Lady Luck

6

Nausea fills my mind, the world spinning around me even though I can barely see a thing through the static. Every corner I turn stops my heart, wondering what I'll see on the other side. The halls seem endless, twisting and turning with no door or exit in sight. Still I run as fast I can, ignoring the soreness in my legs.

Then it happens.

I turn a corner, and I see it.

A tall, black figure, towering hundreds of feet above me. I skid to a stop and my head automatically tilts back, looking for the top of it. Staring down at me is a featureless white face, as large and luminescent as the moon.


Gasping, my eyes popped open as I suddenly jolted awake, my heart pounding. Lying there in shock, it took me a few seconds to realize that I was safe in my sleeping bag, nestled inside my tent. Sweat covered my body, visible in the dim morning light that managed to seep into through the mesh window in the tent's door, and I wiped my forehead with a sigh.

"Nightmares again, huh," I muttered sullenly, groaning softly to myself. Funny, I'd expect to have SOME nightmares featuring that overdosed druggie's face, or the drug dealer's corpse, or Hoody, but no. All I ever saw was that freaking faceless monster. And honestly, I was getting pretty sick of it. Sighing, I pushed the thought out of my mind and crawled out of the sleeping bag. No point in trying to go back to sleep, the shock from the nightmare left me wide awake. Leaning towards the tent door, I unzipped it and crawled outside into the early morning light.

Three months have passed since that fateful night in the old building. Not even twenty-four hours after I fled from that monster, the building made the news. Apparently it collapsed, killing three gang members who were inside at the time. The druggie and drug dealer were just chalked up as two more victims of the tragedy—lucky for Hoody, I guess. Nothing was reported about him, either, so I guess he's still alive, though I haven't seen him since then.

Strange how things worked out. Traumatizing as that night was, if all that stuff hadn't gone down, I probably would have been there when it collapsed and just been another nameless statistic. Instead, I escaped totally unscathed, just like every other tragedy I've encountered, making this tragedy just another example of my insane luck. Still, it wasn't all good—all my stuff was still there when the building fell. Coupled with the resulting paranoia from that night leaving me jumpier than ever, well, that meant things were pretty rough for a while.

Now here I was three months later, and things were finally settling down. Summer had finally arrived—or at least warmer temperatures had—so after rotating through several temporary homes, I decided to just pool what little money I had to buy a tent and go camping. My days were spent becoming one with nature in a giant local park, mostly because I had pretty much nothing else to do. (Fun fact: being homeless can get REALLY boring.)

"Park" usually brings to mind a small plot of land with a playground and lots of grass, and maybe a baseball ring or something. Not this place, though. This place was giant, full of all kinds of nature trails and structures and abandoned buildings. I'd been camping there for nearly a week, and I still hadn't seen everything the park had to offer. After a quick breakfast of trail mix, I waited for sunrise before setting out to find a nature trail I'd discovered just the previous day. Aside from the early wake-up, this day seemed like it would be the same as all the others.

I really should have known better.

Following the trail into the woods, everything felt pretty calm and peaceful. Birdsong filled the air and I could hear a woodpecker somewhere nearby, pecking away steadily at a tree, while squirrels skittered along the branches. All in all, a pretty nice walk. It seemed like it would stay that way, even as I heard faint music and footsteps in the distance. Soon enough a jogger came into sight running along another trail that crossed mine. Music streamed from a music player hidden in one of his pockets, and as our paths drew closer he took out some ear buds and plugged them into it, muting the sound so that only he could hear it.

We both gave each other small nods as we passed each other, just small acknowledgments of "Hello, person I do not know. Yes, I see you. Yes, I exist, and so do you. Neither of us are ghosts. Farewell fellow living stranger." That's how I interpret those nods anyway, can't really speak for other people. We passed each other in silence, me going my way and him going his. Overall, a totally normal, run-of-the-mill encounter, if you could even call passing each other that.

Then I heard a loud, thunderous creak.

Freezing in place at the sound, my mind began racing at lightning-fast paces. Images from years ago flashed through my mind, an incident so small that I'd almost forgotten it. Reflexes kicked in as I spun around and ran, knowing I only had mere seconds to act. Behind me I saw the jogger standing still and looking at the sky in confusion, having clearly heard the creak even through his music but making no motion to move. Great, just great, I thought sarcastically. Without thinking I grabbed his arm as I zoomed past him, dragging him along with me.

Seconds later there was a loud crash as a giant branch fell on the ground right behind us.

We nearly fell at the sudden force exerted by the crash, stumbling forward and quickly grabbing onto nearby trees to keep our balances. Panting from my abrupt burst of energy, I turned to shoot the fallen branch a withering glare. "Hello again, bad luck," I muttered to myself sarcastically. The jogger, meanwhile, stared at the branch in shock, his jaw hanging open.

"What the hell!?" he blurted, tearing his ear buds out as he stared at the tree and then the branch. "What the—what just happened!?"

"We were almost crushed by a tree branch," I said matter-of-factly. "We wouldn't been hit by it directly, but the smaller branches extending from it would've probably knocked us down and at least cause some pretty bad injuries, probably trapping us. We wouldn't be killed by the impact, but since this is pretty deep in the forest the chances anyone would come by anytime soon would be really small. We'd probably die of blood loss, dehydration, or... star...ving..."

I trailed off as I noticed him staring at me in shock, and after a few moments I just quietly ducked my head. My insane luck's left me pretty desensitized to near-death experiences, so it's easy to look at them rationally after they happen. It's also easy to forget that other people aren't the same way and tend to freak out over them right after they happen. It tends to put people off, and clearly this guy was no exception, so I just stuck my hands in my pockets and started heading back the way I came.

So you can imagine my surprise when I heard his footsteps start to trail after me, twigs snapping under his shoes as he drew closer. "Hey, wait up," he called, and quickly caught up and matched my pace. "Where are you going?" I glanced at him in surprise, not really expecting any continued contact.

"Uh, home," I muttered a little awkwardly.

"Home, huh?" He glanced over me, and suddenly I felt pretty self-conscious. Homelessness doesn't provide many regular opportunities to take care of your appearance, and the fact I'd been camping the past few days didn't help. My clothes were pretty dirty and ragged after a fall from an earlier hike, and I hadn't exactly had a chance to take a shower anytime recently, either. So yeah, I wasn't at my best. As I tried to ignore his staring, he continued. "So, do you, uh, live nearby?"

"...Kinda?" I shrugged. Honestly, I didn't really know how to react to this guy. I hadn't talked to many people since running away; the most I'd talked to someone during my stint as a homeless person was that Hoody guy, and he wasn't exactly the most talkative guy. So yeah, I was pretty rusty at conversation and felt overall pretty awkward with this guy. Didn't help my dulled danger senses made it hard for me to tell if he was a creeper or not.

As I tried to sort out his criminal latency in my mind the guy suddenly continued. "Do you want to get lunch?" At this point I had to stop walking, his question totally catching off-guard.

"...Uh, isn't it a bit fast for that?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Not like a date or anything," he quickly amended, holding up his hands. "You pretty much just saved my life, so I at least owe you lunch or something. Probably just a fast food place or something cheap though, kinda in between jobs right now." He gave a small shrug, while I just regarded him thoughtfully. He hadn't made any moves or anything even though we were all alone in the forest, so he probably didn't have any bad intentions like that. Also, I was kinda hungry. Trail mix isn't a very filling breakfast. With all those factors in mind, I slowly nodded.

"Alright, sure, I guess."

"Okay, great." With that we continued heading down the trail at a leisurely pace, birdsong and woodpeckers pecking filling the silence. As we walked along, he noted, "By the way, I never caught your name."

"(Name). Yours?"

"Tim."