Nothing At All

2

Opening my eyes, I saw that I was laying on the ground. My head, resting in a pile of dead leaves, hurt like a bitch. My vision was still fuzzy, but I could see that I was in the same clearing as before.

The memories of what happened before the lightning blast came back to me in an instant, sending me scrambling to my feet. I looked frantically for Mom and the strangers, but they were nowhere to be seen. Even the circle of random things in the mud was gone.

Worst of all, the world was dead silent. The rain had disappeared like it never existed, leaving a void where the thunder had been. No birds chirped, nor any cars revved their engines in the distance. A deadly silence permeated the world.

"Mom!" I hollered. "Alex!"

I took a step forward and feel back down. My stomach retched and the contents of my dinner came back up worse off than they had gone down. I clutched my stomach with one hand and desperately tried to hold back my hair with the other. My nose was barely two inches above the pile of vomit, causing me to drive heave long after my stomach was empty.

When I could no longer hold myself up, I rolled onto my back and stared up at the sky. There wasn't a single cloud up there. The stars looked like someone held black construction paper up to a lamp and poked holes in it.

I had to keep going. Too much weird shit was happening for me to keep laying down. Climbing back to my shaky feet, I looked again for any sign of human life. There was nothing, not even leaves shaking in the breeze.

That was when the panic started to set in. 

"Mom!" I screamed again. I stumbled towards the trees in the direction I thought we had come from. There was nothing to indicate we had ever been here; no footprints or torn clothes, no blood or shattered glass.

My heart thumbed in my chest. The blood pounding in my head left me feeling hot and dazed. Every time I turned my head, I expected to find one of the assailants lunging at me; it would have been almost welcoming, because then I would know that I wasn't all alone.

I slumped against a tree with no clue what to do. I felt something digging into my back and was surprised to find that I was still wearing my backpack. I pulled it off and opened it. There had to be something in there that could help me make sense of this all.

I sighed in relief when I felt the cool screen of my phone. After unlocking it, I immediately made to call the police. The phone rang for a split second before the line went dead. My hopes for help crumbled when I finally noticed the no reception signal at the top. The one time I need reception in this goddamn country and I couldn't get it.

I finally let the tears fall. I wasn't sobbing dramatically like in movies; that would take too much energy. Instead, the salty tears streamed quietly down my cheeks as I leaned my head back against the tree in exhaustion.

When I opened my eyes, I saw a small plume of smoke cresting the trees not too far in the distant. How had someone managed to get a fire going during the torrential downpour from only a few minutes ago? With nothing better to do, I pushed myself up and stared walking in that direction.

Every step was agony. Something was definitely wrong with my leg, but I didn't want to take off my pants to check what it was. The only thing I could do was keep walking and hope I didn't have any broken bones. My brain was too cloudy to come up with any other ideas.

My eyes were so focused on the smoke that I didn't realize someone was behind me. It wasn't until I heard a stick snap that my adrenaline kicked in again. I whirled around and froze at the sight of a shadowy figure standing only twenty feet away from me. A hood was pulled over their head, obscuring any features.

As soon as they knew I saw them, they made a move to raise their hand. Whoever the person was shouted something at me, but I didn't stick around long enough to figure out what it was.

I ran for my life once again, but it was not as easy as before. Mom and Alex weren't leading me and now all the pain caused by my injuries flared up. My run was hardly faster than a grandmother's speed walking.

The person started to chant and I only had time for one final thought—Oh shit, not this again—before I passed out.