The Coordinates

They pulled off to the side of the highway and let me out. I tipped them and they sped off. I turned and faced the woods. The coordinates led somewhere that was unreachable by car, so I had to continue on foot. The more I stared into the woods, the more dark and foreboding it became. An odd familiar feeling began to creep up my legs and onto my back, and the louder my gut yelled to not go. What would be waiting for me? Treasure? A house? A dead body? Death? A car sped by, startling me out of my thoughts. I began walking into the deep, overgrown grass, towards the trees. Everything in me screamed to turn around and hitchhike back home and forget about the book and the coordinates but it was the little voice that convinced me to go.

The forest, once scary and manacing was beginning to appear more peaceful and majestic. But something was familiar, something I couldn’t quite place. The wind blew through the overhead branches and my hair flew astray, obstructing my vision. Birds sang in the trees and grasshoppers flew out of my path as I made my way through the weeds. Stickers covered my legs, making it nearly impossible to walk through the taller grasses without having grass hanging off me here and there. Vines and weeds got caught in my shoelaces. I used to stop and pick them out but they would shortly find there way back in so I just let them stay. 

To continue going straight, I kept in line with the powerlines which ran for what seemed like infinity. I had been pointlessly counting them as I followed the coordinates on my phone. I had passed exactly 27 utility poles in the three hours that I had been walking. I looked back at the coordinates and noticed that they haven’t really changed. In fact, I had apparently become farther from my destination. I stopped for a second and focused on my phone. How had I gone too far? I hadn’t even got a notification that I had passed my point. I must have miss looked or calculated my points wrong, I thought to myself. Maybe it’s because you haven’t eaten since you’ve left the house. I looked around and spotted a thick, fallen log not far from where I stood. 

I walked up to it and slid my backpack off, sitting it on the tree. I unzipped it and dug around for my small bags of trail mix. I soon found them, pulled them out and sat next to my bag. I opened them with a pop that echoed underneath the trees. Though it sounded cool, a thought came to me that deeply frightened me. They know where it is hidden now. The intrusive thought taunted. Run, little girl, run, little boy. 

“What the hell…?” I muttered out loud, thoroughly confused by the thought. I blocked it out deciding that adding paranoia to the mix of exhaustion, confusion, and fear of the approaching night would not help at all. An over-active imagination, that’s all it was. I tried to convince myself that I was completely safe and that I was the only idiot out in these stupid woods but I remained unconvinced. I may be the only idiot, sure. I thought. But that doesn’t mean that others don’t know these woods better than I. I shook my head as an attempt to stop these ignorant thoughts and poured more trail mix into my mouth. I distracted myself by looking at my phone. I was completely perplexed by the coordinates. When I was by the highway, it told me that I was only about a mile away from the destination. But it was now saying that I was nearly two miles away. I had to make a decision. Go back, follow the powerlines and get a ride home or continue on and hope the coordinates get straightened out and possibly get stuck out here past nightfall. I put my phone in my bag and continued eating. I grabbed a water bottle from my bag and gulped down half of it. I looked around waiting for my head to come up with a verdict. Then something caught my eye.

A long thin strip of bright orange material hung off of a low hanging branch. I had failed to notice it before or it had just now flown there. It was odd for a marker to be here because why would someone set up a bait way out here? But even more strange if it was a strip of material from a shirt or something of its sort. I decided to investigate so I rolled up my snacks and threw it in the bag, standing up and dusting myself off. I walked carefully over to it, careful not to get caught in the thick bramble that lay underneath the trees. The closer I got to it, the more I began to recognize the place around me. It hung right above a thick thorny bush that was much too messy to step in or try to. So, I had to reach for it while standing on my tippy toes just to become in reach to it. I somehow managed to get it in between my fingertips and tug on it. It came loose and began falling but I caught it with my other hand, and the second I caught it, I knew exactly what it was. That is when the world went black.

~

I woke up sat against a utility pole with my backpack on and my neck hurting. I tried to pull my head up but pain jerked it right back, hurting it more. I slowly tried to lift my head again. This time I got it about halfway up before it hurt. I lifted my arm so that I could feel for what was hurting me. I rubbed my neck but something besides my hand rubbed against it. I looked at my wrist to see what could possibly be hanging off of it. The cloth. The bright orange cloth was now tied tightly around my wrist. Tight enough to cause my fingertips to go numb. I continued rubbing my neck with my eyes closed, trying to get it to a state where it would successfully hold my head up. What happened? My brain chimed in. The last thing you remember is reaching out for that cursed cloth that was in the woods, hanging above that pesky thorn bush. I opened my eyes to a deep violet sky. You’ve seen the same sky. The rubbing clearly was not helping so I dropped my arm and let it hang at my side, my hand rubbing against the scratchy grass. I had to get up and figure out what happened but my neck thought otherwise. My neck felt as if I had a rope tied around it and had been jerked back the opposite way that it was supposed to bend. I pushed both my hands against the ground and with the help of my legs began to lift myself up, eyes still facing sky-high. I stood myself up and steadied myself against the pole. I began to turn my head back and forth, trying to get some blood flow back into it. The pain lightly dissipated but I could now lift my head up so the pain was tolerable. My eyes darted back and forth looking for signs of where I could be. Something stuck out and it all hit me. It felt as if my eyes sunk in and my head spun. My brain screamed at me. You’ve been here before, and you know it! 

I turned around and grabbed the pole with both hands, basically hugging it, and ignoring the pain ringing throughout my neck. I had been here before. But it wasn’t looking for those coordinates. It was me making the coordinates. Thoughts and reality began to fly through my head like bullets.

I had come here long, long ago with my childhood friend, Markus. We had made a huge mistake that no one was to know about. The more that came to me the more my head rolled and spun. And the only way to ensure that was to make sure only one person knew. Sobs began to heave my body. He promised me that he wouldn’t do it. Held onto the pole harder and harder, my face being scratched up but not being able to care. That he would only bury it and nothing more. I fell to the ground, ugly crying, wailing and screaming. That we would both leave untouched and unharmed. I hit my head against the pole as more and more horrible memories came pouring in. But by ‘we’ he meant me, myself and I. That I was not one of those. I thought that the feeling I got from this place was fear but no it was… it was deja vu. I was now dead and operated like a broken record going through my death, time and time again.