Slipped

by Ira Robinson

  There were other sounds, some time later, but she sat on the ground letting everything pass her by. She could not think, her mind, for those moments in time, broken by what she had been told. By the nightmare of her life growing ever stronger.

  Someone touched her shoulder and the echo of unintelligible words came through her shell, but she paid them no attention. Nothing mattered any longer.

  The darkness entangled her completely and she was shivering when coherent thought began to come back to her.

  She sniffed a few times, trying to clear her nose of the remnants of the tears she had been apparently letting go and, as she glanced down at her lap, she found she had pulled hundreds of blades of grass from the ground and laid them across herself. Some of them glittered slightly in the dim light, the night dew still on them.

  She brushed them away and tried to stand, but it took her some effort to get her legs to work. They had fallen asleep from her being in the same position for so long.

  She had to hold to the wood on the porch to make her way up the short stairs to get to her door, which was still standing open from the people there before.

  When she reached the door, itself, she stared at the detritus in the room, gripping the edges of the doorway for support.

  The tables people brought in, as well as the corkboard and chairs, were gone, but bits of trash and debris scattered all around.

  She could hear her furnace running, trying to keep up with the cold from outside pouring into the house through the open front door. It was not usually loud to her, but in the emptiness of the home, it could have been a jet engine.

  She closed the door behind her and crossed the room to her chair. She sat down and rubbed her legs, trying to get back the full sensation, even after standing and walking. Pins and needles ran their course through them, and her hip ached even as she sat on the soft cushion of the chair.

  She knew it was crazy, but she kept expecting Cassie to come traipsing down the hallway from her room, coming out to play or to show Liz a new drawing she made. She loved to make pictures and, even if she was not very good at making them, they still made Cassie so proud. Liz was just as proud of her for making the effort.

  She glanced out to the kitchen, where one of the lights above the counter still glowed, switched on by one of the people who came through the house. There were a few of those pictures on the refrigerator, even now. Liz could see them hanging, stuck there by a magnet or two.

  They had given up. It kept echoing through her mind. They had given up on her child, and Liz did not know what she could do.

  She should be grateful for the fact anyone came to help at all, but she still damned each and every one of them for leaving when they did. Did they have no heart? No soul?

  She looked at the clock. It showed 11:30.

  So much time. So many hours passed since the last time she saw her daughter's face.

  Her heart was past breaking; she felt cold inside, deadened to it all. A switch flipped, somehow, giving her both a reprieve and a new way to experience the nightmare she was enduring.

  She came to her feet, slowly working out the kinks remaining in her legs and crossed to the small closet. She pulled it open and slipped into her jacket.

  The old flashlight Jack used to use when he worked on something was in a drawer in the kitchen. She tested it and found the batteries still worked, though it was not as bright as she would have liked.

  It did not matter. It would do.

  She closed the front door behind her and walked around the house, heading to the back yard.

  Crickets and other small creatures filled the night air, venturing into the cool dark of night to feed and feast. The sound was soothing to her frazzled state of mind, a monotone drone cutting through the static her emotions wanted to keep.

  The light did not do a great amount of good, only letting her see for the ten feet or so ahead of her, but it would have to be good enough.

  "Cassie!" she shouted into the darkness, searching for an answer. The only response was the disruption to the sound of the song of the crickets and a small animal of some kind skittering through the underbrush some distance away.

  "Cassie?" she shouted again, pleading with her to answer. "Mommy's coming, baby!"

  She took one step into the edge of the woods, then another.

  She did not know which direction to go, so she let her feet decide for her, just taking steps to get distance between her house and her daughter. She would find her. She was sure of it.

  If no one else would help her, she would do it herself, as it should have been from the beginning. She should have known better than to trust in others.

  It had never gotten her anywhere before, why should it now?

  Sounds in the distance kept making her track in different ways, sure that at the end of the steps she would find Cassie. Maybe she found a small hole to crawl into, waiting only for the sound of her mother's voice to come, to let her know everything was okay. She could come out of hiding.

  But when she reached the spots she thought the sounds came from, there was nothing at all there but more trees, more growth choking her passage and more bugs. There was no sign of Cassie or any hint she had been there at all.

  Liz had to stop often to disentangle herself from vines reaching out to grab her as if they were serpent beings gripping her legs. Her imagination started to run wild, thinking of them as intentionally blocking her so they could have Cassie for themselves.

  Throughout it all, she kept screaming her name, hoping it would somehow get through to wherever Cassie was, so she could end this waking horror show.

  She had no idea how much time passed while in the woods. For her, it seemed to go on forever, each minute extending to an infinity. With each step, her heart ached more, until she lost track of what she was seeing. The tears dripped constantly, choking her breathing with snot and gasping.

  When the glow from the flashlight began to dim, she stopped for a moment, shining it into her face. She smacked the side of it, hoping to fix it, but that just made the light flash a few times before going back to the same dimming beam it had become.

  The batteries were completely drained by the time the first sparks of morning light began to creep through the tree line.

  Liz barely stepped forward, each footfall a morass of agony and despair. Her shoes slid along the ground, as exhaustion overtook her adrenaline and, without being able to do a thing to fight it off, she had to stop.

  She leaned against a tree, a large cedar with a few vines hanging down, taking a moment to rest as the light around her grew.

  A moment later, she was slumped on the ground, her back against the bark at the base of the large tree. The flashlight, grown useless with the dead batteries, dropped to the ground out of her outstretched hand, fingers loosening without any impetus.

  Her head bent forward, resting against the arms held up by her knees, and closed her eyes.

  Only a minute. She would rest only for a minute, and then she could get back up again and keep looking. She had to give in to her body, she knew, that, but she could keep going after just one minute.

  When she woke, she opened her eyes to considerably more light and a nagging ache in her back.

  Liz tried to get to her feet, but her legs did not want to listen and her feet were in even worse condition. She glared at them dully, trying to will them into motion, but there seemed to be a block between her brain and her limbs.

  Finally, they did start to move, but, as they did, the pain that shot through her was untenable. She had to stop, leaving her legs outstretched across the cold, hard ground.

  She swiped at her face, trying to run the sleep from her eyes. There was crust all around her cheeks, the last vestiges of her dried tears remaining on her skin, mixed with evaporated sweat.

  She balled her fists, angry with herself for falling asleep when Cassie was still not found and could be just a small distance away, waiting for her to come to her rescue.

  Yet, at
the same time, some part of her mind, a small, still voice, tried to reason with her. It said being there, as she was, had to be a mistake. She did not know where she, herself, was, let alone Cassie. She could have wandered in circles the whole night through, going nowhere, or she could be completely lost in unfamiliar woods, with no water, no food and no way to know how to get back home.

  Although she hated herself for admitting it, she knew the voice was right. At this very moment, Cassie could be waiting at home, wondering where her mommy was and not knowing how to take care of herself.

  Not only was her daughter in a dangerous position, she had put herself into one, as well.

  She closed her eyes and pulled her hair, tufts of it between her fingers. The pain shot through her, a primal scream escaping from her lips and gnashed teeth.

  The sensation faded when she let go, but she was thinking clearer.

  With it came the realization she was doing no good for Cassie, wandering out in the woods alone. She had no choice. She had to find her own way back home.

  She eventually managed to get to her feet and remain steady. She turned around a few times, trying to figure out which direction she needed to take to get back to her house at the outskirts of town. There was not really a sign of her passage through the woods. She could have come from anywhere before stopping at this tree.

  The part of the woods her house abutted was on the east side of town, though, and the light of the sun that she could see seemed to indicate she had gone east, herself when she started her trek.

  She took her first tenuous steps toward what she hoped was home. After a few steps, she became sure on her feet.

  She wondered if she was too late, the fear eating at her footfalls. She tried to quiet her mind, telling herself that worrying about it before she found out for sure would do nothing but waste the precious little energy she had left to go on.

  By the time the thinning of the woods was apparent, she had walked for over two hours, carefully side-stepping gaps in the ground and tree roots to keep from falling.

  Her skin sliced open in many places, and her clothing was a wreck, filled with bugs, dirty and shreds from thorns and branches catching constantly.

  She was grateful when she saw houses through the trees; it pushed her to move a little faster, though it made her stumble a few times as she went.

  At first, she did not recognize where she was. The yard she came into was unfamiliar, so she walked around the side of the house to the front, where the street waited.

  There were no people and only a few cars parked along the sides of the road. She started to walk down the thin sidewalk, limping and gasping for breath, but she was determined to make her way home, wherever that might be.

  Finally, recognition came to her as she passed a cross street; she realized it was one that would lead her to her house, and she turned on it gratefully.

  Would Cassie be there? Would she be on the front step, waiting for her to come? Her strength ebbed as each inch passed beneath her feet.

  When her eyes fell upon the familiar old paint clinging to the siding of her house, she searched desperately for any sign Cassie had been there.

  There was nothing.

  Her heart sank, but Liz kept moving. If she stopped now, she would not be able to start again, and there was still a chance Cassie could be waiting inside of the house for her.

  Keep going, keep moving.

  Liz crept through the front door, sweeping it open with a bang much harder than she intended. Her eyes frantically fell on everything in the room, brows raised.

  "Cassie!" she shouted into the house. Her voice cracked and broke at the last of the precious name of her child.

  Her right foot limped with a resonant ache as she stepped through the house, going from room to room in search of any sign Cassie had been there, finding nothing more than the trash left around from those who had come to search for her, as well.

  She sat on the bed in her own room, numbness throughout her entire being.

  She had nothing left, nothing with which she could use to go on.

  Before her body shut itself down completely, Liz could only think of how much she wished Cassie were there, so she could hold her while she slept.

  Blackness took her completely as soft echoes of the wind outside spun around her.

  There was barely any light to see when her eyes opened again. The setting sun was almost gone and the ambiance from outside was so dim she could barely see across the room.

  Liz sat up, a throbbing in her head accompanying the motion. She put one hand to her temples, putting slight pressure there with one of her fingers, while her other hand reached out to switch on the small lamp beside her bed.

  A terrible smell came from her, dirt mixed with old sweat and dried urine; sometime during her long trek through the forest, her bladder had let go. She never even realized it happened.

  Her nose crinkled at the state of herself.

  The light revealed just how bad things were.

  She stared at the clothing she had worn when she left the house during the night, ripped all around the edges. Slashes were taken from the denim of her jeans and the jacket she wore would never be functional again. There were so many holes she did not think she could do anything to fix it back to usefulness.

  Patches of dirt and mud lined everywhere she could see, and other stains as well, some of which she did not think she could ever identify.

  There was also a fair amount of blood staining the edges of the cuts in the fabric. The gouges and scratches on her skin beneath all dried, but some of them looked deep.

  She bent over to untie her shoes, though the pain from her head made her take her time with it. Why did it hurt so badly? She could not remember hitting it or anything.

  The shoes came away from her feet, sending sensations of both pleasure and pain through her legs. They swelled from abuse and the pressure relief was at least momentarily gratifying.

  Standing on them was another matter entirely.

  She trudged slowly from her bedroom to the hallway, heading for the bathroom. Before making it all the way, however, she turned her head and noticed the front door still standing open from when she came home earlier in the day. Had it only been that day? Or had she slept much longer than that, going through an entire day of sleep?

  She had no way to know for sure.

  She got the door to the home closed and returned to the bathroom, getting most of her clothing off on the way. She started the hot water running in the tub and turned to check herself in the mirror above the sink.

  The woman staring back at her was not herself. It was something else, something horrible.

  Fear laced through her veins, paralyzing her in place, while her own eyes met those of the creature staring back at her. She gasped aloud, watching as the hag before her did the same.

  She backed away a step and saw the thing do the same. It was only then she fully realized she was staring at really was her, but she was in such a state of degradation she could not recognize herself any longer.

  Her hair matted completely through, tangled with pieces of bark and branches, as well as dirt and webs from spiders she had blundered through while walking around. Her face, reddened from exposure and cracking in places where bugs and plants scrabbled for her attention were stark contrast to the gauntness of her flesh.

  Her eyes were hollow, surrounded on all sides by dark blotches and patches.

  Absently, she picked up the hairbrush she used often on both herself and Cassie and tried to use it on her hair, but it took only a few strokes for her to realize there was going to be no saving it.

  The drawer beneath the sink came open with a soft clatter, the small objects within scattering around. She found the scissors and brought them to the first bits of hair she could find that she could easily cut away.

  Messing with the knots and the mire that had become her hair caused her scalp to itch terribly, stirring up things she knew she did not really want to realize we
re there, but it had to be done. One snip after another, her hair fell to the floor, most of the time silently.

  Occasionally, she heard a louder rasp as the heavier bits came away.

  She was finally left with a closely cropped cut on her scalp, a shade of the length she had before. It saddened her to see it go; it had taken a while for it to grow out to the length it had.

  She did not bother to pick any of it up. Instead, she stripped the rest of the way and let her body sink into the tub of warm, bubbly water that waited for her.

  At least some of the ache came away with the heat. She let as much of her legs as she could possibly fit rest in the water, and most of her body was covered with the large tub she knew she was lucky enough to have.