Will you go mad? Will you go Wild?

TW: SA

She picked up the flashlight. Her practiced hands immediately unscrewed the end to make sure it was loaded. She patted her pockets to make sure she had spare batteries. She flicked her camera on and popped its flash up. She didn’t quite remember why she needed so much light, but the back of her mind knew that she wouldn’t make it through the woods without it all. The haze of her memory had stopped alarming her, there were only so many blackouts she could spend time worrying about. She was here now.

The motel owner had looked at her funny when she got out of her car. It felt like every pair of eyes that strayed across her uncertain frame was using her to prove something to themselves. Her memory could no longer hold onto detail, but a vague loss of control was unmistakable. She knew that she had tumbled down a tree-covered hill, bouncing off trees and tearing up vines until she found herself here, a long way from the top. The only distinct image she remembered from before was a warm glow that felt like a romantic comedy. 

Her motel room was musty. Its unobtrusive and forgettable decor did no favors to her already jumbled memory. The forest would be far more memorable. She did not think to question why a motel would be so thoroughly surrounded by thick, black, woods. Her mind was ranging to the other side of the forest, where her mind’s most vivid image lay. The haze and anonymity of her past was mirrored by a clear and vivid feeling of safety and salvation waiting for her on the other side of the forest. The specifics kept shifting, sometimes it was a bed that was too small for her, sometimes it was a door that made her feel safe yet scared, and sometimes it was a mirror that she couldn’t quite see clearly.

All of the clocks said that it was 3am. The air felt darker than that. Her flashlight cut a clean white stripe through the black, catching onto leaves darker than any green is supposed to be. The path that her feet found was distinct, but not yet well-trod. Some words about roads looped in her head, driving her forward into the envelope of pitch black silence. The silence was the strangest thing about this forest. She hadn’t heard a single chirp or broken branch from any animal of any size. The leaves and branches were as still as a photograph. A small part of her brain was comforted by this, as it meant that anything approaching her would be much easier to make out. Most of her brain was mortified by the stillness. A forest with no life. A forest with no light. 

She advanced assuredly down the path, her eyes locked to the cone of her flashlight. Her spare hand rested on her camera, holding it like a cop would upon seeing a neighborhood dog. She planned to be much more judicious. After the third or fourth twist in the path, ensuring that she had no continuous sense of which direction the motel was, the hair on the back of her neck began to rise. She didn’t hear anything, but she could feel something clawing at the edges of her senses. It wasn’t something she could hear, smell, or even see, but she steadily became convinced that it was close behind her. Her neck hairs trembled with the edges of breaths that she could feel just behind her. She knew she was imagining it, but the farther she walked the more the line between imagination and reality blurred. After the sweat began to drip down her neck, she started to jog. The path widened as she jogged, accommodating her increased speed and decreased wariness. Her eyes were still glued to the cone of light stretching out in front of her, but she would have sworn the leaves had finally begun to sway as she started to run from the presence she could feel behind her. Before she could register the change in the leaves, she imagined (heard) a growl and immediately broke into a sprint. She was surprised at how easily the sprint came to her. Her legs fell into a rhythm and her lungs moved with the confidence of a seasoned runner. Was this her past or was it part of this new world she had tumbled into? 

The sprint (chase) went on for longer than she could have imagined herself running. Her pursuer did not let up or fall behind, nor did she feel the need to stop. She was stopped by a footprint in the path. Her foot fell into it, disrupting her stride and sending her stumbling towards the packed dirt and leaves. Before she could process the stumble, her hands were bringing her camera up to face backwards and let off a flash. All she saw was a man-like silhouette leaping through the air, teeth sharper than any human’s should be, before her flash went off and a fine mist of dust filled the air around her. Her stumble had brought her all the way to the earth. The dust of the man (creature) settled around her seat on the cold dirt. She caught her breath.

The leaves had returned to their strange stillness. She did not have time to consider the distinction between imagination and reality. She did want to check on what had tripped her. It was a footprint, one that her shoe fit in perfectly. It was not the same shoe size. It was the same shoe. She hadn’t gone in a circle, this was days old and entirely unfamiliar. As she lifted her foot out of the (her) footprint, her hands gravitated to her camera. She almost fell again as bright images of a wedding flooded through her mind. The flash of her camera reverberated through the images, just as it had through the forest just minutes before. The subjects of the flashes in her memory didn’t disintegrate. They were smiling and laughing, and she could feel the heartbreaking disconnect that her position in this memory had brought her. This version of herself had none of the joy in her life that she photographed so frequently. Rotating through event after event, an expert at capturing joy while failing to cultivate it in her life. 

As this vision (memory) veered into the frustration and sadness of that contrast, she could feel another horrific memory creeping into the edges of the vision. In a moment of particular joy at one wedding, while nearly everyone was focused on the joyful couple, one of the groom’s party members had grabbed her and shoved her into a bathroom. This memory was vivid in different terms than the wedding photography, melting from distinct confusion into inchoate agony. The laughter of the wedding attendees who had entered the bathroom a few minutes later was the most specific thing she could still hold. She had been unable to speak, listening as they stood and laughed just feet from the stall he had forced her into.

She swallowed her memory and began to walk down the path. Her mind tried to reach out and settle itself on the stillness of the leaves and the silence of the forest, but instead of calming the chaos of memory it gave it more room to fester. Having nothing living to latch onto and think about let her mind run. As her mind ran, she began to. She could feel that man-thing’s presence again. She knew her legs and her lungs would carry her with a swiftness that would calm at least some of her fear, so she let them. The path was almost as wide as a small road at this point, escaping understanding as merely a desire path trod by some past version of herself. This was something stranger. There were multiple sets of footprints at this point, some almost impossible to make out. They spanned what looked like weeks of walks and runs by the same pair of shoes. This time was a run. She could hear (imagine) the man-creature-thing keeping pace with her, but she couldn’t turn around. 

For the first time all night she saw something different in the forest. There was a clearing ahead of her. As she ran out into it, she felt the man-presence retreat into the forest. In the clearing, there was a church. It was a church she had worked many weddings at. She could see inside, where the only light still on was in the bathroom. She had frozen as she realized what she was looking at, and it took her a moment to begin moving towards the church. As she did, she heard an evil growl and the sound of a leap. She imagined herself getting torn apart by the man-creature-thing that had chased her for so much of this journey. Her hands didn’t move to the camera this time, and her eyes stayed fixed on the bathroom light. The breath on her bloody and torn neck was the same breath that had been on her neck in that bathroom stall. 

The dust of another of those things drifted through the air and settled onto the body. She picked up the bloody flashlight. Her practiced hands immediately unscrewed the end to make sure it was loaded. She patted the corpse’s pockets to check for spare batteries. She flicked her camera off and replaced its battery. She hoped this would be enough light. The back of her mind knew that she wouldn’t have a chance without it all. The haze of her memory had begun to clear, and she could see more paths through the forest. She looked down at the mangled corpse of someone who looked exactly like her and walked into the church.