I’m running.
I haven’t heard any screams for at least a minute by now. I haven’t heard anything besides my own panicked breathing and my boots stomping through dried leaves and sticks.
I hear a loud crack as my foot sinks into the darkness of the forest floor, like when your foot falls through the empty space of where you thought the last stair was. I hope to God that noise was a large branch but only the forest knows how the nights been. Excruciating pain shoots through my shin and calf like lightning as I put weight on it. That was no branch. I have to stop. I’m alone now. I left her there. I had to.
In a panic, I stumble over the roots and leaves trying to hold myself up by hanging onto a tree… My chest heaves as my heart threatens to burst at any moment. My throat stings from hyperventilating. My jaw is clenched and my whole body is shaking like a leaf. I can’t stop grinding my teeth from the pain. My eyes burn from the sweat and are sealed tight from the strain of just trying to slow my breathing. I’m making too much noise. I can’t think about my leg right now. It’s so dark, I can barely see the mud all over my dirty jeans. I’m too scared of running my hand down my leg and finding sharp bone protruding from the skin.
I bury my face into the dry, unforgiving bark of the tree.
“FUUCK!” I cry to myself.
“What do I do?! What do I do?! What do I do?! What do I do?!” as the terror finally sets in.
Tears force their way down my face. Adrenaline is the only thing keeping me conscious. I’m in shock and I know it. Trembling. The searing pain in my throat only intensifies with every breath, as I panic-cry into this tree. The bark scraping its way through my forehead.
“EZRAAAAAAA! HELP ME!!! EZRAAAHHHHUHHHH! AHHHHHHHH!!!”
The sound jolts me back to life.
“That’s not her! It can’t be her. No… There’s no way… “I think. Confused.
…
“…I fucking left her there. Oh, fuck fuck fuck…” I cry to myself.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry… FUCK! Oh God… oh God please! I’m sorry…” I continue rambling to myself as tears fill my eyes again.
Trying to stand up straighter, my leg brushes the tree and I feel the lightning again. It feels like the only thing keeping my leg together are my pants. I flex my toes and ankle. Movement. Pain.
“EZRAAAA!!! HELP ME!!!” the gargled voice speaks again from somewhere behind me.
The air is still.
It’s using her voice. A cruel reminder and a clever deception to guilt any unsuspecting prey.
I can feel my heart racing, sending pulses through me. I can hear my heart beating in my ear like a drum.
BUH-BUM. BUH-BUM. BUH-BUM.
“EZRAAA!!!” the voice booms through the woods even closer than just a second ago.
The closer the voice gets, the more you hear how wrong it is. The white noise of a TV with no signal. The sound of a million voices screeching in pain. Steak knives being forced across a glass plate. A spoon banging against your teeth when you eat too fast. Nails dragging along a chalkboard.
…and Amaya. My Amaya. Her voice. Distorted and drowned out by the others as it fails to claw its way to the surface.
I bang my head against the tree as the final memories of my wife flash through my mind. The sound of her garbled last cries for help as that thing ripped into her with nails and teeth sharper then blades. Grabbing her abdomen in one long boney hand. Gripping her in its clutches and rag dolling her body in its jaws like a shark in a frenzy. Tearing at her blood drenched clothes like wet pieces of paper as it pulled and broke her into pieces. Towering over her crimson lifeless corpse. It’s over in an instant. Staring at the massacre of my wife. Staring at this thing as it stands, hunched over the bits and pieces of her. Dark grey skin stretched over mangled bone. Long sharp vertebrae poking through its back to make a nightmare strip of railroad spikes. Long arms that stretch toward the ground and drag through the dirt. Folds of different colored skin and tufts of hair and fur cover most of the exposed chunks of meat and ribcage.
The sound of crunching bones and wet flesh being torn to shreds like a pack of starving wolves ravaging the carcass of their latest kill.
My Amaya. The haunting image of her shattered remains. The top half of her body cast aside, arm and face pointed in my direction. Blood slithering out of her nose and mouth.
Her beautiful eyes gazing at me… her lifeless eyes looking through me.
I can’t gather my senses. My hand reaches to the back of my head where my fingers clumsily prod at a gash bloody hair. My back dragging up against tree that had become my front row view of the nightmare before me. The snap of a twig as I get to my feet.
I glance up. The creature rips it head around, looking at me over its shoulder with two different colored eyes. Drooping facial skin that’s barely holding together. What’s left of Amaya’s thigh dangling from its insidiously fanged maw. I quiver in fear as it looms over the remains of the woman I loved, with eyes locked on me. We stare at each other for what feels like eternity. Terror gripping me.
It turns back to finish the meal. I now see that even hunched over, squatting with misshapen legs, it is a behemoth of a creature.
My fear is renewed as the crunching sounds like bone and slopping sounds of meat being ripped apart fill the air. I make minor movements, backing away from this horrific scene as if my presence is still undiscovered. I turn away and begin to run. I’m running faster than ever before.
“EZRAAAAAAA!!!” the voice wails, snapping me back to the present.
My eyes flash open. I push off the tree in my last attempt to make it out of this hell.
The adrenaline runs like a river of ice through my body and every hair on my body stands tall. Dry tears make clear streaks of skin through the valley of dirt that is my face. My sad one-legged hops turn to skips as pain is the least of my concerns. Lightning strikes with every skip, but my leg is still in one piece. Unsure of how much weight it can bear before it snaps, I know I have to risk it. Methodical skipping turns to all out sprinting as my fight or flight takes control.
I can hear something behind me as I continue blindly through the darkness. With every stride, I can feel the fracture in my shin threatening to give way. Like a hammer striking an anvil. The sounds of my boots striking the ground begins to fade as the thuds of that thing closes the distance.
“EZRAAAA!!!” it cries.
What at first sounded like a giant stomping after me, became the sound of cracking branches and splintering wood above me. The sound of countless sticks and twigs cracking like fireworks all around me. Like Chinese New Year in my back yard.
A light in the darkness. Barely a glimmer. Flickering faintly.
It’s the reservation. If I can just make it there… maybe. Just maybe.
“EZRAAAA!!! HELP MEEE!!! AHHHHHHHH!” the screams turn into thunderous roars on the back of my neck.
I’m running.