audience made up of many races speaking a babel of tongues and arrayed in a kaleidoscope of traditional costumes.
At the end of the aisle is a raised platform, a pedestal of righteousness, the place where justice sits, but from across the room Tom cannot see the judge’s features.
To the judge’s left sits a jury of blind men.
Dark glasses hide their sightlessness.
Each member of the jury sports a set of headphones.
Justice cannot see.
Justice will not hear.
To the judge’s right sits a court stenographer ready and poised to record all that will be said in these proceedings.
Tom looks up at the judge and is taken aback by the face that he sees.
It is himself.
It is Tom.
Tom will be his own salvation or damnation.
Dawn breaks.
Alarm rings.
The court fades.
Tom awakes.
