Trapped

5.

I fell into freezing cold water and when it hit me my body started burning because of how icy cold it was. I could feel a shiver emerging from deep within me as my body was trying to maintain the little bit of heat still inside me. I started kicking my legs to push myself to the surface of the water which felt extra far, my wounded leg was feeling numb, which wasn't a good sign.

I finally broke through the water surface and took a deep breath before quickly looking for a place to swim to. I desperately needed to get out of this unbelievably cold water. I saw the dry land a few metres away from my position and started making my way to it. The swim felt endless and when I finally got there I crawled onto one of the big flat boulders beside the waterfall and collapsed from exhaustion. I had pushed my body to the absolute limit today and I knew I would have to do it again. I had to find Jeremy and then the rest of my friends, there was no time to waste. I made sure that the necklace was still around my neck and I was surprised to find that it was still intact.

I rested on the boulder for a couple of minutes and when I felt that I was about to drift off to sleep I stopped myself. I scraped all my energy together and sat upright. I turned my attention to my wounded leg, before I could go any further I had to make sure that my leg was okay. It was bleeding a whole lot and the thorns were still stuck in pretty deep. I took a deep breath and started tugging lightly at the branch, yelping with every little tug. I was carefully pulling it out bit by bit, hoping and praying that all the thorns would stay intact because it would only complicate things even more if one of the thorns were to break off. Finally, I pulled out the tip of the last thorn and I could start doing something about the bleeding. I pulled myself to the water and scooped up some water with both hands. I threw the water over my injured leg and wiped it off with the inside of my shirt.  I knew I had to bandage my leg in some way to stop the bleeding or else I would bleed out.

I remembered that I had a scarf in the backpack I was carrying and I quickly took it off my back and unzipped it. I took the scarf and wrapped it around my leg just tight enough to put pressure on the wound. After I took care of my leg I tried to reach my clawed shoulders, but it was an impossible task and eventually, I gave up and pushed myself to my feet. I was walking even deeper into the unknown, trying to find something or someone that could make all this trouble worthwhile. The crisp midnight breeze that was blowing through the trees went over my cold wet body and I was shivering. I had never been that cold before in my whole life.

My eyes were struggling to stay open as I forced my body to keep walking and that's when I caught sight of a light in the dark distance. I went towards the light and after a while, I arrived at a little fire that was burning low, beside the fire were a couple of really big leaves in a pile and on top of the leaves was a passed out Jason, sleeping soundly on the pile of leaves, snoring away. I smiled slightly at his snores and his open mouth.

I sat down by the fire and waited for him to wake up while I wondered how he got there. Since I had to jump off a cliff to reach this place, he must have found some way to get down that was less difficult than... well, almost killing yourself. My eyelids were becoming heavy and I struggled to stay awake, eventually, I drifted off into a dreamless sleep.

My eyelids tore apart from one another when I woke up to a loud banging noise. When my eyes were focussed, I could see Jason stomping on the spot where the fire used to be.

"What are you doing?" I asked, tiredness evident in my tone.

"I'm stomping out the fire, what does it look like?" He snapped back at me.

"It was just a question, Jason, you don't have to be so rude about it," I defended.

"How do you expect me to be nice to the person who is the sole reason why I had to sleep on the floor?!" What did he mean by that, did he think this was my fault?

"Why am I to blame?" I asked.

"Because it was your stupid idea to go down the slide which brought us to this horrid place and now you are the only one that can portal us home!" The words dripped off his tongue like venom.

"Hey, how was I supposed to know- wait, how did you know about the portal?" I asked.
He stared at me for a few seconds as if surprised at my question, he then took a piece of paper out of his back pocket and handed it to me. It was a letter, I folded it open and read it.

Dear reader,

Welcome to the inside of your very own nightmare, only this one is real. You and your friends will be taken on a trip to rediscover what friendship and life is really worth. One of your friends has been given the responsibility to find you and the rest of your group and open a portal to take you home. If your friend finds you, you are partly safe. If you do not work together you may not find your other friends in time.

Good luck.

I had no words, this letter confused me so much, but there was no time to waste on being confused. "All right, let's start at the waterfall, I can only imagine that eventually, our friends would get thirsty and then they would go looking for water so that would be the best place to start," I said and without waiting for Jason's reply I turned around and marched in the direction that I came from.