Page 3 of Delicious

For all I know, both are equidistant from my car. And standing here isn’t going to do me any good. I take a step, then another, and glance behind me one more time before committing to the path in front of me. But no matter how I try not to, my ears strain for the sound of wails and screams, and my eyes dart toward every shadow that looms or sways thanks to my unsteady arm holding the light up in front of me.

The sooner I get moving, the sooner my heart will stop pounding and I’ll stop being afraid of every little thing in the swamp.

That’s the hope, anyway. Though by the way I can’t help levitating when every sound—real or imagined—hits my ears… Well, I’m already sure this is going to be an insanely long night. But I force myself to keep walking, even through another of the wails that I will believe is a deer until my dying breath.

And the next noise, the mechanical sound that burns through my ears like an engine, doesn’t have me stopping. It has me walking faster, my steps eating up the ground between me and what I hope is the parking lot. There’s no animal in the world capable of making that noise. At least not one I’ve ever heard of. And no deer has been born that has learned to rev an engine.

But how is there an engine out here?

It sounds again, and I trip this time, stumbling and ultimately slamming to my knees no matter how I try to prevent it. My phone, naturally, goes flying, skittering off into the undergrowth until the light is muted and barely visible.

“Shit,” I grumble, fingers curling against the cement of the path. My palms burn, and I don’t need the light to tell the throbbing, stinging pain means I’ve skinned them up. But still I turn them over, eyes searching in the almost complete darkness, and I canfeelthe hot blood against my skin, welling against the wounds and staying there.

“Stupid,stupid,” I mutter, slamming my eyes shut against the blackness. An overwhelming irritation rises in my throat like bile, all of it focused inward. “You’re so stupid, Saylor. And now you’ve probably broken your phone.” God, I’ve got to stop this before it really starts. This isn’t the time to go into a fullthingabout how much I suck. My shitty mental health is not a welcome addition to this night, and it’s certainly not going to make this experience any better.

Or any faster.

On trembling knees and burning hands, I crawl across the hard-packed dirt, thanking every god I’ve ever heard about thatmy camera is still swinging around my neck and hadn’t cracked against the concrete. If It had, I really would just lay down and die. I might as well, at that point. “Come on, you can do this.” The verbal pep talking is a suggestion from my therapist, to quiet the mental rebukes that I can never really seem to stop. “You’re probably almost back to the parking lot. You’ve been walking forever.”

Forever is about seven minutes, give or take thirty seconds. But if I say it out loud, then it’s a little easier to believe.

Something snaps in the undergrowth and I flinch, sitting up to look around the darkness with wide eyes. But it’s impossible to see anything, and the darkness presses against my vision. My phone goes out and I curse softly, looking around for the light, only to find nothing. “H-hello?” I ask, not understanding why the light is gone. Had an animal stepped on it? Was the phone battery near enough to being drained that the throw had done it?

Trembling, I get to my feet, now unable to go anywhere without any light in this part of the densely forested swamp. My hand brushes my camera as I rub my bleeding palm against my shirt; on a whim I pick it up, turning in a slow circle as I make sure the flash is on by feel and click to take a picture.

As I’d predicted, the flash briefly lights up the area. It’s not enough for me to see details, but it’s enough for my brain to see that there’s nothing out of place. I hope, anyway. I turn more, clicking the camera again and again until I’ve made my way a good seventy-five percent around.

There’s no one and nothing here, and I still don’t know what to do if I can’t miraculously find my phone. I can’t make it back in the dark.

There’s no way in hell of that.

Distracted, I turn again, almost missing the flutter of movement that I can barely see in the near-blackness. I clickthe camera with a vain hope that my phone will just be there, levitating in the air and waiting for me to grab it.

The flash illuminates with the click of the camera, and I drop it in surprise to hang from the strap at my neck at the garish, grimacing figure lunging at me.

I don’t even have time to scream. Not when the light from my phone comes back on as the manslamsinto me, knocking me back to the ground and causing my palms to skid along the cement once again. It only serves to send searing pain up my arms, and I’m sure they’re worse now than they were a moment ago. The pain is so sharp that I cry out, but the man in front of me, his dark-stained face lit by the white light of my phone, doesn’t seem to notice.

He towers over me, even on his knees, and behind the dark liquid staining most of his face, I belatedly realize this is the man who’d run into me before. “Help me,” he gasps, grabbing my wrist with my phone still in his hand between us. “Fuck.You have to help me. We have to call?—”

His arm bumps mine and I recoil, one knee coming up between us as I try to shove him away. Heavy and solid as he is, he doesn’t go far. “Get off of me!” I shriek, my slick hand sliding against his shoulder when I shove. But it does nothing except grind pain into my palm, and I can’t scoot away from him, with his weight on my knees.

“Shut up! Just shut up.” He scrambles to his feet, my phone light still on, and whips it around the area. “I need to call the police, then you can have your phone back.”

He keeps talking, saying something I barely catch about the man in the woods. But for me, he’s the only thing out here. He’s the danger I need to get away from, and I crab-walk away from him, chest heaving as I fight the panic welling like lava in my chest.

“Fuck!” he snarls, when the phone light goes off. He pushes it on again, just as my back hits something strangely solid, though neither wide nor thin enough to be one of the swamp trees. “Why can’t I get a call to go through?”

“Because there’s no service out here?” I realize too late what I’m leaning against, just as fingers graze my hair and I hear something big being shifted in his grip. “Because we’re in the middle of a swamp and you’re panicking?”

The man freezes, my light still pointing at the ground, and it’s almost in slow motion that he turns, bathing both me and the person behind me in pale, white light.

I don’t want to, but I force myself to look upward, head craning back as my eyes find sharply lit cheekbones and rolled-up sleeves.

“But mostly because you’re panicking,” the blond man from earlier today says in his quiet, unassuming voice and shrugs. “Are you done running now?” He moves his arm, hefting the thing he’s carrying into both hands.

Oh God…

“Because you’re ruining everyone’s night.”

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