Without A Choice

Chapter 1

She hummed to the tune emitted from her iPod as she carried her liter of cookies and cream ice-cream home. It was a common treat that she allowed for herself. She never gained weight because after being expelled from school, her mother sent her to boot camp where she had learnt a phenomenal fitness routine. She wasn't worried about strangers, not in this neighborhood, so she didn't notice the dark car with tinted windows as it followed her home.

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She looked at the clock, 5 minutes had passed. Second by second, minute by minute the hand ticks away. 10, 20, 30 minutes. An hour. The phone rings, the fire crackles, the body lays still. She can't tear her eyes away from the body. The Cheshire cat slinks along the window sill, the soft snow flitters to the ground outside, the snow-capped mountains of Switzerland visible through the picture window. Just beyond the tree-line at the top, a reindeer wanders out, the young bucks great antlers catching the snow. A single shot is all it takes to wake Talia from her trance. Dashing across to draw the curtains, she sees that it is only the local hunters. But it's too soon to celebrate safety, not now that she had done this, she made her bed, and she could either lay in it or walk out the door. Talia decided to choose the second option, shoving her belongings into her hiking pack, she removed the evidence of her ever being here, wiping over surfaces, spraying over her scent and lastly she wiped over the gun handle placing the weapon into his hand as he lie face down, a pool of blood drying on the cream carpet. Hopefully no one would pick up on the cigarette she over looked or the lipstick on the counter.

She hiked through the snow-capped mountains for three hours, purely concentrating on the snow floating around her, and the pain in her leg becoming more excruciating with each step. Deciding on a break, Talia sat with her leg hitched up on a log in front of her, only slightly relieving the pain coursing through her leg. She rolled up her trouser leg to check the damage. It was worse than she thought, she needed stitches, but she couldn't go into a hospital and tell them what had happened. She couldn't tell them that a bottle had been smashed into her head, just missing her temple, and about having the shards pierced into her calf. The violence she had encountered over the last month was worse than she could ever have imagined. Deciding that she had to do something about her leg, Talia searched through her pack, becoming overjoyed when she found a first aid kit. Grimacing, she stitched up her leg as best she good, only slightly more glad that she had been sent to boot camp.

Rummaging through her pack, she looked for food. 'Stupid' she thought. She hasn't grabbed much food. She had a packet of biscuits and a couple of mandarins. That wouldn't last her long. As if on cue she heard her tummy rumble loudly resembling thunder. She rationed her food so that it would last as long as possible and she filled her water bottle with snow, not yellow snow only white snow, so that it would melt into water.

She hiked for another two hours, slipping over fallen logs and on icy patches. Every step brought on a new level of pain in her leg. It felt as if a fire was burning within her leg. She soon came upon a small dent like cave in the mountain. It want large like a cavern cave, just a small crevice that would provide shelter from the biting winds and snow fall. As it grew dark she unrolled a tarp and thought she may need a fire in the freezing night air.

An hour after limping around collecting the driest stick and twigs she could find, Talia was drifting off to sleep next to the small fire wrapped in the tarp wearing all of her jumpers and coats she had packed. She fell into a restless sleep full of nightmares from the past month and the fear of the monsters that roamed these darkening woods.

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Thanks for reading! Hopefully it's up to standard, my first time writing.

Cheers!

- Lauren ✌