Insight

Chapter Twenty: An Extension of Self

 I fell asleep very quickly, the emotional journey of the day taking no toll on my ability to sleep.

Somehow I was very lucidly aware that I slept without dreaming for a long couple of hours, feeling as if I were asleep for days instead of hours.

Then, the lack of dreams came to an abrupt end as a landscape constructed itself before me.

Before me was darkness. As my eyes adjusted, I continued to hide in the slight undergrowth than ran parallel to the fence. I felt confident enough in my layout of the camp that I might be able to make it out without getting caught by the Nurses. I heard the faint sound of footsteps and immediately sought out where it was coming from. A Nurse with hair that came down past her hips was walking leisurely towards where I had just come from, coming closer to me, then thankfully passing me and continuing into the clearing that held the girls' cabins.

As soon as she was out of my line of sight and I could no longer hear her, I started moving again, crouching low and moving quickly and as quietly as I could. I stopped every couple of minutes, hearing something other than my own labored breathing. Sometimes it was nothing more than my overactive imagination. Most times it was a Nurse, moving closer to me or swiveling around to look at where I had just been because I had become too loud, too nervous to try and keep quiet. Anxious to leave. But every Nurse managed to not see me, passed me by uneventfully as I held my breathe until I thought I would pass out.

Soon I had reached the point I was most scared of, where I'd have to run across the openness of the main camp and get over the gate to reach the road. After that I hoped that the fact that they would have to open the gate to come get me would help me get far enough down the road to hide in the forest until they stopped searching and I could travel down the road at a pace that wouldn't exhaust me until I could find either another road or a person to take me far away. I knew I wasn't fast enough or strong enough to run straight down the road away from this place with them coming after me.

I steadied my breathing, squatting in the last bit of undergrowth before the openness and preparing to bolt for it. My eyes flickered back and forth, taking in every Nurse in the area. There were three, two males and a female. The female was in the way of my path to run but was quickly moving away and the two males were on opposite sides of the main encampment. One turned down the path that led to the boys' cabins, the other called out to the female Nurse.

"Hey, a few of us are gathering at the fire pit, you should come join us."

"I'm supposed to be patrolling." the female Nurse responded.

"We all are. Come on, I've been at this Camp for the past three Shipments. No one does anything this early. And why would they?"

"Alright, I'm coming."

Lucky break, I thought to myself. Too bad that Nurse was wrong.

Soon enough the two Nurses were far enough away with the backs to me that I thought it might be safe to make a break. While I had been waiting for them to go, I had only seen one other Nurse, but he had also gone down the path that led to the boys' cabins.

I stood up, still for a moment, and then burst into movement, pushing myself as fast as I could towards the gate. I ran so fast that I actually slammed into the gate instead of being able to stop. It made a loud clanging and I knew anyone around would soon be here to investigate. I climbed the gate with difficulty, the only handholds and footholds were the (luckily rather sizable) handle to open the gate, which was currently bolted shut, and the top of the fence, which was high enough that I would have to jump from standing on the handle, which was potentially deadly. Why didn't you just climb the fence? I briefly thought to myself before deciding that having a definite way out was much better than wandering through the forest and starving to death. I grabbed the handle and used all of my body strength to pull myself up. I contorted weirdly, causing sudden pain in my neck and spine, but kept going. I managed to both be holding the handles with my hands and have my toes resting on them. I inched my feet forward, wishing that I had stretched more or was more limber. Now came the first tricky part. I had to let go of the handles and stand up on them. Thank the gods that I rock climbed in my dreamscape, I thought, a single prayer flying through my conscious as a I prepared myself. In one fluid motion, I let go of the handles and used every possibly muscle in my thighs and calfs to push myself upwards, hoping that my feet wouldn't slip off the handles. My body straightened, then slammed into the gate loudly and painfully but I let it happen, knowing that that would steady me and let me get my feet more firmly on the handles. My life flashed briefly before my eyes, then I felt the semi-firmness of the handles under my feet. I let myself breathe a sigh of relief, then heard voices coming closer and knew I had to get over the gate fast. I realized jumping from the handle would be difficult, as squatting down in order to jump with my knees facing forward was impossible. So I squatted down with my knees out, as if I were a frog, then sprung, arms stretched upward. My fingers managed to clasp the lip of the gate and I quickly adjusted to get a more firm hold. Then, without thinking, I pulled myself upwards and swung one leg over the gate, straddling it. From that vantage point, I could see Nurses in the distance.