Somewhere Else

By Cameron Lang

Faced with the dilemma of being lost in the bush he falls into a familiar routine of losing himself in his thoughts. The seemingly innocent distractions turn into a great cause for concern when he finds himself spending a night underneath the stars. Rather than jolting him into action, the scale of the task only sends him deeper into his own thoughts where every other kind of escape is waiting. Each day he remains there, the further away his mind takes him, only returning for glimpses of reality. That word is eventually stripped of its meaning as the world around him and the worlds within him start to blend.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Feb 17, 2016
• ISBN: 9781514444009

Cameron Lang

I grew up in Newcastle and still live just down the road from Blackbutt reserve, a place which was a great source of inspiration in the writing of ‘Somewhere Else’. Storytelling has always captivated me and sometimes it’s even an obsession. Although when I’m not writing or beating my head against a blank page, I work as a tutor which is full of fascinating glimpses into the workings of the mind. Since completing ‘Somewhere Else’ I have been writing a novel and hope to complete it in the near future.

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Copyright © 2016 by Cameron Lang.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 04/04/2016

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Cameron is a young writer from Newcastle. This, his first published work, has come after harbouring a deep passion for the written word ever since he first put crayon to paper. It’s a long time for about sixty pages, he’s a bit slow really. When Cameron isn’t writing he enjoys long walks on the beach, watching the night sky in the hope of a UFO sighting- No hold on… That’s not the right file. Oh where did I put his!? I can’t find it… Stuff it! You’ll just have to read the book. I think he’s a Pisces or something… I can’t remember the rest.

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A s though they were notes from the music being played all around, imperfect lines stood side by side underneath the canopy that stemmed from them. It was a busy composition. They all appeared to be positioned next to each other, even though they were varying distances from him, and there came a point on every side where they formed a mosaic wall of colours that were often faded but never dull, and diverse shapes that somehow fitted together perfectly. That wall had constantly been getting closer and further away and the great density that he could see became the most sparsely populated area of the bush when he came to stand in it. He stopped walking for a moment to watch the trees in their natural stillness but ended up seeing everything else. All that had gone unnoticed when he was in motion came to him in a great assault of his senses; the vast spread of vegetation on the ground, from the tufts of long grass to the fluffy greenery that seemed to be hiding something, the movement of small things that he could only catch a blur of, the slanted columns of sunshine that interrupted that scene with glares of light, and the individual trills and chirps of the symphony being played by so many creatures that he couldn’t see.

He slapped his arm and left the imprint of a mosquito on his skin. Having noticed one he realised that a group of them had swarmed around him, even though there was no high pitched buzz that often seemed to plague him at that time of year. He moved away from them and didn’t manage to stop again as he was pulled onwards by the blue that was scattered amongst the leaves; the sky encouraged by a fractured canopy. With it came odd patterns of light along the ground and on the sides of the trees that multiplied the already ample different shades of green and brown. But they were just visitors because with the movement of the branches and the movement of time they were ever changing. The light seemed to be sheltered by its grand hosts, it played at the feet of those old figures who watched over everything under their canopy, and although those faces appeared stern in their dedication to stillness, they had a warm presence. They even seemed to him like a family as for all the diversity amongst them- a bluebird’s call paused his thoughts- they all looked at home around each other.

Apart from the crunching beneath his feet, it struck him how completely void of human influence that place was. The absence of purpose or reason in the layout of the land was completely foreign to him. But the symphony of nature seemed to be rejoicing that fact by its joyful timbre, and even the leaves seemed to agree as a breeze sent them into a gentle roar of contentment. The wall moved out of the corner of his eye as the tops of a few trees wavered from their stillness. Even then however he couldn’t see them individually, they were parts of something bigger that held his attention so completely that nothing less significant could hope to. But there was one tree whose dark and twisted bark made it seem that it had been there before anything else was. It was an intriguing thought for him that the space before him could be empty but he couldn’t quite grasp a hold of it as the current, cluttered surrounding had imprinted itself on him.

Before he knew it was in front of him a spider’s web snapped off its supports and stuck to his clothes. He jumped back and did a little dance as he tried to brush off the spider that may or may not have been on him. His heart rate quickly returned to normal and his eyes turned to the ground where a clear path had been replaced by a mess of debris and the infant offspring of the flora that made the bush what it was. With hindsight it was obvious that he had strayed off track as the crackle of bush debris underfoot had been getting louder for what seemed to him like a decent chunk of the day. All that time he had been lost in the music all around him and the dappled sunlight ever changing on its whim, only to find himself lost again in a frustratingly literal sense. He turned around to go back the way he came but was confronted by the convergence of a few different directions that he could go. He twisted his lips and looked down each way he could have come from, but found discerning the right way an impossible task. Not because they all looked the same but because everything there seemed so unique that he couldn’t keep track of what his surroundings were a few moments ago.

He laughed, scaring some bird into flight and something unseen further into the undergrowth. He put his backpack on the ground and