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Helpless, alone, isolated, barricaded by chanting trees. A never ending street lined with murky yellow, mocking the distance. Wind pressed against weeping palms, lashing, cutting, bleeding. A black coat outlined the concave of her ribs, the pallid complexion of her face. A gaunt, haunted, ashen profile staggered towards the distance, unsure where to go. The only splash of scarlet waltzed in the breeze, and dying flames. She had to survive.
The ground crunched, however the sound was only swept away. Leaves danced, laughing, free, unlike her, who was to forever stay put on the ground, lost, forgotten. How could an innocent school trip turn to such a horror? It was only last week that she’d been the party girl, the popular one, queen bee. Now, the bus would only be left sheltering shredded corpses, prowled by the wilderness. Nature would cover its tracks, but nothing would stop the terror. Stop the memories. Reset the past.
“We’re going on a bear hunt. We’re gonna catch a big one.”
They joked, they laughed, they jinxed themselves. It was all fun and games, until the shred of metal echoes in the frame of death. A roar of hunger and rage shook through. Then the screams, but they only seemed to enrage the dark mass even more. In Canada, the bears don’t normally attack buses, but it seemed this particular one was hungry for human. Revenge for running over its cub. Enraged brown glowed with the embers of revenge as it once again tore into the metal sheeting.
Shock and panic set in. The mad scramble for escape was accompanied by the sorrow of fright. She did not stay. She got onto the roof and swung onto a branch, helplessly watching the bus get forced over as another creature arrived. She has to go, she couldn’t watch the slaughter. It was nature. Black converse rubbed against pine as she shuffled around the tree, trying to leap for the next. ‘And GO!’
Airborne, land.
Safe. For now.
And repeat.
She had to get away from the terror. The scent of iron chased her through the trees, leeching into her clothes.
An eternity of running, escape from the cruelty of the natural order. Were humans really in control? Confidence and arrogance would get them killed. Humans eviscerated by nature. She jumped from a tree only to land in the path of the hunters returning from their slaughter.
‘Okay, Sarah, keep calm. Just stay quiet and you’ll make it out alive.’
She turned away and started to walk, only to end up kicking a suspiciously large object. It was the mangled head of her teacher.
She had to get away now.
TO escape with her life, only to end up starving. The large coat crusted in dirt, grass and exhaustion. Weathered canvas stretched over her feet, gripping into the thin rubber sole. Salt dashed her eyelids, too dehydrated to cry, scream. Or die. The wilderness was not kind. Mother Nature did not forgive and forget the havoc wrecked on herself, the concrete suffocating her land, the weight carelessly placed upon it. The gladiator who entered the world of the wild has survived. Lived long enough to be saved by one of her own.
Head lights hit the exhausted form of Sarah Letterman. Scarlett locks dulled to a rust, ashen pal our cringe in pain. Only a desperate breath made them take her away, back to civilisation, back to life. She was fed, bathed healed. But she never spoke again. And with the shoes she left a note: “I am Sarah Letterman. Survivor of Nature’s best and worst. She will have revenge, but if you dare, Walk In My Shoes.’
Accompanied by her mangled corpse at the ground.