Legend:
The Chimera
By
Erin Dameron-Hill
(c) copyright by Erin Dameron-Hill, January 2011
Cover Art by Eliza Black, January 2011
Published by New Concepts Publishing
Smashwords Edition
ISBN 978-1-60394-477-9
New Concepts Publishing
Lake Park, GA 31636
www.newconceptspublishing.com
This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely coincidence.
Dedicated to my loving husband, Cameron, and to my Uncle James. Thank you for your support and encouragement.
This novel is also dedicated to my Chow, Chyna. You were my inspiration because of your loyalty and never-ending friendship. I will miss you.
We humans fear the beast within…because we do
Not understand
The beast within ourselves—
Gerald Hausman
Chapter One
In my dreams I am flying. I soar over white tundra and green spruce trees. Wind whips at my eyes and stings my skin but I don’t care. The feeling of being lifted on shifting winds takes my soul to new heights. Watching the earth speed by brings a rush unlike any other. My blood curls and sings at the same time as I screech into the gathering clouds.
I am free. There is nothing holding me, chaining me. I am completely and utterly free. The sky has no bars nor does it have a limit. The sky is wide open, vast and mine to own.
My golden wings beat at the thick cool air pounding in rhythm to my heart. I fly faster and higher than ever before. The spruce trees are now just a fleck of green on the gray tundra floor. Snow in the distance appears like a fog as it rolls over the sweeping hills and towering mountains.
I climb higher into the sky, my white-feathered head grazing the tops of clouds as I fly through them, allowing the mist to cling at my lungs. The cold mist feels divine on my sweaty face.
Miles pass beneath me, the landscape passes by in a blur as I continue to soar ever higher and fly faster. I ride the winds as one rides a horse and just allows the wind or the beast to carry her. The wind carries me as if I was its child. As if it had given birth to me. This is where I belong.
I love this dream. I love this dream because I finally feel free. I am not stuck in the day to day grind of my ordinary life, instead I am able to fly unhinged, unbarred. I can just…be free.
My wings beat harder against the wind until I can’t feel them anymore. I know they are there, just beside me, but still they have gone numb. I make a fist and realize I no longer have wings. My hands claw at the sky as I fall toward the earth.
This part of the dream I don’t like as much.
* * * *
My eyes blink into the bright light of white snow and unending white mountains. A windy gust pushes me onto my side as snow crackles underneath my weight. My heart is barely beating. I am barely breathing. Ice cold has wrapped its delicate fingers around my body.
I’m shivering.
My teeth clatter against themselves and my muscles violently contract. I manage to bring my arms around my shoulders and pull my legs toward my bare belly. My knees are purple. My skin along my toes is bright red. Snot and mucous creep down from my numb nose and freeze onto my chapped and dry lips.
I glance down my naked body and realize that I am beginning to suffer from frostbite. My extremities are numb, paralyzed with an escalating cold that bites into me. Blood is rushing to my brain and to my heart in order to keep me alive.
I try to stand but cannot. All I can do is lie here in the snow and let it pile around me. My skin is stinging and tight under the lashes of the snow.
My black hair is stuck on my cold face. I can feel it brittle and hard. I could completely snap it off if I wanted to.
My eyes are blinking even though the skin around my eyes is so tight and dry that I can barely squeeze my eyelids. I feel like I am in a tug-of-war between myself and twelve Vikings because my skin is so tight and unwilling to move. The Vikings are winning. My skin is becoming more and more taut as the wind picks up speed.
Snowflakes drift smoothly across me from behind and they crawl up my buttocks. I can feel it drip inside me. I am so cold and stiff that I cannot stop it. I can only abide this feeling, suffer through it.
Slowly, thoughts form inside my desolate and freezing mind. How did I come to be here? Where is here?
If I had more energy I’m sure I would be curious, but I am just too tired to care. The cold bites at me furiously like I am a steak and it is a starving carnivore. It eats at me, pulls my skin, hollows me out. I can no longer feel any blood in my feet or my hands.
I am a statue in the snow. I will be buried in the snow. In a matter of minutes I will have frozen to death. This isn’t the ideal way to die. Although, being numb certainly helps. I now know what a wart feels like when it is frozen off.
No one can predict their death so I’m not surprised that this is how I die. I just don’t want to die. I don’t want to die on the top of an unknown mountain surrounded by clouds of snow unaware of how I even got here. And yet that seems to be my fate.
I wish I could move. I wish I could get up and start heading towards civilization wherever that may be. I wish my toes would wiggle again. I try to move them but they are stiff, locked in the jaws of the Cold. I miss being able to wiggle my toes. I miss the feeling of sand between my toes. I miss my home. How could I have gotten here? I’m a Florida girl, born and raised. I thrive in heat and humidity. The sun is my air and the ocean is my lover. So what the hell am I doing in this barren wasteland of snow and mountains?
Why am I going to die here? Why? How is this even possible? I have never vacationed in the mountains, never bothered to even see snow let alone feel it. And the first time I see it I will die in it? No. I can’t die like this.
I struggle to move from my fetal position but my body doesn’t respond. I am literally frozen stiff. My heart labors to pump blood to where I ask, but it fails. Instead it continues the slow, lack-luster pumping of blood to my brain. The last part to die on a human body is the brain when being frozen to death. I guess Fate allows the person to meditate on their life, contemplate the meaning of life before she dies.
Thank you, Fate, I thought sarcastically. I would prefer to just go ahead and die now but no, I have to understand that I am dying piece by piece. I have to know that my body is dying as I lie here and watch tiny snowflakes rest on my eyelashes.
I suppose this could be a romantic way to die--it sure beats “eaten by a lion” as a way to go. I could find comfort in that thought. At least I am numb and unable to feel the slow death taking me.
I close my eyes in an attempt to warm them. My eyeballs burn and sting with each snowflake. Besides, I don’t need them open. I think it would be really unsettling to find a dead person with her eyes open. I don’t want my dead self to creep anyone out.
Perhaps in a few thousand years someone would find my frozen body, frozen in time by ice and name me an early ancestor just as we did with that Neanderthal. I could be famous in the far off future. I could be on display in a museum somewhere as little children pass by and say, “We’ve come a long way.”
Yeah, I guess there could be worse fates than mine. I can’t think of any at the moment….
With my eyes closed the world seemed to feel a little warmer. I could still see the bright light seeping in through my eyelids just as the sun always woke me in the mornings.
Freezing to death is a quiet way to die. There are no loud gun shots nor machines, nor explosive car crashes or lingering suffering. Instead, the world is quiet, calm.
My ears have frozen long ago and I can’t hear the howling winds anymore so everything is quiet. The only sound is the soft thumping of my heart which is becoming slower. My heart is aping the quiet around me. It longs to be as peaceful as the lightly falling snowflakes. Perhaps I should allow my heart to beat slower, to fall into rhythm with the quiet snowflakes. I know that when I do, that’s when I will die.
Am I ready to give up now? Am I ready to take my last breath and say goodbye?
Internally, I nodded. My body desperately wanted to die. I wasn’t in any physical pain because I was so numb and atrophied but my body told me it was suffering. The cold was acting as anesthesia, numbing me to the pain. Just because I couldn’t feel the pain it doesn’t mean the pain isn’t there. My slow beating heart was proof that the pain of death was overtaking me.
I wanted to take in a deep breath, to take in a last and final breath before I ended this life and hopefully, begin a new one, but my chest could no longer rise. It, too, was frozen.
I thought my life was supposed to flash before my eyes but I guess a slow death isn’t traumatic enough to trigger a lifetime of flashes. If that’s the case, then I would trigger my own memories.
With sluggish thoughts I imagined my home back in Sarasota, FL. I spent years of penny-pinching just to buy it. The proudest moment of my life was when I first stepped into my very own home. Not even acquiring my master’s degree in Library and Information Science was as happy a moment as knowing that I could be free to paint my home however I wanted to, re-tile the floors, rout the bathroom. Living in rentals and dormitories for so long was such a nightmare that I almost believed it would be easier to just get my MRS. Yes, get married to a lawyer and live off his fat.
If only. I don’t cow-tail to people, I never have so there is no way I could ever be a trophy wife. My life would probably be easier to just be a trophy, but I prefer a challenge. My dream in life was to be a librarian and I am. After years of dedicating myself to hard work, I finally graduated. I’m thousands of dollars in debt and I don’t get paid jack shit but at least I love going to work. And I love my home. It’s just a two bedroom, two bath condo three miles from the beach, but I can call it mine. I own it. I have my own schedule, my own routine. I don’t have to worry about roommates shattering my peace or bringing in a troop of creepy boys. Instead, my place is my own. It’s unfortunate that I only managed to spend half a year there before winding up here. I wish I had more time. I guess that’s what everyone says when they knock upon death’s door, “I wish I had more time”.
I wish I could have spent more time with my family. As much as they irritate me, I still love them. I love spending Christmas together, unwrapping presents and eating Eggs Benedict. I love Thanksgiving dinner when everyone comes in, including cousins and aunts and uncles and we all get drunk and have a merry time. The next morning we’re all ashamed of our actions but we don’t judge each other. We just hug and kiss and go our separate ways until the next holiday. I wish I didn’t just spend holidays with my family. I wish I could have visited them more often. They would always ask me when I was coming to visit and I would reply that school or my job was standing in the way. I always had an excuse. Now that I am freezing to death and left to ponder my past, I wish I could have spent more time with my family.
I wish I had a dog. Or a pet of some kind. I wish I could have grown a garden full of tomatoes and basil. I love the combination of tomatoes and basil. Queen Marguerite of Italy loved the combination of tomatoes, basil, and mozzarella. She even made the sandwich a national icon because it was red, green, and white which are colors of the Italian flag. Aren’t I an encyclopedia of useless information? Why am I thinking about sandwiches as I freeze to death? Food would be the last thing I say goodbye to. Food ranks at least a 5 on the priority scale.
My stomach managed to growl and I wanted to rub it, to comfort it but my hands were stuck on my shoulders, my forearms covering by exposed breasts.
My eyes were still closed as my body began to tingle. Stinging sensations felt like I was being stung by a thousand yellow jackets on a hot day. I had thought I was numb. I missed being numb. I guess death is painful no matter how you go. To stop a beating heart, to stop a mind from thinking, to stop every involuntary function that has worked since the beginning must be painful to stop.
I preferred the cold anesthesia to this stinging pain and I missed it as my heart became louder in my ears. I could hear my pulse pushing slowly and sluggishly through my frozen veins and arteries. I visualized my blood as being thick and coagulating on the sides of the screaming veins. They were being forced open by life, forced to take a breath. I could see them open and watch as thick and gooey dark red blood slid into the veins. The blood didn’t want to move, but my heart was pushing it.
I wanted to scream as feeling came back to my body, as it ached and pulsed under the battered skin. Why was death so painful? What happened to the intense numbing? Why did it have to hurt so much?
I had been willing to die, to give myself over to Fate and this is how I die? Painfully? In agony?
A part of me wanted to open my eyes, to take in one last look at life but I remembered I didn’t want to look creepy when someone found my dead body. I wanted to look like I had died peacefully and easily.
I blinked anyway. My eyeballs felt cold and hard as I narrowed my eyes. A bright orange light was cooing around me. It crackled and sparked as bits of wood lit up and released smoke. Fire. I knew it was fire. What the hell was it doing here?
My eyeballs slowly slid down my body and I noticed I was covered in a heavy gray blanket. Large and bare hands were massaging my legs and feet, warming them, allowing my thick blood to pulse through.
Was this real? Or was Death playing a joke on me? Was I being rescued?
Groggily I closed my eyes and stared at the blackness of my eyelids. Whatever was happening was painful and intense. Bringing a body back to life is just as painful as dying.
Chapter Two
The large calloused hands continued to massage my frozen body through the gray blanket. I could feel each finger digging into my stinging skin and screaming muscles. My toes ached with pain and fear as the hands squeezed them tightly. I don’t know if I could really feel anything in my toes, but I knew that I should feel something.
The gray blanket was pulled back, exposing the gray skin of my toes. My pink toenails were brittle and flaky as if a fungus had eaten right into them and ripped them apart. My pinky toe was the worst. With blurred vision and cold eyeballs, I tried to make sense of what I was seeing. My pinky toe was a crumbling mess of ashy skin. It had been conquered by frostbite.
I was still cold and scared but one thought formed at the top of my head and made its way out of my mouth, “I don’t want to lose my toe.” I wish I could have emphasized it more, been more aggressive with my non-limb chopping statement, but even my cold tongue just barely clicked on the roof of my mouth. I wondered if my words were more than just slurred speech.
The fire was warm and bright but still I was frozen. If I was a steak, it would take hours to thaw me out. I don’t enjoy being compared to food, but what other metaphors are there after being frozen to death?
I desperately wanted to reach down and clutch my pinky toe. Hold it tight. I didn’t want to lose a limb down here. I didn’t want to lose my toe. It’s funny, I almost died and instead of rejoicing that I’m breathing again, I’m completely focused on the loss of my toe.
I should be thankful that the cold bite of crisp air is scratching its way down my throat and gnawing at my hardened lungs. But the pain of loss and of frostbite is almost more than I can endure. I know that the toe has to go otherwise the frostbite will spread, but knowing and doing are two completely different things. And how the hell was it going to be removed out in here in the middle of nowhere?
As the stinging needles of pain crept throughout my body I finally realized I wasn’t alone. I had been so focused on myself and my frostbitten toe that I hadn’t even noticed the body that the hands belonged to. I had completely ignored the person. I am still lost in a sea of thoughts, thrown about by the constant threat of pain and death to even recognize another human soul. Normally I would say I’m being selfish, but after staring Death straight in the eyes, I really don’t care if I am perceived as selfish. I’m alive. I will not be on display in some museum in the future. I can breathe again. I can listen to my heart thumping faster in my chest. I can feel the blood rushing through my body, pushing against the frozen walls of veins and arteries.
If I was to fall asleep, I would wake up. I would open my eyes to a new day, to a new promise of the future. A future with a missing pinky toe.
As a Librarian, I’ve read many books. Name one and I’m sure that I have knowledge of it. I am a true bookworm and as one, I know all about frostbite. I’ve read countless adventures where people suffered from frostbite and even did some research on the phenomenon just to better understand the character’s predicament.
My pinky toe is ashy, a sure sign that it has become infected. I don’t know how bacteria can survive in these frigid temperatures but that’s why my toe has to go. An extremity locked in the grip of frostbite can usually be re-warmed with little to no damage. But frostbite with infection is another story.
The toe has to go.
My beautiful feet that look perfect in sandals and sand will be mangled and freakish. I won’t have a pinky toe. Instead, I will only have nine toes. Nine. 9 out of 10 is sometimes good. If 9 out of 10 dentists recommend a specific brand of toothpaste, then that toothpaste is really good. If, however, there are only 9 out of 10 toes, then that’s just plain gross.
My eyeballs wanted to tear up, to moisten themselves and display my broken heart but the Cold bit into them again, quieting any emotion that might escape my lips or my body.
I closed my eyes and once more stared at the blackness of my eyelids. I didn’t want to look at my decaying toes or see the white snow glisten in the firelight. I wanted to hide myself, shelter myself from the dark future that awaited me.
I recognize that I sound pathetic and ungrateful. I should be rejoicing that I’m alive but the thought of losing a body part is difficult to wrap my mind around. I’m having trouble grasping the thought.
I want to be whole. I want to be a plain, ordinary librarian who reads about adventures but doesn’t live them. I want to be Emily Schaffer from Sarasota, FL who owns her condo and loves her job. I don’t want to be Emily Schaffer with the missing toe. I don’t want to answer questions regarding my loss. I don’t want to be hounded with questions that I can’t answer because I don’t know how I ended up here nor why I would be losing my toe.
My body shivered under the gray blanket and a few of my muscles convulsed. With erratic movements, my body was beginning to fully wake. I was being pulled back from the brink of death, pulled back into the world of the living. I was finally able to move my arms from my shoulders.
I felt like I was treading through water as my stiff arms lay heavily at my sides. I managed to blink and look at the white sky overhead. Several pine trees and spruce trees covered my line of sight as they spread in every direction. It was like looking into a kaleidoscope of trees not knowing what was up or down.
I tried to shake out the grogginess in my head in order to get my bearings. I was disorientated, lost, and confused. I only knew a few things for a fact. I knew that my pinky toe was lost to me. I knew that there was a fire. I knew that hands were slowly and softly massaging me, warming me.
Other than that, I know nothing about my surroundings. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know who the hands belong to. I don’t know how I got here. And I don’t know what to ask first. I especially don’t know if I can even talk yet. I said earlier I didn’t want to lose the toe but it had just come out garbled. My tongue was nothing more than dead weight in my mouth. I tried to stretch it, to move it and with heavy exertion, it only moved slightly.
With no sound from my mouth, I was just as quiet as the world around me. My heart beat in rhythm with the crackling fire and my breathing escaped with the gentle breeze.
With nothing else to do, I stared intently into the bright orange fire. Softly glowing embers snapped at the rocks that circled it as flames ate up thick twigs of dead pine and felled logs. I was lying across from a make-shift shelter made of the same felled logs and branches of pine needles. The floor of the shelter was covered in dark green moss and looked only large enough for one person to lie in. I guess that’s why I’m outside, in the cold. Both of us couldn’t be inside.
My back shivered slightly and I realized that I was lying on something warm and soft. I glanced down and noticed I was on the same moss that was inside the shelter. I felt like I was resting on a giant cotton ball. It was a welcome change from lying naked on a snow bank.
I was still naked but at least I had a blanket. It was shoved under my sides to seal me in with the edge of the blanket lifted away from my toes so that the person’s hands could better reach the decaying areas.
With every touch of the hands, my toes and feet screamed in agony. I was no longer numb but I was able to feel every painful caress. My nerve endings were on full alert eager to give me every intense feeling and scream that I am in pain. I could almost see ice shards under my skin breaking the tissue of my muscles as the hands squeezed harder.
The hands pushed deeper and worked more excitedly as my legs said they had had enough with the pain. I tried to squirm away. My hands and arms wretched as I struggled to stand up and run.
A violent scream escaped my lips and spit flew out from between my lips. I was yelling, “Enough!” and “Stop!” but the person didn’t stop. The hands kept me in agony. They kept torturing me, brutalizing my feet with every touch. I felt a few small tears leak from the corner of my eyes but as they rolled down my cheeks, they froze and were carried away with the breeze.
My lungs heaved again and I desperately tried to scramble away, to push the pain-inflicting hands away but it was to no avail. I didn’t have enough strength to fight or to run. My body was thawing, but I was still so stiff and tight. My arms violently shook and collapsed under my back as I fell hard onto the warm moss.
Every touch was a stabbing pain as if a thousand daggers were just violently puncturing skin, splitting my nerves and sending waves of pain to drown me.
I wanted to scream and cry and throw tantrums but all I could do was lay down and suffer. I could scream silently in my head and I could drool, but that was it. My voice was gone with that one scream that I had managed and had left me with even more pain than before. My throat was ragged, itchy, and throbbing. I couldn’t swallow without wanting to cry. Instead of swallowing, I allowed my drool to freeze on my hard and chapped lips. I turned my head to the side and felt the warm spit cool on my cheek and then freeze. If I kept looking up at the sky I would drown in my own drool.
With my head facing the side, I was staring at a few tree trunks. The fire was behind me now and forest was in front of me. A few gray and thin rocks were scattered over the forest floor as brown pine needles rested delicately on patches of snow. The bark of the trees were almost black as the limbs shadowed the bark and snuffed out all light. I tried desperately to focus on my surroundings, to ignore the pain sizzling under my skin. Anything would be a good distraction right now.
My eyes darted back and forth in-between trees and half-dead shrubs that clung desperately to rocks and outcroppings. The same moss that I was sleeping on was growing on a rock cliff to my side. Resting near the moss was a black backpack covered with chrome climbing clips and white rope. Long black skis stood against a tree while bright blue poles were stuck into the ground.
The black backpack had the manufacturer on the front which read, “Land’s End”. They got that right. This was the end of land and beginning of hell.
I garbled out more spit as my feet twitched. I was in Hell. This was my punishment. I don’t know what I did to get here, what crimes I committed, but this was my hell. Being in the freezing cold, losing body parts, and suffering extreme pain was my punishment.
The hands scraped against the skin of my foot and I wanted desperately to kick whoever was touching me. I wanted to scream and run away. I wanted my life back. I wanted to sit on my comfy white chair in my lanai and sidle up with a good book. Why couldn’t I be doing that now? Why was I here?
My teeth dug into my cold and frozen lip and I moaned. Finally sound was erupting from my mouth. I didn’t mean to bite my lip but the pain was becoming more intense. Instead of a thunderstorm in the distance, the pain had grew into a hurricane that was right on top of me. I felt tossed about, battered, and betrayed by the elements of nature. Why did this have to be so painful? Why was bringing me back to life so agonizing? What is the purpose of suffering this much? What am I supposed to gain by this?
I squeezed my eyes tight and tried to exhale all the pain that had captured me. I was locked in its tenterhooks and escaping that hold would be difficult. But I had to try. I couldn’t take this kind of pain any longer.
The calloused hands caught my eye as they moved to grab something shiny. The handle was black and the blade was bright silver. With the other hand, the person grabbed a handful of moss and laid it beside my foot. The fingers grasped the tip of my toe and the blade was held tightly in the hand.
For a moment, I was in shock. This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening. This was all just a dream. A very bad dream. This was a nightmare. My toe was not about to be cut off. This could be a trick. Yeah. Maybe there’s a camera around here somewhere. Maybe this was just a big cosmic joke.
I heard a deep breath come from the owner of the hands preparing to slash off my toe.
My fingers curled and my lips pursed. I muttered, “No, please” but my words fell on deaf ears. The hands weren’t listening to me. They were going to fulfill their duty. I wasn’t prepared for this. I wasn’t prepared to lose my toe, to watch it being hacked off by a stranger. I’m not prepared. Then again, when would I ever be prepared to lose a toe?
The silver of the blade swung through the air, whistling with speed. My breath caught, my heart stopped, and a scream so loud and vivid tore through the quiet forest.
Chapter Three
Tears rushed down my face ignoring the freezing temperatures and gushed down my neck. My eyes were blurry and wet and my face was scrunched up like a pug. I was screaming violently to the heavens, shaking and screaming. The screams ripped the silence of the falling snowflakes, shattered the hum of the wind that whipped through the trees, and shook the very foundation of the surrounding mountains.
One of the hands found my mouth and covered the scream with a force so strong I finally assumed that the hands were male. No woman would ever be that rough with someone they just mutilated.
The other hand of his reached for the clump of moss and pushed it none too gently into the gushing wound. Bright red blood trailed down my foot and pooled underneath my heel.
He removed his hand from my mouth and instantly I screamed again this time interrupting the screams with sobs of pain. I had never felt pain like this before and I had a feeling I would never feel pain like it ever again. This kind of pain was rare and only attacked those who became lost in the woods. What the hell am I babbling about? I can’t focus or even think. All I can do is scream into the heavens and hope God hears my pain.
With both hands, the man lifted my right leg high into the sky in order to slow down the bleeding. The moss was absorbing most of it but the man tossed the soaked moss and grabbed another clump from my bedding. He again forced the moss into my sliced skin and grabbed some rope from his backpack. He took the white nylon rope and wrapped it and the moss around my foot tightly like a makeshift bandage and gauze.
Now that the wound was covered he placed my leg on his shoulder to give it more height as he bent over my bedding. He picked up my bloody toe and placed it carefully inside more moss.
I guess I should be thankful that he is saving my toe but my toe would have been saved properly if I had been taken to a damn doctor!
The nub on my foot throbbed under all that green moss and I cried some more. The pain was slightly ebbing away or rather I was getting accustomed to the feeling.
I lay back down on my mossy bed and stared at the still white sky. Thick clouds hung in the air in an attempt to release snow. The wind managed to continually whip through the tops of the pines swaying them this way and that. The pulse in my nub jumped several more times before it gradually faded into one long throb.
The man’s hands no longer stroked my feet but instead busied themselves with the fire. My leg was still raised on his shoulder and somehow he managed to move around.
He wore black pants and matching jacket that broke the wind and was resistant to water because of how slick it was. His black ski mask frightened me probably because he had just cut off my toe. I didn’t really see him as my savior, more like my torturer. In a windy and snowy environment like this, a person had to be prepared to deal with the weather. So, why wasn’t I? Why was I naked?
A sharp burst of embarrassment climbed up my face and I knew I was blushing. It’s stupid to be so modest after just losing a toe, but I can’t help it. Some stranger had seen me naked and he cut off my toe.
I pulled the gray blanket up to my chin and tried to hide myself from view.
The man tended to the fire and allowed several loud crackles to exhale from the smoke before he added more small logs. He was tending to the fire just as he had tended to my foot. Someone who played with fire should not be playing with my toes. The man should not have cut off my damn toe!
I managed to pull myself up and grabbed the moss that held my pinky toe. I unraveled the strings of moss and stared intently at my toe. There it was in all its glory. My toe. I was holding my toe but not my foot. My toe was in the palm of my hand. It seemed surreal. This couldn’t be happening. This didn’t happen. I was still dreaming. I had to be. I never heard of a Librarian who lost a toe before. This was unheard of in my line of work. This was just unreal.
I looked up at the man and he was staring intently at me through dark blue eyes. His eyes were so blue they were nearly black. I was slightly startled. I had never seen eyes like that before. I wanted to scoot backwards, away from his gaze but I felt paralyzed, frozen in fear. My cheek twitched and another tear found its way down my face.
The man reached toward my face and wiped off the lone tear with his thumb. His touch was gentle, more gentle than I remember it being. It was almost soothing. His hand was warm as he cradled my cheek. For a moment, I didn’t want him to stop touching me so I cried some more.
He managed to keep my leg still on his shoulder as he grabbed the other side of my face with his other hand. He held me in his grasp as if I was a delicate flower that was easily broken. With tender fingers he held my fragile face as I continued to weep. It was strange crying into the hands of a man who had cut off my toe and who wore a ski mask but still I cried. Circumstances mean nothing compared to pain and loss. I had endured too much pain and knew the harsh sting of loss so I could really care less about my circumstances.
My leg was beginning to ache so I rubbed at it as I cried into the man’s hands. He removed them from my face and instantly I regretted that loss. His hands reached for the raised leg and placed it on top of his backpack. As he did so the blanket was blown back in the breeze and the harsh sting of the wind gnawed at my private areas.
I shivered and moaned as the wind blew snow up into my more delicate parts. The man quickly pushed the blanket back on me and crawled on top of me. He was heavy and having his whole body on me felt like an entire house had just collapsed on me. It was still difficult to breathe into my frozen lungs let alone breathe with a man on top of me. I knew he was trying to hold the blanket down but I couldn’t breathe.
My own hands flailed at his side and he got the idea that I wanted him to move. He slid down beside me and placed his leg on top of my body in order to hold the blanket down.
I have to admit, having him beside me lent a feeling of peace and serenity to the horrors around me. He was warm even through all that heavy clothing.
I looked back into those dark blue eyes and he smiled. His soft, white lips smiled at me.
I tried to smile in kind but failed miserably. All I managed to do was drool on myself.
The man reached into his pocket and pulled out a white squeeze tube that was named “Desitin”. He squeezed the white gunk onto my lips and instantly a warm calming sensation spread over my mouth. So that’s why his lips were white, he was protecting them with ointment.
He put the ointment back into his pocket and took off his ski mask. He was so quick that I didn’t even bother to look at his face as the mask went over my own head. My hair was cold and wet as the mask pushed it into my scalp. I shivered for a minute and then relished in the added warmth.
“You lose 60% of heat through your head,” he said in voice so rich and deep that it soothed my melancholy soul. I nodded. I actually knew that fact.
I don’t care what he said just so long as he talked. His voice was too perfect to remain silent. His voice reminded me of civilization, of the prospect that home was right around the corner.
I finally looked at his face and when I did, I smiled. My lips actually managed to pull back from my tight skin and smile. I don’t remember the last time I smiled. It seems shallow that the first thing I would smile at is a good-looking man rather than smiling that I’m alive. But I couldn’t help it.
His jaw was rigidly cut from granite and a blonde five o’clock shadow framed his cheeks and chin. His nose was perfectly set into his face as his dark blue eyes rested above it. It was his eyes more than anything that made me want to scream and smile at the same time. It seems cheesy to say that his eyes held a lifetime of wisdom and intelligence but they did. He was an old soul, a soul that had been colored over the years. I could see so much life in his eyes, so much eagerness that I wondered if my own eyes carried life again. I hope my eyes were as bright as his. I hoped my green eyes smiled in the way his dark blue eyes smiled at me.
He was fair-skinned and his cheeks were rosy from the howling winds but his coloring was not at all off-putting. For me, I’m used to seeing tanned skin. Being tan in Florida is like breathing air--everyone is tan, even the elderly. His skin was so light that it was a refreshing change. I could barely tell the difference between the snow and his perfect skin.
He didn’t have any wrinkles that I could see, just perfection. His blonde hair was so close to his head that I wondered if he kept it shaved most of the time. He had a beautiful shaped head, one that could definitely go shaved unashamed.
His ears were slightly red from the cold and what made me smile was how small they were. They looked good enough to eat, or at least nibble upon.
I shook my head and got rid of my smile. I shouldn’t be thinking like that. I just lost my toe for crying out loud. I’m still naked in the freezing cold, lost in the mountains and unaware of how I came to be here. And I am freaking hungry! What does a girl have to do around here to eat?!
My belly rumbled as soon as I thought about food. What I wanted most of all was wings. I love wings. I love the hot sauce that oozes over them, love the malt vinegar that soaks the French fries, and love the light beer that washes it all down. Dear God, I could eat some wings.
My eyes looked at the graying skies and the trembling pines and I knew wings would have to wait. There couldn’t be a building, let alone a restaurant around here for hundreds of miles. I was in the boonies. Lost in the mountains with a stranger and missing a toe.
The forest behind me was growing darker and the fire was growing brighter. Evening was beginning to settle in bringing cooler temperatures and more snow. I didn’t know it could get colder but I was proven wrong.
I shivered under the blanket and stared up at the cloud ceiling. I just want to go home. I miss home. I miss my warm bed, the humid afternoons that inevitably bring thunderstorms, the sweat that always rests on my chest from the heat, and the smell of magnolias that gently wafts on the non-existent breeze. I miss that.
The man got up to his knees and placed his arms underneath my body and picked me up as if I was just a cloud, as if I weighed nothing. He must have had rippling muscles under all that clothing. I don’t weigh much, but lifting a person clear off the ground is impressive.
I wasn’t impressed for long, however. As soon as my moss bedding was gone from beneath me, a gust of wind sidled up to my backside and announced its return. I shivered more violently in his arms. I wanted him to put me down. Put me back on the mossy bed. It was warm there. Instead, he trudged about three steps and pushed me into his makeshift shelter.
His mossy bed was cool to the touch because it had been exposed to the elements. I desperately wanted my own bed back. The man placed my blanket back on me and then turned to face the fire. He poked at it with a stick and allowed the flying embers to disappear with the wind. The fire howled as more small logs were added and a sudden gush of warmth spread into the small shelter.
My nose didn’t feel as cold anymore. I liked the shelter. It was warm here. Well, at least, warmer than out there. I felt slightly guilty as the man stood outside the shelter and placed his blade back into its sheath. He was giving up his shelter that he made. He was giving it to me. Chivalry isn’t dead.
I brought my legs closer to my chest as a few pine twigs grazed my face. Their sap stuck eagerly to my cheeks but it was a small price to pay to stay protected in this shelter.
Movement caught my eye and I saw the man walking away. He was leaving me. I would be alone again. I would be naked and cold in the snow, lost in the unknown. I managed a small eek from my mouth and he turned around. With his beautiful smile and deep, rich voice he said, “I’m going to see if my traps worked.” I looked at him quizzically and he continued, “I placed some traps earlier in the hopes of catching a rabbit. Perhaps we’ll have dinner tonight.”
I understood what he was saying, but I didn’t want to be alone. I didn’t want my sawed off toe to be my only companion. How many times do I have to reiterate the fact that I am lost and scared, alone in the woods?
He turned around again and disappeared into the thick undergrowth of dying shrubs and browning pine trees.
I huddled into myself and knew that I was alone again. I was little better off than when I first started this adventure. I’m still naked, cold, and alone. But at least I have a blanket, shelter, and a fire. I could be thankful for that.
Chapter Four
Lying helpless in the cold is a great way to gain introspection. The only thing I could do was look at my life, analyze my actions, and ask questions regarding my decisions. Did I make the right decisions? If I did, then why was I stranded in the mountains? What decision had I made that led to this predicament?
The mind is a terrible thing to waste or so I’ve read. My mind was wasted. I couldn’t remember a thing before waking up in the cold snow. I could remember my life before this, but not how I ended up here. I knew my name, Emily Schaffer, my age, 29, my birthday, June 20, 1981, and a bunch of other bits of useless information that wasn’t helping me in this situation. I knew plenty of stuff, just nothing that would help me.
As the wind howled outside the makeshift shelter, a few branches of pine trembled with the torrential air flow. I knew how they felt, I was still trembling as well. I maintained a constant shiver as I huddled under my blanket and basked in the warm light of the fire. I couldn’t see past the fire anymore because everything was dark.
I didn’t like being alone in the dark in the wilderness. There are bears and things out here. I could be attacked at any moment and have no way to defend myself. I can barely scratch my nose let alone move my body quickly. If I wasn’t going to be frozen to death, I would be eaten alive or until the carnivore ripped out my throat.
I shivered some more, not out of cold, but out of fear.
I never went camping. I never went hiking. I didn’t even go to the lake. My days were spent in the safety of the concrete jungle, surrounded by houses and strip malls and plastic surgeons offices. The closest thing to nature around me was the millions of lizards that live in Florida. They are everywhere. They’re small and eat bugs and spiders so I like them. But I don’t really know what lives here. I have read countless books regarding mountains and the animals that live there, but reading and living are two completely different things. I could read that if I’m attacked by a bear I’m supposed to throw my hands over my head and fall to the ground. But I’m pretty sure I would just panic and run. There would be no way I could possibly face down a bear. No thank you.
The fire had been snapping and crackling all evening and every time it made a noise, I would jump. I hate this place. I hate the gnawing cold that grows in the evening, I hate the snow that pretends to be beautiful as it is killing me, and I especially hate the feeling of despair, of uselessness.
All I can do is lie here and wait. I can’t move. I can barely breathe because the cold has hardened my lungs. I haven’t fully thawed out yet so parts of me are still stiff and rigid.
I am helpless. I am a newborn baby lost in the woods. My fate is tied to a stranger with dark blue eyes who has just cut off my toe and is hunting rabbits.
I should be freaking out more, shouldn’t I?
A few small tears leaked from my eyes. I’m so scared. And so alone. I’m in constant pain that feels as if my skin is being ripped in twain and then eaten by millions of red ants. I know that’s a sign that feeling is coming back to my body, but I preferred the numbing. I preferred nature’s anesthesia of blinding cold.
I wish I could do more and that’s why I’m crying. I am completely and utterly helpless and at the mercy of a stranger. He controls my destiny, my fate. I’m just along for the ride.
I despise not being in control. I despise being so…vulnerable. I feel weak, unable to defend myself, to even keep myself alive. The one instinct that is universal is survival and I can’t even do that. I have to depend on a stranger to keep me alive. How pathetic is that?
I am being hard on myself but I’m never this weak. I can defend myself, provide for myself and protect myself. I always carry around mace and I even use my keys as small knives. My college campus offered self-defense classes for women because, let’s face it, there are quite a few dangers out there for women. One of their tips was to hold the car key upright as if it’s flipping someone the bird and when attacked, go for the jugular with the key. I thought that was a good idea so I made sure I remembered it. A lot of good that advice is doing me in the middle of nowhere. I should have taken a survival class or studied more on survival in the wilderness. I wouldn’t feel like such an idiot if I had.
The fire snapped loudly and I jumped again. I hated the sporadic sounds that trees make. I hated it when the wind sounded like menacing growls…
The wind really does howl here. I always thought that howling winds was just a figure of speech. Sure, I’ve lived through bad storms and hurricanes but the wind never howled. Instead, it sounded like a train huffing through a tunnel rather than a wild wolf. Here, the wind is an entity in its own right. The wind is alive. It doesn’t feel like it’s part of a storm or brought about by dropping air pressure, instead, it really is alive.
And it howls.
The howls are always far off, in the distance, when the wind rips its way through the tops of the trees and several pine needles delicately land on the ground.
When the wind calls closer, it almost growls. It sounds deep and bass-like, wild and free. It moves briskly and invisibly through the woods and even whistles through outcroppings.
There are so many strange noises here that I feel as if I am on a different planet in a galaxy far, far away.
I shiver some more and try with more ferocity to pull my knees up to my chest. They’re so stiff I can barely manage the fetal position. My skin screams as it stretches over bone and muscle.
I try licking my lips in an attempt to moisten them but my mouth is dry. I have no drool or spit. I’m bone dry. The cold has sapped me of my moisture leaving me not only freezing but parched as well. My mouth feels like a deserted tundra beaten by wind and cold.
I purse my lips and realize I’m so thirsty. I want water so badly. I want to jump into a pool and drink the liquid. I want to feel it splash down my throat and slosh around my belly. I want to feel the warm water wash over my cold body as I drink it up. I wouldn’t care if the water was warm, just so long as I was drinking and fully satiated. I’m just so damn thirsty.
I have nothing better to do than complain, so I thought I should try to remember something as to how I came to be here. The very last thing I remember was meeting a man dressed in a black suit and tie and wondering what he was doing in a library. He said he needed information on a specific person and how he might be able to look them up. I told him he should google the name and try emailing the person. I didn’t know if he was a stalker and I didn’t want to help him stalk so I gave him minimal help. He had smirked a little but sat down at a computer nonetheless. After a few minutes he had come back to talk to me. I asked if he found who he was looking for and he said “no” but that he would return tomorrow. I didn’t even know how he could access the computer without a library card. All of our computers require usernames given by the library so that no one can hack in. I wondered what he had done for ten minutes. People can be so weird and strange that I had just shook my head and continued to put books back on the shelf.
I feel like I saw him again later that day but I don’t quite remember if I did or did not. I don’t even remember what books I was placing on the shelves. Why was that the last thing I remember? It had nothing to do with my predicament and explained absolutely nothing so I had just managed to waste more of my time. Hooray.
But what else was I supposed to do? I couldn’t go for a walk, I couldn’t call for help. I could barely breathe much less send out an SOS.
The wind growled just outside my small little shelter and I shivered more into my blanket. I want to go home. I want to listen to cicadas and crickets not howling and growling wind or snapping twigs and burning embers. I want to be somewhere familiar, where I feel comfortable and safe not trapped inside this hellhole waiting for Davy Crockett to rescue me.
The wind growled again nearer to me and this time my heart picked up speed. That was not wind. That was a growl. A few twigs broke beside my shelter and I knew something wild and feral was less than a foot away.
I had thought the fire would protect me, keep me safe from wild animals but it didn’t.
I swallowed hard and peeked around the corner as my blood stopped moving. My body went still as I came face to face with black fur and dark blue eyes.
Chapter Five
The dark blue eyes seemed utterly familiar, but the black fur haunted my vision. The creature growled ferociously like a lion that had just caught its prey. Within that growl I felt a tremor of violence and fear that had no bounds.
I scooted back slowly as a few small tears etched their way down my cheeks. Blood was pumping forcefully through my cold veins sending wave after wave of ache into my already screaming muscles.
My back hit the rear of the small shelter as pine needles scratched at my neck. I couldn’t scoot back further, I couldn’t distance myself from the creature anymore. This was it.
The Cold didn’t manage to kill me but this thing would.
The creature pulled back its black lips and bared its shiny white teeth that glistened with drool and slobber. Its blue tongue lopped out from its mouth as it then licked its chops in a very human gesture.
I was a tender morsel and the creature knew it. The creature could tell I was a weak animal, wounded which made me the perfect prey. Carnivores in the wild are supposed to take down the weak and sick. The balance of life must be maintained and as Darwin said it is “Survival of the fittest”. Kill or be killed.