Fear

Chapter Eight

The smell of death lingered.

Lumping itself to the surrounding area the scent of forest overtaken with blood. Snow was no longer a nuisance against nature, but had melted into floods, and water sources for all of the surrounding wildlife.

The ground was cold, and the air colder.

Red.

Everywhere.

It filled up Harlow's nose, ears, dripping down her arm, and surely soaked her cloth

Her breathing was slow, labored, and painful, feeling like there was a dead weight sitting on her lungs, and the puffs of air shown in front of her face due to the cold was a mocking gesture.

It was light out now, the grey sky laugh making her ready to loose her mind, everything was loud, it pounded in her head, in sync with her slowly beating heart.

The worst thing that hurt was her chest, every breath was blinding, it danced black spots in front of her eyes, visions of darkness, every minute she knew her life was slipping away.

It ends like this. There's no monster, no horrible supernatural creature, it was a pack of hungry wolves, and she was on their territory anyway.

Would a hunter find her remains in a few years?

Dry bones, picked at by starving vultures, and the rest of the wildlife.

Would Amelia and Harden never know what happened to her? Even if they found her body, it would take years to find her DNA, besides the only one needing closure would be Harden.

Amelia would be sad, but she'd move on, she was all Harden had left.

Maybe you give him too much credit, maybe he gets over you faster than you think.

Shut up, she wanted to scream.

But there was no energy left, she was drained, of life, of reason, and everything in between.

You can't give up now, after everything.

A crinkling noise came from the dead brush beside her.

They've come to finish me off. The wolves were back, maybe they'd be able to end her misery.

Because now she felt the cold seep into her bones, making everything worse.

The ruffled noise began again.

But what came out was no wolf.

In fact, it was a certain black cat.

"Cat? is that you?" Harlow's voice was raspy, with the underlined tone of agony, and disbelief.

The black furred animal stalked closer, her pink nose touching harlows hand before letting out a low meow, the cat climbed on Harlow's bloody stomach,

You can't just die here, you need to live, need to overcome your fears.

Survive.

"Help!" She called, her voice worse than when she spoke last, more of a whisper.

"Who am I k-kidding Cat?" Her voice was a broken sad whisper, waiting for her untimely ending.

No ones out here, no one will be until hunting season, she was doomed.

This was it, it was over.

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