As the last few rays of sunlight descended and the forest was cast into darkness, Claire truly felt as if she had been thrown straight into a nightmare.
When the fights between herself and her boyfriend had increased over the past few weeks, she thought that it was perhaps in part due to their busy schedules. Emotions were running high, and as more responsibilities were piled onto Claire’s plate at work, she would admit that she was spending less and less time out of the apartment. Whether that warranted items being flung across the room by her boyfriend in anger and suspicion that she was cheating on him was another matter entirely. Yes, she knew that Jason had a temper. But he always took it out on inanimate object. Never on her.
Not until now.
She choked on a sob, furiously wiping at her tears and wincing at touching the skin around her eye that was swollen and tender. A weekend getaway in a cozy cabin had seemed like a great idea at the time for helping them rekindle their relationship. After all, they’d spent their early dating years enjoying such outdoor activities as hiking and kayaking, back when they were kids in undergrad and couldn’t fathom the pressures of actual adulthood. But the peaceful weekend hadn’t lasted long, and a part of Clair’s soul was crushed as, after drinking himself into a stupor, Jason’s aggression was finally taken out on her. The second that he had passed out into drunken oblivion, she ran.
Claire couldn’t spend one more second at that place, not knowing what kind of state Jason would be in when he woke up. In her haste and desperation to escape she tripped on uneven ground, twisting her ankle and scuffing up her legs. She limped now through the forest, and with no cell service, no knowledge of the area, and no sunlight, she felt utterly lost and alone. Being stranded in the depths of a dark forest felt like being swallowed whole by a monstrous being. But she would still choose it over spending one more night in that cabin.
The
