Blood Fear

I ran through an almost swampy deciduous forest area. I say almost because the pools and pockets of shallow water were sand bottomed instead of the kind of muck that results from leaves turning into silt. The sand, a nice, fine Sahara Desert-esque sand, was firm and well settled. Judging by the lighting, I would guess it was afternoon, possibly hinting at the very earliest mellowing of evening.

The forest floor where I was running wasn't tangled with thorn bushes or wild rose or the large number of small saplings that usually clutter and dominate the lowest level of a deciduous wood's struggling growth. It wasn't quite obvious that a path had been cleared, but more like the plants would not grow where there was too much traffic. If that was the case there wasn't a hint of human or animal life to give opposition to the plants. None save myself and whoever he was that was chasing me. The trees were tall and straight like a maple and oak wood. I was running and I was scared.

The person who was chasing me was a boy, one who would conjure up the title "native boy". He wore only a reddish-brown loin cloth, and was obviously more adapted to the woods than myself. I had a pretty good jump on him, but I had enough difficulty in manipulating the landscape that I could feel him gaining on me. I'm not exactly sure what it was that made me fear this boy so much. Physically he wasn't intimidating in the least, but that didn't keep the adrenaline from pumping my veins full of the latter half of the fight or flight syndrome.

I ran over a low, small mound of grass covered earth that had a light dirt path worn in it from use. Use by whom, I'm not sure, as I've said before. There was what appeared to be a tall solitary gum tree on the left of the clump. I passed it and splashed into the fish pond-sized pool on the other side of the mound. It was calf-deep, making it passable with only a little difficulty. At the far edge of the pool was a small gap, gaited knee-high by a tangle of tree roots where the water had eroded the dirt as it emptied into the lake-sized flat of water which I had a limited view of because of the small break in vegetation.

As I stumbled out into the flat I saw that it was shallow, no more than a foot and a half at it's deepest. The tree line along the opposite shore came to the very edge of the water maybe a hundred yards away, and appeared to be more heavily vegetated than what I had passed through. I noticed the bluff of a short cliff ran along the whole left edge of the water, where it deepened and had a decent current.

I was running out of Time. I turned and ran back to the small clearing with the Gum tree. Launching myself onto the trunk of the limbless tree I scurried upwards with unrealistic ease. The roughness of the gum bark either had no effect, or simply wouldn't register through the limiting effects of my fear. From the top of the tree I could see the boy coming. He was close. He was getting closer. He was very close.

My adopted tree fort began to sway a little more drunkenly than the wind could have caused. Could my weight alone be enough to topple this tree? It was a pretty decent sized tree! How could little old me tip over this monolith of centurial representation? Unfortunately, physics didn't care what I or reality said. Possibly physics simply didn't apply. Oh, well. Regardless of the reasons or non-reasons, I was going down.

Pure evil radiated all throughout my body in the form of fear so utterly biting and cold and permeating that I ceased to think in any rational sense and only braced for my landing and the mad dash to get away after that. It didn't occur to me that a human falling from nearly a hundred feet into water no more than two feet deep (for, that's where my tipping tree was headed) had almost assuredly no chance of survival, and positively no chance of making any mad dashes, and, in fact, needn't have occurred to me. As soon as I hit the water, I was up and dogging my way through the water towards the stream's outlet.

With a good twenty yards to go, I turned to face my threat. There was no way in hell I would make the other side before this more agile being caught up to me. Squaring off I stooped my shoulders, staggered my legs, balled my fists, and tried to channel all the adrenaline into the first lunging blows that would, hopefully, shatter his nose, wind-pipe, temples, and anything else my blood frenzy told me was a vital functioning necessity of his.

"Buy the ticket, take the ride." Those words, falling from my own lips were the first human utterance I had heard in more weeks than I cared to count. The solitude I'd reveled in gave me no reason to externalize my musings or observations, and silence was, after all, much safer.

The first droplets of water from his splashing rained down on my face and chest; The fear was unreal now. It was a white and red heat that refused to stay within it's boundaries and was gushing over into the realms of ferocious anger and quickly drowning rational thought and sanity.

I lunged, splitting skin and smashing bone. As I opened my eyes I was startled to see his hand reaching out towards me in an unmoving perpetual last grasp. The panic abated and I thought about trying to stand up. I never have gotten entirely used to the metallic tint in blood. Maybe I never will.