1X
I woke from a dreamless sleep in my bed. My legs are sore, I can barely move them. I pull myself up into a sitting position, which takes tremendous effort. I wrack my brain trying to find the reason for my stiffness and exhaustion. Just then, my mom comes into the room.
"Come down for devotions." She said, then left and went downstairs. I groggily climbed out of bed, falling when I came to the ground. My bed is a bunk bed, and I sleep on the top. So when I say I climbed out of bed, I truly did. I sat on the floor for a few moments, gathering my thoughts together.
Oh yeah, I ran away yesterday.
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I walked down along the wide dirt pathway beside a field. The pathway followed the edge of a cornfield, and led towards an old barn. I could see the highway from here, but I wasn't going to go over there. I could get picked up by strangers. Plus I had a destination in my mind now, I was gonna walk to Jane's.
Now if you know where I live, and where Jane lives, you know that it's to far to walk from my house to Jane's. Plus I had been walking in the opposite direction for the past almost hour now...
The sun was starting to set as I looked up at it. I had to turn around because it was behind me, fear started to creep up on me. Darkness meant the possibility of wild animals that could kill me. At the time I didn't realize how scary this was going to be, but along the way I had found a big thick stick. I named him George. I talked to him every so often, commenting on how beautiful it was around here.
I was now walking through a field, and I could see a strange structure in the distance.
What is it? Some kind of sign, but what's it doing in the middle of a field?
As I neared the sign thing I could kinda make out what it was. As I finally came up to it, I went around to the other side, and saw some paper with targets painted on them. The targets had tiny holes in them, probably from bullets. I looked over and saw a table about a hundred paces away, so I went to investigate. As I approached I saw that the table had bullet shells on, and around it. I took one, and put it in my pocket. I also looked around the table for a knife, but no luck, no knife.
I guess George will have to do, to bad, oh well... Well your not so bad George I just don't think you could kill anything and you might break, your a good walking stick but not really a good surviving an attack from an animal stick ya know?
After the table was a tree line, and after that an other corn field. The sky was getting darker and darker, and I started getting nervous.
I can't turn back though, noway.
I climbed over a broken metal fence, the wooden posts were disintegrating, so the fence had fallen over. I jumped to the ground, and walked into the cornfield. Every movement a stalk of corn made sent me on edge. The sun was lower now, almost setting. I stopped every so often to listen to see if I was being stalked by any creatures. It was hard to tell because of the wind. I heard a corn stalk break very loudly and very close to me, and I bolted. I held George in my hands ready to strike anything that came out at me. Moving him back and fourth from in front of me, to behind and to the sides as I constantly looked around. My heart was racing, I felt like a jack rabbit being hunted by a fox, except I didn't know if I even was being hunted by a fox, or anything else for that matter.
I stopped again, listening intently to everything around me. No concerning noises. I was out of breath, and getting tired, but I gotta press on. I continued walking forward, pushing myself closer to the road, this way at least someone could witness my death if I had enough time to run towards the road. But I stayed in the stalks so that no one on the road saw me.
The field started slanting down, and I could see the end the field at the top of a hill. There was only one problem...
There was also a house.
How am I going to get around this house? Well it's still a bit away so I'll figure it out when I get there...
I paranoidly (if that's a word) pressed on through the cornfield. With every passing minute of my being almost blind and deff because of the noise and bad visibility, and the growing darkness, my brain was starting to shut down. I was starting to talk to George less and less. I couldn't even remember why I was here, I wasn't even thinking about it either. I just had to get to Janes house, I had to keep going, I couldn't give up. But I started getting very afraid too. Maybe it's one of the things that kept me going, the fear of dying, the fear of the dark, or maybe it was my will. My will to finish. I'm a very competitive person, so I want to win. And when people don't play to win it confuses me. But this wasn't a game, I knew that. Loosing would be death, and winning would be collapsing onto Jane's coach or bed when I finally made it to her house. I was going to do that, I was going to win.
I finally got to the end of the cornfield. There was a thicket of brambles, then an other metal fence. Beyond that was what looked like a swampy marsh, but it wasn't, it just had a bunch of dry reeds throughout it. Maybe it had once been very moist. After that there was a yard, with lots of trees in it. That was good. Then the house. But it was still light enough for them to see me, so I had to be very careful. I crawled through the brambles and over to the fence.
How can I hop this? They'll see me. Maybe if I just...
I lifted up the fence, and found a spot that looked like I could fit under.
Wow now I really feel like a rabbit.
I chuckled to myself as I started to crawl under the fence. But as I got further in, my butt got stuck.
Ugh great, really butt?
I squirmed around until I got loose, pulling myself through and under. I used George to push through the dry plants so that if any snakes were there or water I would know. After a few minuets I was in the yard. There weren't to many windows on the old brick house, and a lot of them had the shades drown or the lights in the rooms weren't on. But still, just to be safe, I carefully ran, from cover to cover, crawling when necessary. Finally, I was on the other side of the house. I mentally groaned when I saw yet an other cornfield, but I still had to find a way through this next fence and past this house. I crouched in some of the underbrush near a tree, looking back up at the house. A light was on, in what looked like the family room. An old man was sitting in a lazy boy chair. A young boy passed the window every so often.
"And they will never even know I was here." I thought to myself.
I waited a few minutes longer, to make sure they weren't looking. Then I jumped over the tangly vines and stumps landing with a thud on the other side. It was lower then the top ridge, so I momentarily lost my balance, but quickly regained it, running into the "safe" coverage of the cornfield. These stalks weren't as tall, I don't know if that really helped though. So on I go, switching from walking backwards and forwards, but in the same direction through the field. Switching George from hand to hand depending what way I was facing. I cursed the sun for having to set, and wondered what I could have done to chop off some more time.
After more walking and sprinting, I came to the end of this cornfield. The sun was almost set now. I could barely see it, and the light was changing from yellow to white. Things weren't bright, everything was growing darker and scarier.
Imagine your home alone, and you hear a noise. Now add, it being dark. That feeling you get, times five. Plus the tiredness of having walked for so long. Your tired and scared, and also hungry. Not only not eating lunch, but not eating lunch and dinner. Plus your emotionally drained, but you can't remember why.
I pressed on through the tree line, hopping onto a big fallen tree, walking across, and carefully jumping to the ground on the other side. Now the sun had set, it was dark. The corn wasn't safe anymore, not like it was anyway. But now it was dark enough that I had to walk along the fence beside the road for safety reasons. So I crouched down, and made my way over to the fence. Because the fields were just to dangerous.
