Ineveryscarystory, the worst place for a girl to be was alone in the woods at night.
Fabled monsters lurked in the darkness so thick you couldn’t see a hand in front of your face. Every twig that cracked beneath your foot was a trigger for blood-thirsty animals to descend. Each sprawling tree had creepy bent arms for branches, ones that looked like they could snatch you up and feed you to the darkness.
The woods at night was no place for young girls.
But I wasn’t all that young anymore, and I think I qualified more as monster than girl anyway.
I could feel the eyes of wildlife on me as I ran, a flash of snow cutting through their ceaseless night. The woods were never-ending and so were my tears. I wasn’t even quiet as I tore through the dense brush and spindly weeds or as they tore right back through me.
I sobbed and wept and ran, crying out in thanks with every scratch and scrape nature inflicted on my passing body. My insides were cooking to a boil, the fire swelling too tight beneath my skin. It was trying to burst through, erupt in a volcanic array through my flimsy layer and drench me from head to toe in lava.
Every slice opened me up and helped lessen the too-tight tension itching beneath my skin.
And I wanted more, more, more, more.
But each time I whimpered in relief at the pain, James’ voice echoed in my head.
‘Your brother would be so disappointed.’
A brutal sob clawed from my chest as I thought the words, tiring legs almost giving out.
James could be a jackass, but there wasn’t a chance he saw through the chaos in my head enough to be able to pluck out my biggest fear and project it out loud with a savage twist.
The single fear of disappointing Johnny, my main motivator that kept my goal in focus.
If I died before I could disappoint him, then it would never come true. I would never become the sister who disappointed her brother’s memory by forgetting it.
But the pain… the obsessive need for it.
That was all me.
I couldn’t claim that defect in Johnny’s name because it wouldn’t be true. My pursuit of death was for him, but the self-inflicted torture I’d enjoyed way too much along the way had been all for my benefit.
Because I was sick.
Empty and desperate to feel something.
A yelp spilt from my mouth as my toes caught on the hard jut of a root, toppling me down to my hands and knees into something wet.
Wet?
Confusion took my brain over, trying to slow my hyperventilating so I could listen to my surroundings. My eyes stretched out wide, blinking fast so my vision could adjust to the darkness, too.
After a few quieting seconds, roiling blood wasn’t the thing filling the space between my ears.
It was water.
The sound of it gently running, soft plops intersplicing the stream.
After a few more moments, my eyesight balanced out to the absence of light and caught the uneven glimpse of moonlight splitting down through the canopy of trees, the invasion glittering along the ebb and flow of the water.
It was a creek.
I’d stumbled into a shallow creek in the middle of the woods.
I panted hard over it, overwhelmed without even understanding why as tears pushed faster from my eyes. Soggy sediment curled through my desperate fingers under the biting cold water, dirt lodging beneath my nails. Sniffling, I eyed the peaks of my white knuckles breaking the surface of the crystal waters and followed the rhythm of the reservoir moving around them.
There was so much life in the simple fistful of rocks and soil in my palms. I could feel it, bustling between my fingers as if the wet dirt had a heartbeat.