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Chapter Eighteen

The moonlight cast a silvery light by the creek, illuminating everything in its sight. I could not stay asleep because I was so hungry and sick. My stomach would not quit making awful gurgling noises, and I had a terrible case of diarrhea from the creek water. So much regret ran through me, quite literally. I had climbed up and down the tree at least five times in the past two hours to release myself in the bushes.

An awful noise of an animal screeching echoed through the air, interrupting me from my distressed daze. I clenched my eyes shut and tried to ignore it so that I could rest while I could, but the relentless wails were getting under my skin. It was clear that something was dying- the sounds of the process filling the predatory atmosphere and leaving the air thick with tension.

Suddenly, the cries came to a halt. A disturbing sound of bones crunching replaced them. Curiosity got the best of me. I wanted to know what had been murdered below.

I rolled over and slowly peeked over the edge of my spot in the tree, my heart racing as I searched the darkness. What was left of a dead rabbit was scattered below me, nothing else in sight. I was about to look away so that I could lay back down, but my eye caught a movement in the darkness. A glowing pair of eyes in between bushes stared up at me, sending a chill up my spine.

"Go away." I demanded in a loud tone, hoping it would scare off easily.

To my dismay, I got a growl in response. My heart rate increased as my gut demanded for me to let it be.

"Okay then, never mind." I whispered, retreating my intended mission to get the animal to go on its way. I flopped on my back, the whole platform wobbling beneath me.

There is no way I am going to have it out with whatever is down there. Nope. I will lay right here.

It is not exactly my goal to be a night snack to some rabid animal. I did not want to have the same fate that Mr. Bugs Bunny did.

I felt bad for him, as I could hear his meat get chewed on by the creature below. I know it is only the circle of life, but still, I like rabbits. It felt wrong to not help it in some way, but there is nothing I could do. If I had tried to step in, the beast would be feasting on my limbs instead.

My legs felt antsy and restless, constantly twitching on the rough wood. I scratched the bark beside my face. It peeled off easily and fell to the ground. What can I say? I was miserably bored.

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It felt like I had been waiting forever until everything came back into plain sight as the sun returned. The animal below kept me awake for a while as it shuffled around the bushes and camped out as if it were waiting for me to leave this tree.

The branches above my head shook with the wind, the small leaves on the end jiggling. I lay there staring up at them, trying to imagine what it would feel like to be one of the small blades.

I would feel free, waltzing with the breeze that would capture my edges and guide me. Or maybe, just maybe, I would find myself between the mandibles of a grasshopper. The dark brown spit would cover my veins for flavor before its jaws would expand and munch on me.

I pushed the ridiculous notion out of my mind. Who thinks of what it would be like to be eaten by a grasshopper?

Perhaps I was just thinking that because there was one crawling up the tree beside me. Technically, I could eat it instead of imagining it eating me. Its skin was a dark shade of brown, camouflaging smoothly into what was left of the casing that I had not peeled off.

Before I fully thought it through, my fingers snatched the bug and popped it into my mouth. The grasshopper must not have noticed what was happening either because it did not fight as my molars noisily chomped on its crunchy exoskeleton.