The Trail

Chapter 32 | Fireflies

I wanted to scream.

It felt as if the ground had come loose beneath my feet as I watched the thick blood cling to my fingers. My eyes were flooded with rivers of red that persistently flowed down my cheeks. The more I blinked, the more blind I went. It might as well have been gasoline running down my face, thrown at the flames nursing the growing despair inside.

But then, just as expeditiously as it had began, it promptly stopped. I was left with blood smeared skin and a pair of bloodshot eyes that stung terribly. I shook my head.

"Pull yourself together, Charlie", I said and wiped the blood of my face with the help of the green scarf that somehow never seemed to leave my back pocket. "You've dealt with far worse than this. You just gotta keep moving. Ain't that right, Juniper?"

The dog almost seemed to shrug at me. At least, now, I understood her reason for keeping herself at a safe distance from me. I reckoned if I could, I would, too.

After I had paid my respects to the dead, by leaving some dried lavender at the man's feet, I left the stone circle. It hummed and buzzed as I pressed through the barrier. I realised that it was more of a challenge to step outside of it than it had been coming inside. For a moment, it felt as if the energetic field would crush every bone in my body and make it explode in an unsettling fountain of body fluids.
But then, unexpectedly, I fell forward, coming down onto my knees. It felt as if I had stepped out of a swimming pool, my body strangely stiff and heavy. My head throbbed and the pressure to my lungs forced me to cough.

Slowly, I tried to stand to my feet, but was forced onto the ground once again by my dropping blood pressure. It felt as if something thick was stuck in my lungs. I coughed into my scarf in an attempt to get rid of it, this time more violently. As I removed it from my lips, hand shaking, I saw that the olive green fabric had been stained by red drops. Bearing no consolation, they gleamed solemnly in the moonlight.

Juniper, who had ran ahead, barked at me as if she wanted me to follow.

"Just a minute... I think...", my words were interrupted by another series of coughs, "I think I need to rest for a bit..."

Exhausted, without even bothering to remove the backpack from my shoulders, I curled together into a ball on the rough ground. The sharp rocks dug into my side as I rested my head on my arm.

Despite everything, I missed Owen. He refused to believe it, but I knew that he had a good heart. I wished that I could tell him. I missed the touch of Juniper's soft fur against my side. I missed my mother, her strength and resilience. She had always known what to do in the most dire of situations. I missed my father, or the memory of him at least. The absence of him in my older years did not give me much to remember him by other when he was seated behind a desk. I guess I had never considered what it would be like to die alone before. Now, that it was not too far from becoming present, it was what scared me the most. Not the pain, the pain I could handle, but the sense of being left to your own faith, to feel so infinitely small... That was what gripped me with fear.

I sighed. I was too tired to think. Too tired to care about the voices that called me out for my sins.

Too tired to even worry.

While the taste of iron still lingered upon my lips, I fell into a deep slumber.

***