Vestiphobia Pt. 04

All it did was make her run faster. She'd come this far, and she'd go farther still. She leaped down the sidewalk, not feeling fatigue, just the thrill of adrenaline. The barking was becoming fainter, and the shouts less coherent.

Until a wire fence leaped out in front of her. It was easily seven feet tall, and surrounded on both sides by buildings. Foolishly, she'd run down a narrow alley without checking that she had a way out. The only direction she could move was back the way she'd come, back towards the police and their dogs.

Lisa swore at herself. She looked back down the alley. Barking and shouting still filled her ears. There was no way she could go that way, her pursuers were too close.

Really, there was only one option. A few months ago, Lisa would have thought it impossible. Now, she wasn't so sure.

Lisa took a moment to stuff the phone she still carried down the front of her... bag. It was tight enough that it should hold in place. Then she turned back towards the fence, bent her knees, and leapt, hands forward like claws.

She grabbed the wire links and climbed, hefting her body up to the top of the fence, and then over the top. She was straddling the fence. Now she had to get down. With a grunt of effort, she hoisted her right leg up and over the top, and threw herself forward.

Something snagged. There was a brief feeling of pressure, then a loud ripping sound, followed by a heavenly sensation of relief. Lisa had cleared the fence, but her dress had not. She glanced back at the torn black fabric, hopelessly tangled up in jutting wires, and then continued running.

For the first time, Lisa felt completely relieved to have lost her clothing. Her mind was exhausted from the pressure of trying to convince itself that she wasn't actually dressed, and now it could rest. Her skin was delighted by sensation of the cool night air.

She ran until she reached a short wall. Behind it and below it raged the river that flowed through the city. Having nowhere else to go, she climbed onto the wall and looked down at the swiftly moving current.

The police had not lost track of her at the fence, like she'd hoped. After all, she'd left a twisted piece of fabric as a clue for them. And Debra's phone! It must have dropped when she was climbing the fence! She'd forgotten all about it.

Dogs barked behind her, and the policemen approached. Lisa stood still on top of the wall, looking down at the river. The wind whipped up her blonde hair.

A loudhailer clicked on, and a man's voice said, "We have you surrounded! Come down from there!"

The dogs had been quietened, and the man with the loudhailer paused to wait for Lisa to comply. There was long, tense silence. Lisa knew that she was in enormous trouble, the biggest trouble she'd ever faced.

A policeman coughed, and another one muttered something to a colleague about the view.

It was a ridiculous thing to worry about at this stage, after all she'd been through, but Lisa couldn't help but blush at the thought of all these policemen standing behind her, staring at her bare ass. She suspected that the loudhailer man was pausing to savor the view.

Well, she thought, that's all they're going to get. She took a deep breath in and held it.

Then she fell into the river.

Lisa ignored the shouts of the police. Wind whistled over her body as she descended, finally breaking the surface of the water with a mighty SPLOOSH!

It was cold, so cold, and it propelled her forward. She struggled against, twisting until her head broke the surface and she could take a desperate gasp of air. She couldn't see much above her, but she knew she was moving fast, far away from her pursuers.

She wasted no time in kicking off her waterlogged shoes and socks, finding she could keep her head above water more easily without the extra weight. Her toes wiggled in delight, and she felt that the last of her burdens had lifted. The river held her in its watery embrace, and she surrendered to it, lost herself to the current.

After some time, the high walls and the smells of the city gave way to empty fields, and then to lush riverbanks. This river, she knew, flowed out of the city and through a deep forest, and that's where it was taking her.

A small, ever more distant part of her mind screamed at her that she was crazy. It was a miracle she hadn't died jumping from that wall, and how was she not freezing right now?! For that matter, how had she managed to run so far and so fast, outrunning police dogs, and still have the energy to jump a fence? And how had she knocked out that purse-snatcher?

Living under the curse had changed Lisa. She was a very different girl from the naive, studious freshman she'd been at the start of the semester. Never in a million years would that girl have done what she was doing now.

The sun was coming up as Lisa slowly drifted towards the river bank. Grabbing fistfuls of reeds, she pulled herself out of the water and onto the shore. She stumbled forward, towards the softest patch of long grass she could find, and lay down, falling at once into a deep sleep.

To be concluded...