The Wild

-24- Turning Tables

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I ran as fast as my feet could carry me because anything less than that would end in someone catching me, whether it be Tyler or John or even Mary. Tyler could easily catch up, even John could, but something made them all stop at the edge of the forest. I couldn't even look back to make sure they had indeed stopped, because I was too busy jumping branches and tree trunks.

I picked up so much momentum that by the time I reached flatter ground, I was at the bottom of the hill where all the water ran off, and ended up getting my feet stuck in the mud. My feet squelched and kicked up mud all over my legs that I couldn't even see with all this maddening darkness. I searched for a tree and grabbed onto it as soon as I could, and heaved myself out of the mud foot by foot. My chest was heaving from the run, and damn did I feel awful.

I felt awful for Tyler and everything I'd put him and Brian through. There Tyler was, just getting over the fact that his mom didn't want his dad, and I couldn't even forgive him. He'd kidnapped Bennet and I, he'd broken my gutter, and paralyzed me with both fear and tormenting adoration. For all of the terrible things he'd done, coming after Mary was a bad choice after all.

I couldn't see for shit until I found myself walking towards a tree where the moonlight hit the bark and lit up the forest around it in bluish light. I was panting even more than I had been before, and my head was on fire for whatever reason. Sure, running wasn't exactly my best skill, but I'd never gotten this exhausted from it before. I blamed the adrenaline.

In the midst of twisting my necklace around and pacing the forest floor, trying to catch my breath, I heard my name called in the distance and felt like running again. Instead, I rationalized and took for the underbrush, hiding in the midst of branches and tree roots as the sound of his voice echoed through the forest and reverberated through the tree trunk beside me.

My eyes were burning, but I didn't feel like crying. My throat wasn't closing up or anything like it did when I cried, but my eyes hurt like a bitch anyway. I pressed my palms into my eye sockets and felt all sorts of awful down to my very core. I must have been making quite the racket, because not even the necklace could keep Tyler from finding me once he reached the moonlight among the trees, but then I wasn't completely sure if he was Tyler or Brian.

"Christ, Lily, what's wrong? Are you hurt?" he asked the instant he spotted me in the bushes, and made a prompt attempt to pull me out, but I kicked his hand away when he tried. I didn't know--I couldn't see him. Was it Tyler? "Tell me what's wrong, I can help."

"I-I can't--I can't breathe. No, g-get away from me," I stammered, floundering to grab onto the tree roots, but he had me around the waist in a second and pulled me free of the branches and weeds. He had mud all over his arms now because of my filthy shoes, but he didn't seem to care at all.

In the midst of not being able to breathe, I found myself being lifted up by Tyler, and forced to my feet with the intent of walking it off, maybe clearing my head from this fog, but I couldn't even process who was with me anymore. Was it actually John? When I tried to remember what he looked like, it came up blank, which had me panicking even more than before.

I couldn't breathe-

My legs hurt so much that I fell and collapsed to the ground.

A scream tore through my throat, so agonizingly desperate that it shriveled my lungs up to nothing, and left me hunched over on the ground with a split lip and hands that weren't my own. There wasn't anything to me at all except hair and fragments of what I could only assume to be pictures, and not actual memories. They weren't real.