The October Music: Fourth Verse - Day 4

Start Over
​
            Twigs and leaves crack and crunch under your feet as you race through the woods. You shove aside branches as you run, your skin tearing in tiny ways as the sharp edges cut into you. You don’t notice them. You don’t know where you’re going. It doesn’t matter. You just need to go, to run, to escape.

            You don’t know who’s chasing you or why. You don’t know where they came from or where you came from. All you remember is waking up in the forest with the burning terror sunken into your chest. You had to run. To get away from whatever was behind you.

            You don’t want to look. Can’t force yourself. Looking would make everything worse and would slow you down. You can’t look. Don’t want to see whatever it is closing in on you with, well, you don’t know. Claws sharper than razors? Teeth like daggers in mouths slavering and pouring foam and blood? Eyes that cut deep into you? You don’t know and your mind races as your body does the same.

            Maybe you could fight back, you think. You could stop and engage in a heroic last stand. Go out on your own terms. You think that could be a good way to go, but no. You keep running. You can’t make yourself stop. Coward.

            By now, your lungs are on fire and your legs ache beyond measure. Your body is telling you to stop, to rest, and to give up. But something in your mind, that deep primal fear, refuses to let you. It refuses to let you die and spurs you onward, further into the forest, because then you might be safe. Maybe. Hopefully. You want to believe that. You truly do. But there is another part of you, the part connected to wanting to rest, that knows it’s a lie. It’s just biology pushing you past your limits. You will never be safe. You know that.

            Your breath is ragged now. Pouring from your mouth in gasps and shuddery wheezes. Your lungs are shaking inside your chest. Overexertion. You have to breathe. You have to breathe. You have to breathe. You must stop and take a good, long breath. But you keep running.

            It’s your left leg that gives out on you eventually. Something tears. Something important. Maybe you stepped wrong or hit a rock. Maybe it simply couldn’t take the stress. It doesn’t matter. One moment, you’re running. The next, you hear a snap and feel a rubber band in your leg go limp and then you crash to the ground, rolling through mud and filth before coming to a hard stop against a tree.

            You have to get up. Get up. GET UP. Keep running. It’s almost here. It’s going to get you. You have to get up. You have to –

            A sharp stab of pain in your left chest. Your heart. It’s done. You’re done. You-
​
            You’re waking up. You’re in a forest. Something is chasing you. RUN.