In-between the Real Story

In-between

Her first day in the jungle consisted of a few bruises and throwing up (she had tripped over a rock hidden in the vegetation and fell face first into a shrub full of oval shaped leaves and particularly sweet yellow fruits she had felt compelled to eat. They turned out to be poisonous.). After that, Harper was more careful not to let her void of a stomach make any decisions for her. But her stomach was obviously not happy with that arrangement as it kept loudly complaining. But hey, what could she do about it?

Harper had decided to set up a sort of 'camp' near where she woke up in naive hopes that she wasn't far from home and someone was looking for her. The first night she had made a lean-to made of sticks and large leaves (that kept falling over) and a small fire pit. The night was frigid and the ground was lumpy and hard so Harper didn't get very much sleep.

Most of her traps and hunting expeditions resulted in small animals and after she had gotten too ambitious and killed one of the turtles that had (foolishly) crawled up onto the river banks during their 'apparent' breeding season, they seemed to be avoiding her. Who knew turtles had such good learning abilities? At least it had sustained her for about two days and a half days. But she was being stingy.

Come the fourth day and some of her shallower scrapes were healed or were getting there. The wound on her forehead refused to close up, seeming more painful and swollen every day, and her stomach was yelling at her to go find food. At about mid-morning, after putting out the fire and sharpening the poor excuse for a spear she had made, Harper decided to go check her traps.

Harper sighed. "Nothing," she muttered. But that was to be expected since this trap was probably too close to her camp to actually be of any use anyways. She made a mental note to take it apart and move it later.

As she went along her (now daily) route, checking and resetting all of her various traps, she didn't find a single thing. Now that was strange. Come to think of it, the jungle was oddly quiet. There were no birds squawking or bugs buzzing. Just a brief breeze whistling through, rustling many plants' leaves as it went by.

Harper was on her guard now, her body crouched low to the ground so as to be hidden from view. She didn't know what she was wary of but didn't want to find out too soon. Even still, she couldn't help but be a little hopeful.

'People are loud and scare away animals all the time right? Maybe someone's finally found me!' she thought. 'But then, why is it so quiet? Why am I getting a bad feeling about this?' another section of her brain reasoned with more logic than the optimistic side.

'But I've been stuck in this stupid rain-forest for weeks!'

'It had not been weeks! Stop overreacting. It's only been four days.'

While Harper's little voices were arguing, the thin crackle of leaves sounded off to her left. Her breathing sped up and her head snapped in the direction of the unexpected noise. Harper sank even lower until she was in a sprinting start position. Her heart was pounding in her head and it felt like she was in hyper-focus mode. Her gut told her to make assumptions later and to just be careful for now. She listened, seeing as she didn't want to end up as a kebab on the end of a spear if she rushed up and gave someone a huge hug for 'saving' her.

A large boot stepped out of the foliage, followed by the heavily built body of a man with a strange mask. The face of an angel was painted onto the mask and a gold wire halo was attached to it. Something about that mask sent chills down Harper's spine along with the strange feeling of nostalgia. That was weird.

The man was wearing a wet red trench coat and black combat boots. Harper got the feeling that that coat wasn't supposed to be red but she couldn't tell what color it had previously been. The strange man looked around sternly and took two steps forward. Then he sniffed the air and looked to his left. Where Harper was hiding.