Outlaw

4. Calypso

Day 1

I awoke with a start, it took a minute for me to remember where I was. Then all of the awful memories came flooding back to me: the woman telling me I had three days in a chase for my life, I remembered my mother sitting at the kitchen table all alone, soon to be dead because of my own selfishness. I hated myself for what I had done and wanted nothing better than to sit here in this tree hollow and wait for death to find me. Self preservation wouldn't allow it, it told me I had to get up and keep going or my mother would have died for nothing. I suppose it was right, no matter how much I hated the fact. As I rose to stand, all the aches and pains from yesterday's running came down on me like a ton of bricks, almost pushing me back down to the floor! With all the effort I could muster, I stayed on my feet, I had never felt such pain before. It ached all the way down to my toes - ironic. This was not going to be easy, that was clear, it was also now plain to see that I couldn't run for three days straight, even if I was good at it. So, I resigned myself to picking up my pack, and begining to walk west. The sun would be the only thing guiding me for a while to come, hopefully...

Trees cast a greenish tint over the surroundings and my own features were shaded the same colour as the morning sun shine thorough the leaves. Early dew glistened like a thousand pearls on the leaves of trees and bushes. There was so much of it on every perceivable surface that it seemed like there would be enough to fill my entire flask, though I didn't  really have the time in my hands to test the theory at the present (I made a mental note in the back of my brain to test this if/when I made it  back home).

I went out in the woods very often back home so I could semi confidently tell you which berries would kill you and which ones wouldn't; a helpful skill to have in this particular situation. The little voices in my head were telling me to keep running while my body was telling me to sit down and eat some of those delicious, poisonous berries. It was like my body was having an argument with itself without my permission. I know, RUDE! In the end, I took my rightful position as being in charge of the faculties of my body. I shut my stomach up and kept walking. Finally, peace and quiet; so much so that I can at last begin to notice the landscape around me.

Great, towering oaks, oaks that were older than time towered over me. Not in the menacing way, but in the way a parent would stand over a child: protective, like a sentinel. Overhead, a canopy of leaves sheltered me like a blanket; varying hues of green melding together to form one single shade that was plastered to every surface, giving the forest a lime tint. Slowly fading morning dew glistened from the leaves of bushes and the branches of trees, joyous creatures peeking out from their houses to say hello before retreating once more into their abode. Berries - some poisonous some not - popped out of the bushes they resided in in splashes of colour like the baubles on the Christmas tree we used to have at home.

The thought of our old Christmas tree conjured up melancholy emotions within me as I reminisced about how we would put it up every year, at least, every year before father died. Now, well, Christmas might as well not happen in our house: no presents, no tree, no Christmas dinner. There was nothing for me back home with father gone and the villagers all hater me for supposedly killing my own beloved father so they would be happy to see me go. Right? Probably? I hope so or my guilt-ridden conscience will berate me about it the whole journey and I could really do without that thank you very much.

I was following a stream west through the forest, the water gurgling secrets I couldn't understand into my ear as I continued my trek. The water brought back memories from when father would take me down to the river and play with me. It brought back memories of when he died.

We were playing hide and seek as per usual and I was hiding in a bush. Suddenly, soldiers surrounded father, soldiers I now recognised as the ones working for the facility. The last thing he ever said to me, he whispered so the soldiers couldn't hear:

"I love you Calypso, now go, run to mummy quietly and don't look back."

I did what he said, as I ran I heard the gunshots and my father's screams. I wanted to cry out, to tell him that everything I never got to say, tell him that I would avenge him. As soon as I got home and told my mother everything that had happened, she went into the trance like state she is still in now - three years later - starting into nothing. She watched the front door with the intent of a bloodhound, waiting for my father to walk through the door like he always did, but he would never walk through the door again. All of a sudden, the whispers of the trees and the gurgling of the brook turned into snippets of my father's last words.

"Don't look back"

The trees mocked me as I broke into a sprint, calling my father's last words after me, like a parting call.

"Run to mummy"

The leaves rustled the words at me, reminding me what I caused to happen to my father.

"Quietly"

Water gurgled in the stream on my right, telling me what a bad person I was.

"I love you"

The sun was setting and casting the world in shadows as I got my sleeping mat out and got ready to go to bed

"I love you..."

I lay looking at the stars, thinking of all the things I could have done better throughout my life, all the things I wish I could've said.

"Well I'll probably be dead soon so I won't have to think about it any longer."

I laughed harshly, more a bitter bark that a laugh out of humour, humour wasn't an emotion I was inclined to feeling at the present, even if I was able with all the morbid, dark thoughts swirling through my brain. It was a cruel world I lived in.

My father's words played through my head like a broken record all night long, over and over and over and over...

I didn't sleep a wink.