A Vulnerable Broken Mind (3 page)

              “What are we going to do?” Amber asked.

              John wracked his brain but drew a blank. “I don’t know. All we can do is drive on and hope that an exit appears; hopefully far sooner than later.”

Despite her worry, Amber continued to drive and she and John tried to look for some sort of sign or even a car to show them that they weren’t out in the middle of nowhere. As the lightning got worse, it began to rain; it didn’t begin slowly. On the contrary, the rain came down in hard and fast drops. Its force caused the car to shake harder. The combination of the wind and rain made it harder for Amber to drive. Her visibility was very obscured.

“John, I can’t see,” She shouted in full panic.

“Just hit the brakes and stop here.” John said immediately.

              Amber slammed on the brakes but the car didn’t stop.
“HIT THE BRAKES,”
John shouted.

“I AM,”
Amber shouted back as she pressed her foot against the brake all the way down to the floor.

Amber looked forward and a look of shock came across her face. John looked in that same direction and saw a figure standing in the road. The figure quickly became clearer as the car sped in its direction. Soon enough, a little girl came into view.

Caught by surprise, Amber quickly turned the wheel to avoid the little girl and they veered off the road. They spun into the woods, the car hitting several branches. The car rocked violently as Amber frantically tried to stop it. A tree appeared in front of them but they only had a few seconds to view it as the car slammed violently into it before everything went black.

Chapter 2: Waking Up From the Abyss

John

              Deep in John’s brain he didn’t know whether he was dead or alive. All he saw was blackness before his eyes. However, if he was dead, how could he know that he was seeing all of this? Was he in hell?

              Before he could ask himself any more questions, a light materialized. The light was in the distance and floated directly in front of him. The light reflected off a pair of walls that surrounded him and a floor that he was standing on. He was in a hallway.

              The atmosphere was rough and cold. The walls and floor were made of old chipped wood. The floor creaked with every step as John walked closer to the light.

             
“LEAVE ME ALONE,”
a  woman’s voice screamed, startling John. It was so loud that the vibrations from it shook the hallway. “NO! I don’t want to. LEAVE ME ALONE!” The voice continued to scream. John had to cover his ears. His ears felt like they were going to explode from it all.

              Despite that, he continued to walk towards the light. After a few moments, he was no longer staring into the darkness. The white bright light dazzled his eyes. It did not last long as he felt himself being lifted from the hallway. He drifted very slowly back to the real world.

              Waking up from the abyss is always painful. What is the true abyss; is it the nightmare or is it the real world? When things are at their darkest, you sometimes don’t know which one is more welcoming.

              John slipped back into reality in the most painful way possible. His whole body was slumped forward. He felt his head pressed against the dashboard. And there was bump on his head from hitting it. His chest hurt from the seatbelt digging into it.

              Dazed, he slowly sat up and slumped back into his seat. Every part of his body ached in the process. He could feel glass shifting in his lap as he moved, indicating that the windshield was broken. The smell of smoke flooding his nostrils also told him that the front end of the car was smashed.

              It took a while for all of his senses to become fully aware of the situation. Besides the nagging pains caused by the accident, nothing felt broken.

              “Amber, are you okay?” He asked as soon as he was able to open his eyes slightly. His vision was black but cleared up after a few seconds. He waited for an answer but no answer came.

“Amber?” He questioned again but there was still no answer. No answer could only mean one of two things; she was hurt or dead. He hesitated to look over, not wanting to confront the possibility of the latter.

              He slowly turned his head to look toward the driver’s side of the car. He was welcomed to a terrifying horror before his eyes. The seat that Amber was sitting in was completely empty and there was no sign of Amber.
“Amber,”
John shouted once more, hoping that if he was louder, she would answer, but he was answered by dead silence yet again.

              When he felt well enough to do so, John opened the car door, which to his surprise opened without a single problem. He faced another challenge, getting out of the car itself. The crash had so much force that it caused the floor of the car to buckle and rise.

              It had risen high enough to trap John’s legs between the floor and the dashboard. John, desperate to get out, didn’t care if he ripped his legs off; he was getting himself out. He pulled with all his might; his screams of pain echoed throughout the woods. Half of John’s body was sticking outside of the car while the rest of him was still trapped.

              He pulled with every fiber of his being, trying his damnedest to free himself. After exerting most of his energy, he looked down to realize that he had only freed a quarter of both of his legs. He rested for a couple of minutes to catch his breath. He was completely worn out by this point but knew that he had to get out .

              He  grabbed onto the door with both hands for leverage. From there, he pulled as hard as he could and screamed so loud that he thought that his voice was going to give away. Despite the pain, the effort paid off as both of his thighs were out. It was easier to pull the rest of his legs out once his thighs were free.

              Much to his surprise, there was not a lot of blood. But there were severe scratches on both of his legs from the dashboard and they were both  numb; so much so that John didn’t move for a couple of minutes for fear of falling because he couldn’t feel them. Although, considering the situation, John considered himself rather lucky.

              After regaining the feeling in his legs, he stood up and looked around.
“Amber,”
he shouted once more but got no response. He looked around the car to see if there was any sign of her. To his utter dismay, he couldn’t find anything that told him where she was.

He looked around to get a sense of where he was. They had apparently driven fairly deep into the woods as he couldn’t see any sign of the road. He wouldn’t have even known where to begin if he wanted to get back to the road.

His instincts were telling him to walk further into the woods to look for Amber. With few choices at his disposal, he had nowhere else to go but to follow those instincts. Before leaving, he checked his pockets. He still had his wallet in his right pocket but the most important thing was in his left pocket; his cell phone.

A great idea struck him. Amber had her cell phone. He turned on his cell phone; it was still working perfectly. He called her number.

RING

John’s heart sank as he heard her phone ringing only feet away from him. He turned in the direction he was hearing it from and, sure enough, in one of the cup holders in the car sat her cell phone. John hung up the phone, disappointed and frustrated.

With no other choice, John walked deeper into the woods. The farther that he walked into the woods, the darker it got. John was claustrophobic and with the trees surrounding him, he felt like he was in a box that had no holes to breathe through and no lid to open. A rustling in the trees caught his attention. He could only assume that it was an animal of some sort.

“Amber,”
he shouted hopelessly. He knew he wasn’t going to get an answer. He didn’t even know where he was himself. If he turned one way, there were trees, and if he turned the other way, there were more trees. After what seemed like an eternity of walking, he realized that he didn’t even know how to get back to the car.

The box now felt like a dark circle that he would be doomed to walk around for all eternity. That maze that everyone fears to go through. Every time you think you’ve reached the other side, you’ve only reached another wall. If the wall could talk, you knew that it was laughing at you.

After walking for a little while longer, John suddenly stopped. All hope was gone. He was starting to think that he would not only never find Amber, but he would not be able to get out of the woods.

He sat down on a nearby log and stared at the ground. He wracked his brain for a solution. He just sat in silence and thought to himself.

“Hello,” said a gentle voice. While gentle, it still made John jump. He thought that he was alone. He turned to look in the direction of the sound. It was a little girl; an adorable little brunette in a red and white striped dress.

From what John could tell, she was no older than ten. What really stood out about her to John was her eyes. She had piercing blue eyes, which were staring directly into John’s. They were almost hypnotizing.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” said the little girl sweetly.

“Who are you?” John asked, trying to sound equally as gentle.

“My name is Carol,” she replied with a smile. “What’s your name?”
              “My name is John,” John said. His nerves were finally starting to calm.

“What are you doing here?” The little girl asked, still keeping the smile on her face. “You look lost.”

“I actually am,” John admitted. “I’m looking for someone very important to me. If you don’t mind me asking, where exactly is here?”

“You’re in Tuxton.” She told him.

“Tuxton?” John repeated, confused. He had been to many cities across the country but had never heard of Tuxton in his life. “What is Tuxton?”

The little girl laughed. “It’s the town you’re in right now, silly. The town is just a little ways that way,” she said and pointed in the direction that John had been going from the start. “At the end of the hill, you’ll see it.”

“Thank you, that helps me a lot.” John said, managing to smile. He felt that it wouldn’t be best to show the emotion he was feeling in front of a ten year-old. It just didn’t quite seem right to him.

He then stood up and looked in the direction that he would be heading. “Maybe you can show me where to go,” he said to the little girl and he turned around to look at her. But when he turned around, the little girl was gone.

Startled, he looked around for her. He looked behind several trees but concluded that she was gone. He couldn’t understand how she could have disappeared so fast. He knew he couldn’t dwell on that for very long because he now knew where he was going. He took one look back to see if she would appear and when she didn’t, he continued on.

Tuxton was a lot farther away than he had initially thought. The little girl had made it sound like it was just a short walk away. But minutes soon turned into nearly an hour.

The moonlight in the sky was John’s only form of light. The trees were making it tougher for that light to guide John in the right direction.

The longer he walked, the more dense the trees seemed. Soon, the light disappeared completely and caused John to stop dead in his tracks.

He looked up to see if any portion of the moon was still visible. Far up, looking at his eyes through one of the branches was the man on the moon. As childish as it may have seemed, the moon’s stare brought him comfort. It seemed like his only form of contact, even if it was imaginary.

Amber

              When you are rendered unconscious, all you have is your subconscious in front of your eyes. But your subconscious is just as uneven and unbalanced as life itself. It can show you joy or it can show your worst fears that make you curl into a ball and leave you weeping like a baby.

              Amber was in that world and her joys were nowhere in sight. She had been left in a dark hallway with walls, a ceiling and floor that were all a blank white. At the end of the hall was a door. Shining under that door was a light.

              With no other place to turn, Amber walked towards it. As she walked, she could see a shadow quickly pass by the door.  Maybe it was her fear playing tricks on her. She might have just been seeing things.

              After taking a couple more steps, she heard a noise: the sound of a little girl giggling, echoing across the hall. The reverberations made the laughter sound creepy instead of soothing. Amber actually had to stop for a few brief seconds to breathe as her fear began to rise.