Vanessa enters the Forest of Misery, having come out of the Dark tunnel relatively unscathed. She finds that the forest is the source of the fog that had been filtering down through the tunnel. The fog in the forest is dense enough to obscure the view of her legs from the knees down and around her everything is covered with a white haze. She can only make out the trees closest to her. It may just be her mind playing tricks on her, but she could swear that some of the further away trees were actually moving, and not just the ‘moving around in the wind’ kind of moving, but the actual ‘up and walking around’ kind.

Vanessa begins to make her way away from the tunnel entrance and deeper into the forest. She has absolutely no idea which way’s the quickest way out of the forest or if there is even a way out of the forest, but that’s not going to stop her from trying, after all, what good would giving up do? She has to be careful to watch where she’s going because yes, the trees actually are moving around. That has actually come as a surprise to Vanessa, but like with anything she doesn’t let it show on her face.

With each step that Vanessa takes she’s filled with a little more dread. Hopelessness begins to set in after the first few minutes, along with a firm belief that she’s not going to make it out of the forest alive. This is new, she thinks to herself, encountering something entirely normal and strange. It’d probably be called guilt or remorse by anyone else, but for someone who’s never felt a drop of remorse over any action it’s entirely new and strange and she doesn’t like it at all, but she can feel it creeping in bit by bit as she carries on through the forest.

She can feel a whole host of negative emotions pushing in on the edges of her mind, almost feel them trying to worm their way in and she doesn’t want them there, doesn’t want to feel them... doesn’t want to feel anything. She raises her hands to her head, her fingernails raking over her scalp as though she’d be able to pick the feelings out one by one and just throw them away. But it’s not the way it works and she pulls on her hair. The pain momentarily distracts her from all of the obscure emotions running through her, but that escape is all too brief and all of those feelings are once again back and clawing at Vanessa’s mind.

“Get out. Get out. Get out,” she mumbles to the emotions running through her as she sinks to the floor. She draws her knees up to her chest and begins to rock back and forth. She sits there for a while, who knows how long. It could be seconds, hours, even days; this place has forced all sense of time out of her head. The emotional part of Vanessa wants to sit there and cry and feel guilty and all of that other crap, but the little bit of her that remains rational, calm and in control won’t let herself just sit there. Get up you annoying little shit, she thinks at herself.

“I thought I told you to stop moving,” she says to the nearest tree, looking at it, “no, no, no, that’s not what trees do. There are rules, don’t talk with your mouth full, don’t say mean things and don't walk about when you don’t have legs.” She looks away, her eyes drawn to another tree somewhere further away. She cocks her head for a second as though listening to what the tree may be saying before she turns her head back to the first tree. “Hey, hey, hey! Get back here. Your friend is right, you can’t break the rules of nature. Hm, hm, hm, yes! But we can bend them.”

Vanessa stands up once again, looking around the forest as though listening to a conversation taking place between the trees. “Everything in my head is singing... singing to me... dreadful things.” Vanessa carries on her crazed rambling as she skips her way through the forest. The time she’s spent has broken her, broken into lots of little pieces, little shards too sharp to put back together. “Hello, daddy, Miss Nessa’s home.”