The Scenario

Her throat itched. She asked it to emerge. It buckled, both of them wondering if it was even alive. 

She asked, near begged it: exist. And quickly. 

A burn ran down the front of her. Was that her way of knowing she could do it? 

Her eyes drifted past the lecture building, up the red orange leaves dancing along the mountain face. She knew about the trail leading through those thick trees. There was a cue up that hill, hovering in the forest, waiting to be met. She would be guided to it. They all would. They would walk into the dark, headlights bobbing, until they were stopped. The instructors would dim their lights red to face them. Silence would come, light would disappear. Rain may fall, if the forecast was to be believed. 

And then they would be left alone to walk forward. That is when she would need it. As she guided the group into the dark, in her stomach it would have to build and build, quickly racing up her body, confident and pounding at her skin, rushing to the base of her throat, lava through her teeth, bursting past her lips with a power she never before allotted to anything that came from deep within her. 

She would need it to be there, ready for that final leap. 

The thought electrified her. She fantasized the sound, how her roar would come to life, what pitch, what wave it would ride from height to death. She envisioned the split second in which her scream would completely hold them hostage. The shock, the confusion. The sound of it pinging off the pines, rising through the leaves and drizzle. Shooting up into the sky like explosive smoke. In that moment the entire forest would be that sound. It would raise the heads of both predators and prey. What she created would spread rapidly, quicken heart beats, and then die out.

No one would believe it was anything other than real. Not her, not the quietest girl in the class, in the world, now crying out louder than all of them could muster combined. Not her, she wouldn’t pretend, she wouldn’t joke. No one would expect it. No one would see it. She was their assigned leader for the night. She was not the one meant to fall. 

Her eyes came back to her car. She forced a bite of cereal, the spoon the same one as yesterday, caked in sugary fluff. The grey sky dwindled around her. The fall colors drowned in coming black. With every passing second her nerves grew. She had no idea how to get this out. How to be ready. If she was even capable of it to begin with. 

Make sure you scream, loud. The instructors stressed how the shock of the moment was meant to test the others. To see how well their new skills held up in the face in of surprise, in ‘reality.’ Scream, because it hurts. 

She pressed down on her pant leg, trying to get a look at it without ruining the makeup. The instructor had done such a good job, she’d hate to ruin the red purple colors before it was time. 

“I’ve done this many, many times,” he had smiled as she took in the bloody bruised painting he had created on her leg. As she stood she couldn’t help but believe the injury, hobbling away with the small stick taped to her skin, meant to simulate a bone sticking out.

Why had she been chosen, out of everyone? Was it really just because she was so quiet and unassuming? She wished she was one of the others, clueless and without the weight of the whole scenario on their shoulders. 

She crossed her arms, laid lower in the seat. The classroom lights were still on, a few of her classmates stirring excitedly. They had their version of what was to come, and she had hers. She was the only one who knew the truth of who was going to play the victim. 

She tried to focus by visualizing herself reaching far down through her stomach and pulling out something red and dark and spurting. There was no place to practice, to test what her voice could do. Trying even a little would give her away. There would only be one chance, one shot. She worried that trying to draw it out now may only scare it into burrowing deeper. She worried about what may happen when it was freed. Could it escape and be gone forever, lost in these woods so far from her home? Would her body start to build its replacement, another 29 years she’d have to wait before something like it returned to her? 

What will it feel like? She had never screamed in quite this way before. Had never screamed in really any way before. This sort of task was foreign to her, to pretend and deceive and shock people. The scenario was mere hours away but it felt like something that would surely take her take days, even weeks to even draw forward from such lack of practice. 

She left her car and started meandering at the edge of the woods. Paranoid someone may see her, question her role in the scenario, sense that she knew something they didn’t. She was instructed to find a small stick, easily breakable, and snap it at the moment just before the scream. Her leg breaking, her bone jutting out. Mock fall, snap, scream. 

The stick was harder to find than she imagined. When she at last placed a suitable branch into her jacket pocket, she looked up from her search to realize the world was much darker and all her classmates were back in the classroom, chatting in small throngs, gear loaded on their backs. 

She rushed to the classroom and slowed herself as she came into sight. She met with her group, talked calmly and with authority issued a plan for the hike and the scenario. There will be multiple victims, she assured them, and they will be in the forest waiting for us at a certain spot. 

The lie digested easily. The moment from classroom to briefing spot to uphill hike was one slow continuous inhale. People talked on the way up but she couldn’t bring herself to engage. She could only think of the scream and pray that it was boiling inside her, creating the sick deep bellied ache she endured up the mountain. 

Before she knew it, before time seemed to have even passed or elevation even gained, the lights over the instructors heads faded. Their steps slowed, and for a moment everyone fell to anticipating silence. The instructors offered a simple ‘good luck’ before turning their lights back on. The subtle nod of showtime was given as they stepped past her, back down the path to rate her scream from a distance. The class looked back at her, eleven strings of bright white aiming at her neck to avoid burning her eyes. 

“So what now?”

Her heart dropped. She should have done it already. The instructors were gone. That nod was the signal to go, really go. Fuck, she blew it already. Her moment passed, and now she can’t possibly do it with them all looking expectantly at her. Her face flushed, thankfully obscured in the dark. She imagined the instructors giving each other confused looks. Time was slipping away from her. She had to save this, somehow. 

She stepped forward. “They’re up more,” she announced with a shaky voice. “We have to walk further up the trail to find them.”

She took another step to assure them. 

“Really?” she heard from a few. “I thought they were coming to us.”

“Yeah isn’t that what they said? That we’d wait here for them?”

The chilling October wind brushed against the sweat on her neck. 

“No,” she insisted. “We’re not far up enough yet.”

Listen, she wanted to growl. I’m the leader, just listen. 

She never had much of a command presence. God why did they choose her for this?

“Then why did they stop us here?”

She turned around, afraid they’d catch the wildness in her eyes. What was there to do? She started walking away, craning her neck for the sight of the instructors. They would have to bail her out of this. 

But the group dutifully followed her, forcing her to stop. How could she beg for their assistance with the group watching?

The trail bent to the right, obscuring an angle of the downhill. She leapt for it, scanning desperately for their lights. All she found was blackness. 

“Oh!” she nodded her head, waved her arms, gave a thumbs up. Prayed it looked convincing. “Oh, okay! We’ll go back!”

She rushed back to the group before they had a chance to see the hill. 

“They’re waving us on,” she breathed. 

The class glanced at one another. “Oh?”

“Yup,” she said a pang too forcefully. “They waved at me to go back, to keep going. It’s further up.”

Her heart hasn’t learned this rhythm in all her life. A frantic, please-believe-me beat. 

“Okay,” they shrugged, and started in the opposite direction. 

The mountainous weight in her shoulders lessened. Everything was fine now. They were walking away from her, talking among themselves, letting her recede slightly to the unlit background. Rain landed unsteadily, lopsided, one drop landing at corner of her mouth. 

If that wasn’t a sign that now was the time, she didn’t know what was. 

She took a deep breath. The air felt good, cold. She could see it all lying out in the seconds before it started. Her falling, forgetting the stick in her pocket, forgetting to snap the twig and instead just scream. For how long, at what pitch, she couldn’t predict. The success of it, she couldn’t know. For a moment she endured the terrible image of screaming at the top of her lungs and no one hearing her, so that she would have to do it again and again but still they wouldn’t hear. She imagined there really were patients out there waiting for them, and this had all been in her head, no one had ever asked her to scream, who would ever ask that of her? The power of her doubt nearly launched her towards the forest floor. Her steps became short, unsteady, primed for an actual fall. 

To calm herself she pictured her classmates. How they would rush to her when she did indeed fall. How their faces would contort to shock and terror but then relax into knowing: this was all part of it. She’s okay, she’s just fooled us. They will know what to do, they’ve been taught all the steps over the past week and half. They know how to help her fall with minimal damage. How to test every inch of her body for pain and other symptoms. They know the questions to ask her, the notes and vitals to take. They know what to prioritize, how to treat life threatening injures first. They will clean and dress her wound, pull her leg so that the stick-bone may be set back within her. She will have to scream more for that, but it will feel better once its back in. Someone will be at her head talking her down from hyperventilation. Someone will be monitoring her for shock. Someone will be digging through their gear for clothing layers to support a splint. Someone may go so far as to make a shelter, start a fire. Every fifteen minutes two fingers will press against her pulse. She will be encouraged to drink water, to relax. She will be talked to, asked about, watched at all times until help in the form of their instructors arrived. They will use their clothes to keep her warm and dry. They will offer her a snack and tell her she’s doing a great job. They will smile and hold her hand through the pain.

She will be in good hands, so good that she will start to believe she really is injured, she really does need them to survive. She could see herself falling for it, especially in the aftermath, the adrenaline come down that clouds her logic and puts everyone in this intimate glow. She may feel and truly believe that something real slipped through the pretend. That in some way the bond expanded beyond what the scenario required it to be. That the care wasn’t scripted, but rather a simple given. Unearned, unpaid, merely hers by default. Performance will warrant performance, and the rescuers will convince the rescued that she is indeed alone and in a bad way, but that they are there to pad her, warm her, save her. 

 There will be chaos and then there will be the opposite of it. She will fall and they will stumble and forget things and rely on each other to treat her. They will come together and the splint will be built. Her needs will be met. They will succeed, and then the time will come when the rain grows heavier and the ruckus of the incident will give way to quiet and slowness. Anxiety and tension will recede, and they will sit against the tree trunks with an eerie, quiet pride. 

The thought of it all soothes her. She hadn’t expected that that was what she needed to feel just before her lips parted. But she wanted that moment she dreamed of, that feeling she knew was just around the corner of her roar. She wanted to be set against a tree with them, immobilized in their clothing, written in their notebooks, guided and looked after and reassured that everything was okay and help was coming. 

She wanted it bad enough to scream bloody murder for it. 

So she inhaled deeply, one last time, and opened her mouth.