When Jared Left

Blood pounded in my ears, air escaped my lips in uneven, ragged breaths, hitching in strange places. I curled up in a ball, the soft, autumn leaves crunching beneath me.

"He's gone. He's left me."

The words escaped my lips, even though I had been doing my best for the past half an hour to stop them from entering my mind, to stop my mind registering the pain.

He had left no trail at all, no footprints in the mess of mud and multi-coloured leaves. His scent had gone, the unique scent that I could smell from a mile away.

"Why did he leave?" I screamed at the trees. "What did I do wrong?"

I sobbed the words over and over to myself. I didn't expect an answer but I couln't help myself. Slowly I drifted to sleep, but even then it wasn't peaceful. In my dream I was still in the forest. I walked around and around, over and over again, all of the trees blurring into a big blob of green and brown. I walked until I reached a clearing; in the clearing I saw myself listening to him, again and again. His emerald green eyes were glinting in a shaft of sunlight that shone through the trees, his golden hair spiked up in an odd disarray of spikes. His biceps stood out under his white T-shirt, muscular and sculpted. I felt my chest rip open over and over again, each time wider and wider. Every time I looked at him, looked at him with such longing, the pain ripped through me. It was excrutiating, it tortured me, all of my body was screaming, begging for it to stop, and I woke myself screaming, still lying on the forest floor, the wet mud seeping through my clothes.