The night swallowed the Earth and everything around you, into an overwhelming darkness. Shrouding the vast sky in a blanket of indigo blue, that bathed the land below it in it's haunting shadows. Forgoing the twinkling stars or even the brightest sliver of moonlight, for a twilight so immense it felt suffocating. For it felt as though the oppressive darkness was apart of the atmosphere that you breathed. Falling through the darkness, as though an inescapable black hole. Hurdling towards a destination you couldn't see, the bottom of the pit hidden away as the blackness around you seemed to travel on for eternity.
Every breath, stinging with the humidity that lingered with lost rain showers and unavoidable fear in its tracks. The air felt thick, as you breathed it in through your lips that panted wildly out into the open air. The puffs freezing faintly in the few inches from your face, still imperceptible to your sight, but you could feel the minimal lash of it as it wafted back across your sweating flesh. For the night contradicted itself. With the moisture that lingered in every breath, lending to a humidity that made it feel more like late July rather than early October. But the chill in the autumn air, nipped at your exposed flesh as you ran through the still breezeless night. It froze your exasperated and exhausted breaths with the simple flick of Jack Frost's frozen finger.
The fallen leaves crunched beneath your sneakers that pounded the forest floor, feeling the pressure in which they hit the ground with, reverberating throughout your entire body. You could barely see what lined the forest floor below your feet, but you could surely hear every snap and crack it made, in the stifling silence that engulfed the darkness around you. Hearing the crunch of the dried up leaves, lost of their color as they were stomped to ripped up pieces in the dirt, that had been saturated with the late night rainfall. The rich scent of the Earth filled your senses, as the floor was damp from the fresh precipitation. Muddying the path your shoes clumsily sloshed through, side stepping thick roots ripping up through the ground and hidden rocks rolling your ankles. You could hear the squishing of your shoes as they hit puddle after puddle of thick and molasses like mud. The night was so still, as even the branches of the bare trees all around you seemed to lay at rest. Allowing for every miniscule sound to be heard and send a tremor of adrenaline laced terror rushing repeatedly through your veins.
However, even as the adrenaline your body pumped furiously through you managed to keep you moving, it could no longer numb the pain shooting throughout your body. For as the muggy but chilled crisp air danced along the raw flesh wrapped thinly around your wrists like bracelets, from the pinching handcuffs that tore through your skin as though a sharp set of teeth, you could feel the sting immediately. Piercing your eyes with the bitter bite of tears at the sharp searing sensation that held your hands captive, just as the rusty set of metal had for days. It was a sharper pain, more abrasive and attention seeking. Whereas the wound on the side of your left thigh, was a throbbing ache. One that didn't crave your regard straight off the bat, but rather fed on the ache it slowly spread and consumed your leg with. It was a dull throb, as it swept upwards from the deep knife wound, through the surrounding discolored flesh and the muscles that slowly started to scream. Finally, after having been running on your wounded leg for longer than you could possibly begin to remember, forcing the overwhelming pain to the forefront of your mind. Consuming your body and your thoughts, as all you could think of now was the excruciating pain that had once been a throbbing voice in the background.
Staring ahead of you into the thick void of black, your eyes search for the faint outline of the figure running a few steps ahead of you. His heavy breaths heard in the echoing silence, alerting you to his constant presence but failing to make out the details of his shadow. Squinting your tear burned eyes for more than the thin outline of his broad back, that nearly disappears into the night with the dark fabric of his t-shirt and the silhouette of his clenched fists as they sway at his sides with each bounding step. As your eyes focus their sight on the man ahead of you, the obstacles of the haunting darkness around you reaches out their hands. For the thick base of a fallen branch slams into the bone of your ankle, forcing you off of your already swaying balance and crashing down on your hands and knees. Scraping the palms of your hands on the rough bark that coated the damp and dead tree branch, feeling the sting of newly ripped skin across the lines of your trembling hands. The knees of your blood soaked jeans scraped and ripped, feeling the oozing of the sudden cold mud through the tears.
