The forest doesn’t ask questions. It waits for yours.
This week’s microfiction unspools in the hush between memory and myth. “You Don’t Remember Coming Here” is a tale of quiet dread and surreal unraveling. The idea came from the prompt by Weird Micro on X. It’s a “Quagmire of Dread.”
A lone traveler, a path swallowed by fog, and a whisper that knows your name.
You Don’t Remember Coming Here
You wake in the mire. Not on it—in it. Mud clings to your ribs like fingers. Your breath tastes of moss and iron. The trees loom, not above but around, their roots threading through the fog like veins. You rise slowly, knees cracking, unsure if the sound is yours or the forest’s.
You don’t remember coming here. But the mire remembers you.
The path ahead is barely a suggestion—half-submerged boards, slick with rot, leading deeper into the wet hush. You step forward. The ground sighs beneath you. Something shifts in the water. Not fish. Not wind. Something watching.
You pass a sign nailed to a tree, the wood swollen and split: “Welcome Back.” The letters bleed.
Further in, the fog thickens. It doesn’t obscure—it erases. Your thoughts blur. Your name slips. You reach for it and find only syllables that taste wrong. You remember a childhood, a dog, a song—but they flicker like candlelight in wind. The mire drinks them.
A cottage appears, half-sunken and listing. Its windows are eyes. Inside, the walls pulse with damp. Portraits line the room—each one of you, but wrong. One smiles with too many teeth. One weeps black water. One is just a shadow in a frame.
You try to leave. The door leads to more mire. The forest has shifted. The path is gone. The trees have closed in, their bark slick with breath. You run, but the ground pulls. Every step sinks you deeper. The fog whispers now, in voices that sound like yours—but older. Regretful. Hungry.
You don’t remember coming here. But the mire does. And it’s patient.
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