It was in the middle of the night when I finally made up my mind. There was a weight to the inky blackness that enveloped me, a weight I was going to have to get used to. A cold breeze had begun to blow whipping my hair into my face. Perhaps that was an omen- perhaps I wished for it to be an omen- anything to dissuade myself, anything at all. Burdensome as my decision was, “breathe deep”, I steeled my resolve. Moonlight danced timidly through the swaying branches of the deadwoods, casting eerie shadows on the worn cobblestone path that led to the aging manor. A symphony of crickets against the inevitable metronome of my footsteps provided the soundtrack to my inner turmoil, their chorus crescendoing with each pounding heartbeat. The faint yellow slipping through the crack of the window shutters now cast an eerie glow- an aura of sorts. With a deep breath, I summoned the courage to set in motion a chain of events that would hopefully alter the course of my current existence. Obstinately ignoring the breeze turned wind now cutting into my cheeks, I took one step forward, another, and…

… one step forward, another, and I finally managed to cut through the grass. Grass? Why I was amidst it, I knew not. My hands were battered, the sawgrass sticking to my palms- It hurt, “I” hurt- everywhere. As if shrouded, the forest was filled with deadwoods. Falling apart as I roughed my way through them, fighting all the way. Against the woods, and against the ringing pain in my head- I was running on instinct. For an ephemeral moment, there seemed something ethereal about my surroundings- A penumbra of the halcyon and unadorned primordial, it beckoned to me or should I say, beguiled me. I took one step ahead, and another, my feet drowning beneath the shifting terra firma. Terra palustris? My legs now quickly sinking as I struggled against earth herself. I felt played, toyed with, mocked. Firmly planted to the earth now, the wind whistled in my ears as if it were a sick cacophony of laughter. Harshly cutting against my battered face, I winced, my hair- the only of my being to stand in its defiance,, barely pushed out of place-merely rustling…

…rustling louder, the leaves cushioned my fall as I tripped. It was oddly circular if I had to make a guess. Humanoid and larger than a rock in the marshes should be- but then again, this was no place for Sophism to be. A justification that might as well have been a sophism in itself. “Breathe Soph”, I muttered heaving myself onto my feet- an action that left me scarred, my palms assaulted by the sawgrass. Each step forward now felt increasingly impossible, I suppose “I” was the only thing that could take me ahead. A sophism playing on my mind, I shouldn’t have thought so hard perhaps, for I fell again. Just this time not over something in the dark but into the dark itself…

… the dark itself receding, the moonlight weaved in through the trees. Speckled yarns- the loose dust flitting in Brownian motion against a backdrop of yellow. Yellow? There was a manor ahead. It was in the middle of the night and I finally made up my mind, I would get to the manor, I would find help, I would be alright. Right? A question silenced by a clear, rational and almost certain argument I told myself. I suppose I was afraid it might live up to my name- a Sophism…

… a sophism- an artful tapestry of distortion, a deceptive dance of eloquence and cunning, a puppets play laced with truth and deceit intertwined.  A premise built on the fallacious, it rests upon pillars of deliberacy.   A uni-focused goal, a rectilinear timeline, an attainable destination- a sophism. A sophism of me as a narrator, doomed to a mobius strip of an existence, sophism I am.

Ensnared in illusions, veiled and profound,
Perception twists, entangled in a ruse,
A dance of sophism, with each step to confuse.
Mirrors reflect, distorting all that's seen,
A fragmented reality, deceptive and serene,
I glimpse myself, yet stranger I become,
An enigma in shrouds, a paradox unsung.
Are you the dream, or the dreamer entwined?
In this kaleidoscope of mind, entangled and blind,
For within the depths of this mysterious flow,
I'm both the deception and the truth I long to know.

In this narrative piece, I have attempted to contrast the inner conflict one faces during fear. The characters and the setting are only an extended metaphor for the internal workings of the mind itself. Beginning with the character named Sophism, I attempted to clarify the unreliability of the narrator and the narrative in itself. A sophism is a false argument that is presented in such a way that it is perceived to be true.

The four paragraphs of the narrative are all disjointed. Each alternate paragraph referring to the same version of the character it places two versions of the same individual in coincident timeframes. Despite this, their only seeming interaction remains limited to when one trips over the other and dismisses it all off with a Sophism thereby classifying the other version herself as unreal. This was to reflect the very human tendency to trip over our several arguments when afraid in an attempt to come to a conclusion- finally classifying all the rest as mere sophisms.

The dark eeriness of the setting was a choice made clearly to define the claustrophobic and stark nature of raw fear. The deadwoods signifying the lack of any source of joy and the marshes a literal representation of the feeling of having the ground crumble beneath your feet.  

The manor however was a creation inserted only to clarify the repetitive nature of the narrative and function as sort of a goal for the character to vie for. The two versions of the character are representative of the two approaches people take when afraid- one stoic and defiant silently questioning all that they see. Despite this, they unknowingly fall prey to the sophisms of their mind in the end. On the other hand, the other version is a mirror to all those who question, second guess themselves and inevitably fail to notice the smaller details that could perhaps have directed their course of action towards a better outcome.