A Life Wasted

Worst Night Ever

The next time I woke the dogs were still gone and I was still alone, propped up against the dead tree stump. I looked up and noticed that it was getting dark. That or it had been dark and was now getting light. I had no way of knowing which. Hoping that it was getting dark I thought that I needed to get up and get going. So with that thought I stood up. I was stiff and sore. Every limb felt like it had the worst possible case of being asleep, but when I thought I should get up everything responded and without thinking about the fact that I hadn't been able to move all day, I simply stood up.

It wasn't until I stomped my numb feet on the ground that I remembered what had happened that day. That I'd been unable to move and convinced myself that I would die where I lay. Yet here I stood, completely numb but in no pain at all. I actually felt pretty good. Somewhere in my mind I worked out that the lack of pain was a bad thing. That my frostbite was so severe I couldn't feel the pain troubled me but not enough to change my course. I was in bad shape but I no longer believed I was going to die. By standing up I had found hope. From where I had laid at the mercy of those dogs a few hours ago a little hope was a precious thing.

Since crossing the creek about twenty hours earlier I had been walking north, with a slight western slant. There was a medium size college town in that direction so that had been my back up plan after not being able to catch the train. By my rough figuring I should've been less than ten miles from the town so hoped to be able to see its lights soon after it became fully dark.

I stood by that tree and stomped my feet until I figured it was dark enough that I couldn't be seen from a distant house. When I was comfortable with how dark it had become I continued my journey north. The clouds were low in the sky, as they had been the previous night and were the few times I had been lucid during the day. As I walked I thought about those low clouds. They looked like snow clouds but there hadn't been any snow. They were low and thick enough to not allow any visibility about them. The sun lit the clouds but they were so thick that I wasn't able to discern where the sun had been during the day. So thick that when I woke up and stood up I couldn't see where the sun had set, even though I knew where west was. With all of this in mind it occurred to me that I'd not heard an aircraft all day. Id expected an air search at first light but it was possible that the clouds had been too low to fly VFR. I've flown in clouds that low, I called it scud running, but it was possible that the professional pilots that worked for the government and the state wouldn't chance it. It was also possible that they had flown in search of me and that I'd been unconscious when they were near. Either way they hadn't found me, nor were they likely to search from air that night. Even I wouldn't fly below these clouds at night.

Well I suppose I would've if I could've found an airplane.

Though I began this night's walk feeling hale and whole, I went downhill fast. The first thing I noticed was that my brain stopped working, or at least it had stopped working well. I'd been thinking about flying then I just sort of spaced out and saw myself soaring into the clouds without an airplane. The next thought I had involved having my face planted on top of a rock hard clod of dirt. I had passed out and fell. Passed out so absolutely that my arms were at my side, having made no defensive move as I fell. When I stood I wiped my face and had blood on my hand. The blood immediately froze. I started walking again and vaguely wondered why my face didn't hurt from the fall and what the freezing temperature of blood was.

I hadn't walked too far before I found myself looking at the ground again. When I stood I had something in my mouth. Curiously I spit the foreign object into my hand. Two teeth. Still no pain. I walked on and tried to understand how I could fall to the ground hard enough to break two teeth but not feel any pain. This process repeated all night. I would wake up with my face planted in the dirt and realize I had passed out, then get up and start walking again. Several of those times I had to spit out teeth. Thinking I'd figure out a solution I got up again and walked backwards, figuring that when I fell I wouldn't bust out anymore teeth. Only this time I fell after a few steps. I didn't pass out this time, I tripped. Rather than landing on my face I landed on my butt. Strangely my butt hurt from the fall yet my face didn't.