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It’s not as pleasant as she had thought it would be.
Lottie had been so desperately looking forward to this. For years now she’d been dreaming of even a small taste of freedom, the liberty of taking a walk outside without eyes following her everywhere, or being restricted to walking in circles around a soulless compound.
Her time in the hospital had been valuable. She’d been able to convince other people to accept help, and had worked with other patients on bettering themselves. It all gave her an actual aspiration, if nothing else, and had cultivated a feeling of community in a place that is overwhelmingly isolating by nature—she’s used enough to isolation by npw, thank you very much.
Despite these positives, she had sorely needed this. To be back out in the world.
Lottie had intended to walk the marked nature trail of this forest—estimated as an hour walk, which sounded like a fantastic start—but had found herself straying off the path almost immediately. Now she wanders amongst the oak and hickory trees, running her hands over their trunks and skimming her fingers over taller plants.
The air is clean, the land is flourishing, and it’s utterly dead.
Quiet is good, Lottie knows that. Quiet keeps her safe. But here, in the midst of birds chirping and the sound of a stream somewhere in the distance, acorns and nuts crunching beneath her feet, it’s so silent that it’s… oppressive.
Something is missing. Something should be speaking to her, but it’s not, not anymore. And that’s a good thing, but it’s just so dead. Or it’s trapped, trapped inside where plants grow free, behind bark and inside nut shells, covering itself with pretty flower petals.
Be free, she wants to call to the land. Be free with me. It doesn’t have to be such a horrible thing, it doesn’t have to mean blood. It’s just to be what you are.
She doesn’t call. She knows now that some things are better off trapped. And maybe the reason she can’t hear them is because she’s suffocated that harmfulness within herself.
It’s the right thing to do. She’s sure that one day it will feel right, too.
She takes some comfort in humming to herself as she makes her way towards where she estimates the stream is. She’s already lost the trail entirely, but she finds herself entirely unbothered. It’s not a big forest in the middle of nowhere, after all. She could easily find her way out if she wanted to, if she just found and followed the river, and someone would probably hear her if she yelled loud enough. So it’s not all too bad to be a bit lost. Not when there are also multiple fresh blueberry bushes around to pick from, as long as you choose to ignore the sign back at the beginning of the trail forbidding you from doing so.
The people who made that sign have never been truly hungry, Lottie thinks. If they had, they wouldn’t fault people for simply picking a few berries. Lottie certainly wasn’t going to feel guilty about it herself as she stuffs as many blueberries as she can into her coat pockets.
If she’s hungry, she’ll eat. That’s survival.
A sharp gust of wind rustles leaves overhead, the canopy seeming to be nodding in agreement with her sentiment. An image flickers in Lottie’s mind of a hand raised high and a prideful smirk, satisfaction reflecting in eyes as dark as a cave’s mouth.
She shakes her head, the movement helping her regain physical awareness and pulling her from the depths of her own mind.
It’s not a vision, just a memory. One she need not linger on.
Memories. Troublesome things.
Therapists and psychiatrists have told Lottie that she needs to process the past in order to move forward. She doesn’t really believe it. What good is processing something that’s over and done, and that will just make you miserable to reflect on? Moving forward is rebirth, and you can never achieve that through trying to scrap together pieces of old tragedy.
Having this in mind, she’s incredibly annoyed with herself. Reminding herself of an old face like this is a backwards effort.
Shauna Shipman means nothing to her anymore. She knows that. And she doesn’t mean anything to Shauna either, Lottie’s sure. She’s probably living a quiet life now, far away from here. As far as the ground feels from Lottie’s feet, as quiet as the forest.
Lottie considers emptying her pockets, but instead decides on eating the berries more quickly. The fuller she is, the further she is from Shauna, who had been nothing if not Lottie’s hunger pains.
She continues forward at a steadier pace. This walk had already begun as a disappointment, and that dead silence is starting to feel gradually more insidious. It might be ideal for her to turn back when she reaches the stream, and to return some other day when she’s a little more settled.
Perhaps, if she keeps coming back, she could reframe this all as a kind of exposure therapy. By getting herself lost in the forest, she can brush away her old negative experiences, and tell herself to only focus on what it is in the present rather than what it was in the past.
The present is blueberries, comfortable clothes and clean hair. It’s freedom—the safe kind of freedom. She must immerse herself in this.
As the land dips slightly, and a thin, calm stream comes into vision at the bottom of the decline, Lottie weaves mantra after mantra in her head.
It’s not too quiet. It’s normal, and I will be used to the quiet.
It’s not dead. It’s as alive as it can be, and I feel at peace with it.
I do not know anybody who reminds me of forests anymore. I have started new, and this forest is separate and free from every association I could make with it.
I do not know them anymore. They’re gone, and I am here.
I do not know her anymore. She’s gone, and she means nothing to me. She is not a god, she is not the earth, she is not a bear at my feet. She is not what’s lacking within the forest and she is not what’s lacking within me. She is nothing but useless memory, and I will forget her face and voice and name with ease. I will—
Not paying attention to where she had been stepping, Lottie’s foot catches in some sort of hole. She topples forward gracelessly, throwing her hands out in front of her to break her fall. The rough stones of the stream’s bank scrape against her palms, and there’s a horrible wrenching sensation in her ankle as the fall twists it at an odd angle.
“Fuck!”
Startled birds cry out from all around her. Now well and truly frustrated, she screams back at them.
“Be fucking quiet, why don’t you?!” She screeches, kicking her foot out from whatever it got stuck in before letting herself fully collapse.
The grounding steadies her. Gives her a moment to breathe.
In four, hold seven, out four.
In four, hold seven, out four.
It’s okay. I’m okay.
When she feels slightly more at ease, Lottie manoeuvres herself into a sitting position. The first matter of importance is checking her ankle, she figures; it didn’t feel like a sprain, but she might have pulled or strained something.
Her sneaker does not come off easily, but it’s not the worst thing in the world. Lottie’s able to grit her teeth and suck up the pain as she wiggles it off, peeling away her sock and probing at her foot with careful fingers. An attempt to flex it makes her wince.
Definitely strained something. Maybe the achilles tendon. That’s what it’s called, isn’t it?
She sighs, tapping her knuckles against the ground. She doesn’t really want to call for help; it doesn’t seem worth it. And she doesn’t think she’s too far down the trail. Limping back up to her car would take time, but she could definitely manage it. Still, not a fun prospect.
In the name of procrastination, Lottie crawls over to try and get a look at what she’d gotten her foot stuck in. She finds what must be some kind of burrow; just barely large enough for her foot to have gotten wedged in—just her luck—but deep. Deep enough that it’s too dark to see where it ends. It could be a straight tunnel right into the depths of the earth, for all she can tell.
It’s familiar.
Look closer, something inside Lottie urges. Crawl inside.
As Lottie stares into it, her lungs grow too big for her chest, crushing against her ribcage. She’s not sure if she can move right now. She’s not sure if she wants to.
She’s been here before. A thousand times.
Eyes darker than the shadows. Pupils that swallow the moon and the light of a fire. Alive like nothing else, alive and immortal and hungry and fed.
Holy shit!
Fuck that.
Lottie closes her eyes. Shakes her head. Pushes back from the hole and fumbles for her shoe. As she jams it back onto her foot, uncaring of the pain, the white of the sneaker stains red.
Her hands. Filthy with dirt and scraped raw, rivulets of blood starting to trickle down her fingers. She wipes them hastily on her butterfly-patterned dress, and doesn’t pay any mind to how ill that makes her feel.
Adrenaline can make humans do extraordinary things in times of panic. Lottie Matthews uses it to drag herself away from that burrow, taking the trail at a sprint despite her injury, running as if for her life.
Some things are better off trapped and suffocated.
Whatever Shauna Shipman had made her is one of those things.