Run Away

Go. You need to run. You need to run away now. You can’t let It catch you. It will hurt you. It will kill you. It will stop at nothing until It catches you. Please go! Get as far away from here as you can! Run away!

I don't belong here. Black of night, maybe very early morning. It’s impossible to determine when exactly. The forest. Stretching conifers and pines far are seen in every direction, a verdant expanse of evergreens, most so tall they threaten to break out into space. Wind lightly pushes their branches up and down, left and right. Leaves periodically detach from their stalks, gently bobbing through the air, catching on the wind’s edges in their descent, and eventually land on the forest floor. Somewhere on Earth. Somewhere on land. It’s impossible to tell where exactly. Everything begins here.

It is serene now. A full moon embosses the clear and inky black sky overhead, packed alongside tufts of gleaming stars. The animals that wander this place by day have withdrawn to their burrows and nests. Most are asleep, or at least idle. They’ve been having busy, tiring days recently. It’s hibernation season soon, and they’ve spent most of their time preparing. Stockpiling food and insulating their shelters and carbo-loading. The nocturnal animals crouch in concealed spots, silently waiting for game to scurry across the forest floor.

Until a sound emerges from the stillness, so gradually it is as though the sound has always been a part of the forest. Although seemingly benign, it is especially out of place in this setting. It’s a steady muted thudding, not so much a sound as a vibration. The mind fills in the pulsation with noise. The thudding is unusual because it doesn’t match the sound of an animal from this forest, like a bear or a wolf. It’s lighter, and the time between thuds is more spaced out. Thud…thud. Thud…thud. Thud…thud.

A barred owl, brown-and-whIte-feathered and wide-eyed, perches on a high-up branch. She listens carefully as the noise slowly gains in volume. She expects prey to hunt, or a predator to evade. Instead, she sees a peculiar thing on the far-below ground- a person. A boy. A boy of indeterminable age, some point of adolescence before teenage. A running boy. A boy is running through the forest. He is swift and agile, leaping over fallen trees and bramble bushes and slick patches of moss with great dexterity. Leaf litter crunches under his feet. He follows the deer’s paths through the forest, where the foliage is stomped down and sparse, animal footprints lightly imprinted into the dirt. Farther and farther through the forest the boy goes. Farther and farther into uncharted unknown territory the boy goes.

It’s freezing; the eve of winter. Thin sheets of ice coat parts of the ground, flecked white. He’s careful to sidestep them. He can’t risk slipping and falling. He can’t risk being slowed. He can’t risk being caught up with.

His face is one of terror and panic. His eyes are bulbous and wild. He periodically looks behind himself as he runs. He is running from something. And by the look of it, something bad. His hands are torn open in long gashes. Blood trickles from them in diminutive drops down his arms. He rubs his hands on his clothes as he runs. He’s clad in thin clothing- a zipped-up jacket over a plain black T-shirt, and sweatpants stretching over tennis shoes encasing tube socks. He isn’t dressed nearly warm enough for the frigid temperature.

The boy does not recognize where he is. He is in a bad place. This place is foreboding, impenetrable, threatening. Terrifying. The trees seem to close in on him, their bowers largely concealing him. The moon is absent from sight beyond the canopies. If not for the few rays of moonlight that make it through the layers of leaves, he would be in complete darkness. Where is the boy running? He doesn’t know. He is running away. Far away. Somewhere he can’t be found. Somewhere he’ll be safe. Away.

Seemingly all at once, the forest dissolves into a small pocket of swampland. He can tell at first by the feeling of viscous mud lapping underneath him, soaking into his shoes, then by the sounds- frogs croaking, fireflies droning, cascading water; a stark contrast to the near-total silence he’d found in the forest. The shrubs are replaced with cattails, the ferns with overgrown leafy vines, the dead leaves with salt film.

How far has he gone? How many feet, yards, miles has he traversed? He doesn’t know. He doesn’t care. He only cares about pushing himself forward. He only cares about getting away. Still, he wants to stop. He wants to stop running. He wants to rest. His legs have grown heavy, especially as he treks through pliable ground, where his shoes get halfway sucked into the mud with each footfall. The boy doesn’t know what to do. He can’t keep running in perpetuity. He will be found if he does not find a place to hide. He is not fast enough to outrun what is chasing him.

In the distance, he notices a copse of mangroves. They lie a few dozen feet from an enormous river. They’re packed tight together, their roots twisting out from the mud like gnarled skeletal fingers. As if a colossus had drowned in the bog many years before, and its outreached fingers, the only part of it exposed, turned into tree roots.

There! Look at how his face lights up, look at the glimmer that appears in his eyes. He has an idea. He has discernible hope. As he reaches the mangroves, the boy dives into the muck. He grabs onto the roots and pulls himself forward. He’s quickly and thoroughly sheathed in muck, the mud worming into his ears and nose and mouth. He squeezes between two roots, narrowly pressing into the slot within.

Saltwater trickles onto the top of his head as he huddles in the tight space. He can’t see anything; a thick sheen of silt covers his face. He gropes around in the darkness until he can sit up, until he can’t back up any further. He wipes some of the silt from his face, providing him with limited visibility of the roots that encircle him and the swampland beyond.

His breathing is irregular and ragged, and he covers his mouth to keep himself silent. His exhalations escape from between his fingers, pale whIte and wispy like cigarette smoke. It also sounds as though he’s muttering something under his breath, too quietly for anything other than himself to hear. Help me help me help me help me. Like some organic rhythmic beating. Help me help me help me help me.

But he should be safe here. He shouldn’t be found here. All that he can do is wait.

The boy suddenly begins to shiver deeply. Now stationary and completely dampened, his mind not focused on running, the boy truly notices how cold he is. The mud is turning solid and icy against his flesh. He feels the chill reach down to his bones. It becomes harder to keep his eyes open and his thoughts straight. He wants to rest, to finally shut his increasingly weighty eyelids, but knows he may never wake up again if he does. He’ll freeze to death, transforming into a human icicle come morning. But where else can he go? What else can he do?

The boy is lost in thought and worry when, in the distance, ten feet or ten miles away from where he cowers, a crash thunders. A violent, forceful bang. The ground rumbles lightly. The animals go silent, and the rumbling reverberates through the mangrove’s roots. Then another, a little louder. And another. Another. Another.

Here and now, when the swampland is wholly quiet save the dull babbling of the river, when the mud he kneels in ripples against his legs, when his heart pounds faster and faster against his ribcage, when all the hope he previously held melts away, the boy begins to cry. Help me help me help me help me.

-

Terror lashes at the boy. Again and again and again like a whip. His breathing comes out of his chest in violent bursts.

Another boom, louder.

The boy muffles his tears, clumsily rubbing at his dampened eyelids with his numbed fingers. Snap out of it. Snap out of it! Keep your dignity! It’s the least he can do. The least anyone can do.

Another boom, louder.

He closes his eyes and curls into a fetal position. He shoves his head between his knees and tucks his feet as far back as he can. He waits.

Another boom, louder.

He waits for discovery. It’s bound to come any second. He doesn’t look. He can’t look. He can’t look at It. He can’t face It. He won’t.

Another boom, louder. So loud it seems to come from directly in front of him.

He waits for death.

Silence. Cruel, unwavering, vicious silence. Almost as cruel as the noise that preceded it.

Time passes. Or maybe it doesn’t. It’s impossible to tell. What feels like hours may be seconds, what feels like seconds may be hours. The boy doesn’t move through all of this. That’s all he can do.

Cold, miserable, hostile silence.

Finally, a boom breaks the silence. But it’s quieter.

Quieter? Quieter. Though still intolerably loud, it’s quieter.

Another boom, quieter.

Is It leaving?

Another boom, quieter.

It is leaving.

The booms steadily lower in volume like this until they entirely fade from earshot. The swampland’s sounds take their place again, as if nothing had taken place at all. The boy’s heart slows. His breathing softens, slowing to a far more standard rate. Is It gone? He’s tempted to force himself out of the roots when an intrusive thought suddenly plagues him.

What if It’s faking? What if It only pretended to leave when It’s still right in front of him? What if It’s waiting for him to open his eyes and look at It, to see the boy’s joy change to confusion change to blind terror? What if It’s still right there?

No, no, that’s ridiculous. It wouldn’t do that. It wouldn’t wait to kill him. It wouldn’t delay the act. If It wants to see him scared, It wouldn’t wait.

But what if It is waiting?

But what if It isn’t?

What if It wants to scare him?

Why would It do that?

Why not?

Why?

Why not?

Why?

This continual volley of backs and forths keeps the boy frozen in apprehension and worry. The possibility that It could still be standing there in front of him stops the boy from doing anything but continuing to cower in place.

Until. Until the need for knowledge overcomes the dread he feels. The boy’s need to posItively know what awaits him beyond the mangrove roots overwhelms the trepidation of what he may find.

With considerable effort, as though weights had been placed on top of him, the boy lifts his head and forces himself to open his eyes. He opens his left eye first, his right eye following a few seconds later. With considerable effort, he focuses his line of sight on the spaces between the roots that look out to the swampland.

There’s nothing there. The swamp exists past the roots as it had when he’d entered this space. It’s gone. Really, truly gone. The boy lets out a sigh of relief. For now, he’s safe. For this brief moment, he’s safe.

-

The boy pushes back out of the roots and into the night air. He stands up and takes in a breath of air that rattles through his lungs. He moves forward uncertainly, stretching out his legs as he does so.

The mud frozen to his skin cracks off in places. Feeling slowly returns to his extremities as he trudges past the mangrove trees and towards the river.

A roiling and churning stream, frothy foam rimming parts of the water. It stretches in both directions beyond eye view. The river is about thirty feet long at its widest point and no more than a few feet deep. It’s difficult for him to precisely gauge the river’s depth, as the water has taken on a blackish hue from the night. Rocks protrude just above the flow like gems, slick and shiny with moisture. Beyond the river, the swampland pivots back into relatively familiar forest.

The boy falls to the ground in one jerky motion, like a puppet with its strings suddenly cut, and puts his lips to the water. He takes quick, greedy gulps, the water ice-cold as it slips down his throat. With each gulp he takes, he only seems to get thirstier. He drinks and drinks, so quickly that a glut of water floods his trachea, and he vomits. His vomit, a mixture of water and stomach acid, pools on the river edge.

He coughs sharply, expelling a final dribble of water that trickles down his chin. The sight of him! A shivering, filthy, retching boy, isolated in an endless forest. As though he’s an animal. As though he’s as savage and barbaric as the beasts that inhabit these woods. As though he’s always existed here.

The boy puts his hands to his chin, wiping away the dribble of water. He stares at his hands as he brings them back down, at the thin gashes that lattice across his palms, having closed over with fragile scarring.

His hands begin to shake.

It did this to him.

It did this.

It did this.

Hesitating for a moment, he plunges his hands into the river. The current rips away the mud, and he keeps them submerged until it washes away. He picks up a handful of water and splashes it on his face. He rubs his hands across his forehead and cheeks and neck, fetching back handfuls of mud. It takes a few minutes for the boy to entirely remove the dirt from his face. His exposed skin is bright pink and stings slightly.

The cold water rejuvenates him. He feels alive. He is alive. He crawled out of the belly of the beast. He came within feet of death and survived. The swamp is a battleground that he prevailed in.

But he can’t stay in the swamp. He needs warmth- fire. To dry his body and his clothes. To survive the night. It’s too wet here. The forest is teeming with dry materials to make fire.

The boy walks parallel to the river until he finds a particularly narrow spot, maybe ten feet in length. A pathway of spaced-apart rocks leads to the other side. He doesn’t think It crossed the river. He didn’t hear It travel through water- he didn’t hear a forceful displacement of liquid from his hiding spot, an artificial disruption of the river’s natural racket. It must have returned to the stretch of forest behind him. The stretch of forest beyond the river is the most promising place for him to put significant ground between himself and It.

He sets a foot against a nearby rock jutting from the river, carefully balancing himself on the rock’s slippery surface. Once his foot is secure, the boy throws his upper body forward, catching the rock and holding tightly. He awkwardly pulls and clambers the rest of his body weight onto the rock until he’s on all fours. Inches below him, the river howls; one mismanaged shifting of his weight would fling him into the water and swallow him alive, pulling him down and away in its frigid current, violently transporting him from the prospect of safety.

From that rock, he reaches out towards the next. He hopscotches from rock to rock, flinging himself forward time and time again. He’s continually sprayed with mist in his passage, irritating his eyes and making it difficult for the boy to keep them open. The route is slow and grueling. His arms and legs pump and burn with exertion and effort.

Finally, he finds himself perched on the closest rock to the shoreline. Feet away is freedom. He rises to his feet, carefully balancing his weight on the small rock. And he jumps.

He lands on his side. Stringing pinpricks explode from his shoulder. He groans in discomfort, then sits up. He's on the shore. Inches away from the water. He made it. He leaps up and runs into the forest, leaving to trace of his passage on the way.