Lost in the Woods

You don’t realize what an obvious Fuck Up this was until you see the figure staring at you from the treeline. You read the statistics. You know that you are at least four times as likely to get assaulted, raped, murdered or worse.

So when you catch yourself in the woods alone, in the pre-dawn darkness, with only a camera to defend yourself, you recongize the Fuck Up. 

Your heart hammers in your chest and it begins to tighten. As your blood pressure rises, you feel a dull ache behind your eyes form. You become aware of quick, cold breaths and the frigid non-feeling at the tip of your nose. 

You keep pushing forward on the trail because You Are Not Afraid. The squirrels over your head keep tossing acorns down into the underbrush, creating a series of small crashes. They echo like waves through a thick mire.  

You’ve lost sight of the Figure by now, whatever it was.

You spot copses of dead trees peppering the trailside, violently thrust into each other like highway pileups. You recall a documentary about Bigfoot that you watched. You really hope that the Figure is a Bigfoot. Bigfoots - feet? - cannot be transphobic, right?

The sun begins to peek through the canopy of the lithe pine trees. Their branches pierce dawn light, shading the fallen pine needles littering the Earth. 

You line up a shot of the pine stands. How did these rows get so straight?

The eyelet of your boots snags on a branch and you trip, cracking a branch on the ground.

An amorphous dark figure darts away - you see it only for a second. It glides with disturbing quickness behind the stands of pines. Maybe it was a deer but you swear it was too round and large.

This is when you decide to leave the forest.

The sun continues to rise behind you as you make your exit. You see a stocky man and his black lab on the trail ahead. The man avoids eye contact when his dog boops your hand with his wet snout.

Behind the duo is a trio of salmon-haired women in track suits, power walking into the forest you just left. One of the women gives you a suspicious glance and, frowning, whispers something to her companions. The others ignore you.

Still, it’s a relief to have witnesses. 

Exiting the woods, you see the parking lot is now almost completely full. The day has started. You see a group of hikers weighing their packs down with sandbags. Before you get in your car, you spot a caterpillar corpse. Fruiting fungal bodies burst forth from its rotten exterior. 

Closing the door to your car, you can feel your shoulders drop. You check the photos on your camera. No obsidian figures, faceless and gawking.

You don’t know if that worries you more, or less.