Half conscious, I don’t know how to wake up. My body won’t move, but I can still feel the wet leaves beneath me. Not knowing where I am, I try to listen. It sounds pretty, like a playlist of the rainforest with different animals, singing a harmonious song. However, behind the playlist, I can hear a woman and a man murmuring about a girl. It was said that if they don’t find her, they won’t see tomorrow.
My heart beats as if it knows something I don’t. I can hear their voices grow a little louder. “They might be able to help me,” my mind convinces me. My soul shouts “Get up and run.” I panicked without moving a muscle, suddenly I couldn’t breathe. A drop of water silenced my body, one drop, two drops, three. I got up and gasped for air. Water running down from my face; was it the water God woke me up with or from my eyes, I still couldn’t tell you.
My eyes burned from the high sun as if I had just fled from prison through the underground tunnels. My eyes squinted; I looked around. The harmonious song grew silent as reality settled in. I was deep in the forest and I couldn’t remember a thing.
The smell of iron overtook the sweet fragrance of the forest. I tried to get up to investigate the smell and realized my right arm had a gash on it and was dripping with blood. I bit on a stick and tried to tie my arm with my orange jacket sleeve. The pain brought me to a flashback. I was in a dimly lit cabin that smelled like dollar store perfume, Marlboros cigarettes, and boxed wine. It seemed like I broke free from my lacerations and had a steak knife hidden behind my back. My flashback cut to me fighting with an English woman and she slashed my arm. I then shoved her, and she hit her head on the ash-covered coffee table as I ran out the front door.
Suddenly, I was brought back by a shiver swiftly running down my back by an English accent in the far distance. I grab a stick to make my now vermilion jacket into a tourniquet. I don’t know why I’m out here and I don’t know who I’m running from, but I do know I can’t be found, and I can’t trust anyone. I may die out here, but I promised myself I wouldn’t be the only one.
