When I began to run, I did it without realizing. I haave to be calm, I thought as my sneakered feet sped past the point of jogging. I wiped the tears that continuously streaming down my eyes. I heard a familiar loud sound that I never get use to... a sound of gunfire. I stopped my tracks and closed my eyes, trying to feel a warm thing to pierce through my skin, but there was nothing. I was not shot. I looked back to where I came from... "Oh my God, Michael." I whispered through the wind as more tears well up my eyes. Is he okay? Did he just shot that monster? What if he is the one that is shot? There was a battle in my mind whether to go back there and find out if he was all right or continue running and find some help.
"..If there is any chance that you could escape, do it." Michael's voice rang through my head as I made my way further into the woods. The same pain on my shoulder continued with its torturing pain as I forced myself to continue moving. A few minutes later, I was already exhausted. I saw the sky, now sagging with rainclouds, and I saw roughly six trillion trees, but saw no sign of human life-not even smoke from a single campfire.
Suddenly, there seemed to be some sort bugs around me. They were forming their cloud, hundreds of tiny black spots dancing around my eyes, only this time the spots were getting bigger and seemed to be bursting open like the blooms of black roses. I had just time enough to think, I was fainting, this was fainting, and then I went down on my back in the bushes, as I saw the bugs hang in a shimmering cloud above my small pallid face. After a moment or two, the first mosquitoes alit on my eyelids and began to feed as my eyes rolled up to whites and fainted.
****
I woke up into something cold splashed onto the bridge of my nose and I opened my eyes. Another cold drop of water splashed down dead center on my forehead. Bright light ran across the sky, making me wince and squint. This was followed by a second crash of thunder that startled me into a sideways roll. I pulled instinctively into a fetal position, uttering a croaky little scream as I did so.
Then the skies opened.
I sat up, gasping like someone who had been tossed rudely into a cold lake (and that was what it felt like) and staggered to my feet. Thunder boomed again and lightning opened a purple sewn in the air. As I stood with rain dripping on the tip of my nose and my hair tying lank against my cheeks, I saw a tall, half-dead tree ahead suddenly explode and fall in two flaming pieces. A moment later the rain was sheeting down so thickly that the valley was only a sketched ghost wrapped in gray gauze.
I backed up, went into the cover of the woods again and sat on a fallen tree. My head was still woozy and my eyelids were all swollen and itchy. The surrounding woods caught some of the rain but not all of it; the downpour was too fierce. I saw the ever-present cloud of bugs dancing in front of my eyes and I waved at them with my strengthless hand. Nothing makes them go away and they are always hungry, they fed on my eyelids when I was passed out and they'll feed on my dead body sooner or later. I thought to myself as tears began to well in my eyes again, thinking about Harry and this fucked up situation. I knew I have to be strong because he was there, waiting for help. Soft sobs escaped my lips as I wept and continued waving at the bugs, cringing each time the thunder roared overhead.
With no watch and no sun, there was no time. All I know is that I sat here, a small figure on a fallen tree, while the thunder began to fade eastward, sounding like a vanquished but still truculent bully. Rain dripped down on me as mosquitoes hummed. I wondered how many more awful things were waiting and I am glad I didn't know, couldn't see. Maybe none, just a bright morning ahead after the storm and rescue awaited.
Suddenly, I heard a sound of twigs snapping. My head snapped up, looking for any signs of movement around me. No, I will never let myself caught by those monsters again. Gathering all my remaining strength, I got up and started running again. Well, more of sprinting since I could not make myself run again simply because I was so exhausted, weak and hungry. Damn I was so fucking hungry I had never felt like this before. This feeling came to me just once after three days of biscuits and water but I swear this was too intense I never thought it was possible.
The breeze on my face as I ran, tearing through a thick set of trees with a crackling sound that seemed very distant was cool and strangely exhilarating. Yet the thought of being alone in the woods and had no idea where to go was very disturbing and tiring. Where am I going? I don't even know where I am. Am I somewhere near the lake? Should I continue moving or wait until the sun lights my way and somehow might help me find my way. But the question is: will I make it? Will I survive?
I continued jogging through the woods, a huge bird or a bat appeared flying towards me, so low I thought it might hit my head. I ducked - barely - too late to notice a branch on my way, a jutting branch that seemed to thrust itself at one of my eyes. It scraped the side of my face instead, drawing a thin scrawl of blood on my left cheek.
"Shit!" is all I could manage to say right now. What else could happen? If I was not dying by infection on this damn gunshot wound, I might die with accidents here or by extreme tiredness and hunger. I looked back and the bird or bat or whatever it is, flied up again. I held my tears back as I slumped on the muddy ground, I wanted to run fast and further, maybe somebody was already looking for us there. Maybe the boys were there, screaming out our names with their flashlights on. But as the shadows in the woods thickened and joined hands, there was only the sound of the rain and the sound of my own breathing. My mental pictures of Jay, Richard, Arun & Jimmy weakened, little by little.
I couldn't stay here all night, no one could expect me to stay here all night.
I felt panic trying to grab me again-it was speeding up my heartbeat, drying out my mouth, making my eyes throb in their sockets. I was lost in the woods, hemmed in by trees for which I had no name, alone in a place where my town-girl vocabulary had little use, and I was consequently left with just a narrow range of recognition and reaction, all of it primitive.
From a famous singer to a cave girl in one easy step...