Escape From Norriswood

CHAPTER THREE

The call-response melodies of birds echoed around Rosalyn and Tara, and in the afternoon warmth, it seemed to Rosalyn like the whole forest was listening. She noticed how the road before her seemed to curve and verve constantly. Every flat section of road lasting for a hundred or so acres, before the road dipped left or right, and around another bend. Another corner laden with greenery, the trees on the side of the road reaching into the sky. Rosalyn guessed they must be at least a couple hundred feet tall.

As they walked, Rosalyn picked up on the faint whiff of sulphur that Tara had, as well. A kind of sourness clung to the clean breeze of the forest air.

"Do you think we should worry about leaving the Rabbit where it is?" Tara asked. She was holding a stick, and had been pressing it into the ground with each step. Her wizard staff, she had called it.

"I think it'll be fine," Rosalyn said. "It's not like there have been cars coming this way. Besides, we're days away from Norriswood at this point."

Tara's staff clipped the ground, the sound of a third leg marching in counterpoint to her original two. "Do you think our parents called the RCMP?" she said.

Rosalyn let the question sift through her thoughts for a moment. Her cargo pants had been trapping the heat on her legs now for days, and even in the relative coolness that the forest offered, she wished she had a knife, something to slit them into a pair of makeshift shorts.

"Rosalyn?" Tara said.

"Yeah, I imagine my parents have called the cops by now, Tara. They must be on their deathbeds with worry." She turned to Tara and smiled, her teeth stained and crooked in the green hewn light that petered in through branches above.

Tara thought she saw something else in Rosalyn's smile. What she wanted to say was that she didn't think her father had called the cops. That if anyone was tailing them, it was him, and him alone. Suddenly, she imagined the guy who had doxxed her, (what had Bobby called him? Dr. Chad?) What if Dr. Chad had planned to come to her house? What if there was a few of them in on it, a few of the users who had bought her pics?

The idea then of a group of random people having access to pictures of her vulnerable and naked, posing in the comfort of her own home, came unbidden to her mind. A bird called out someway in the distance, it's melody ending in three long notes, like the way her kindergarten music teacher would get the class to clap their hands to rhythm. Tara saw those small hands clapping, and almost felt her own hands coming together now in the forest, clapping along. Suddenly, a chainsaw's scream rang out through the forest again, this time sound muffled, muted almost, but not too far away. Tara's staff slipped from her hands, landed with a thud onto the asphalt.

"You know what?" Rosalyn said. "Fuck this." She walked over to the gulley that separated the road from the first few inches of forest brush. On the other side of the gulley, a tree stump rose upwards from the ground. Rosalyn quickly hauled off her cargos, and sat down on. The concentric circles of the thing whirled around her, as she pulled the fabric of one leg back, stretching it before her mouth. She bit into it, and flexed the pant leg even tighter.

From the road, Tara leaned on her stick. Some ways above them, the clouds began to part as more light filtered its way down onto the road.

Tara heard the pants rip. Rosalyn sat on the log, and chucked the first cutoff piece of fabric to the side with her arm. She rotated the pants around, and picked up the next leg.

"Be careful a tick doesn't bite your bare legs," Tara said. But her voice had gone dry and hallow. There was another rip as Rosalyn tore the next piece of cargo off, and Tara looked back to the road, as she stood up and began to put the cutoffs back on.

"Ok, sorry about that," Rosalyn said. She was back on the road beside Tara. Tara just shook her head, quickly to the side, and then felt Rosalyn's hand on her back. "Everything's going to be cool," Rosalyn said. "We'll get to this town, get some gas, get some food, walk back to the car and keep driving. Who knows, maybe we'll even wind up in the United States? Cut down to Maine through Nova Scotia? Fugitives together – or, escapees, rather."

Tara found it hard to gaze into her eyes, those blue dots beaming at her, still, and silent, like micro versions of summer evening lakes. Those freckles bridging her nose, the tan line racing back behind her ears where her sunglasses had lived all summer. Tara found herself looking at the asphalt. Cracked, the water from all the rain already evaporating in the afternoon burst of sun.

"Yeah," Tara said. "Let's keep walking." She struck the black road with the base of her stick, and stepped forward.

Rosalyn followed, their five legs moving slowly across the Earth, a breeze catching her two exposed shins. She clasped her hand on Tara's back again, and laughed.

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