I was in a state of terror, making frantic attempts to escape a being that should never have left the confines of nightmares. Its silhouette loomed against the bruised twilight sky, featuring shoulders of unusual width. Ok, I know that sounds like something a four-year-old would tell their mother when describing a nightmare, but I’m serious, I was. Its two crimson eyes tracked my every movement and seemed to glow in the fading light of the evening. So, I did what any sensible teenager would do: I ran. I ran over a huge log of wood, over what might’ve been either an ant hill or a random bump in the ground, around a river, and through six or seven different bushes. I kept running; my lungs were begging me to take a break, begging for one breath, my legs aching with exhaustion, but I couldn’t stop now. I was a blur of motion, a wild teenager driven by fear, my body lurching and swerving over obstacles as I raced through the fading light, my heart pounding and my breath ragged. The wind whipped against my skin, a cool and relentless force that pushed me onward like a gust from the heavens. I pushed harder; I had to be faster, I told myself. I was soaring through the sky, faster and faster. I was losing the creature; I looked back and saw that it was a few yards behind me. A little further, I told myself. Regardless of how I felt inside, my feet seemed to soar high in the air. My feet were going the speed of light; I was going the speed of light. I was going fast, faster, fastest. Suddenly, I noticed a small rock on the forest floor a few feet ahead of me, but I kept running. I felt a sharp pain in my leg. The pain shot up my spine and radiated throughout my body. I ignored it and kept running. I failed to notice that I had stopped, so I was unable to catch myself, and I ended up right on the forest floor. I lifted my body onto a rock positioned only a few inches behind me. How could I be so dumb to not stop when I saw a huge rock in my way? My left knee was gushing dark red blood. There was one deep cut that ran from my knee to the top of my foot, which also had large specks of dirt in it. For a moment, the world compressed to an ache and the wild hammering of my heart. I blinked, mouth open, chest heaving, the air burning in and out of my lungs. The forest pressed in around me, the moss and decaying leaves all faintly green, but my attention tunneled down to that sharp, jagged pain pulsing up from my left leg. I didn’t want to look. I had the childish urge to keep my eyes fixed on anything and everything but my injury. I needed to just stand up and keep running, but, well, that urge was flattened by the fact that my calf felt like it was about to split in two.

I gritted my teeth and forced myself to examine the damage. I propped myself up further onto the rock I was sitting on with the help of my elbows ,then, with a pathetic little yelp, scooted my butt back until I was completely sitting on this rock. It was almost as if the forest had arranged itself to conveniently provide me with a special place to die. The stone was cold and rough, but it was the best I could do as long as I was stuck in the forest. I bit my lip in an attempt to hold back the tears as I bent my left leg to get a better look.

It wasn’t good. Not at all. My knee was scraped open, ribbons of dark red oozing and collecting in the torn fabric of my jeans. The fabric was already soaked, sticking to my skin, but the real horror was just below the knee. There, a long, winding gash started at the side of my kneecap and slithered down to the top of my ankle, exposing a raw pink trench with black flecks of dirt and what looked like bits of bark and moss. My sock was already saturated, and I could see the blood pooling inside my shoe.

For a second, I just stared at it, equal parts nauseated and fascinated. I’d never been seriously hurt before. Sure, I’d had my share of cuts and bruises—what kid hadn’t?—but this was different. Running from something that shouldn’t exist was bad enough; the idea that I could just bleed out and die here in the woods made the whole nightmare feel almost… ordinary. Predictable, even.

The pain flared again, sharper now that I was paying attention to it. I groaned, hunched over, and pressed the palm of my hand to my thigh just above the wound. My hand came away sticky and red, and the blood just kept coming.

Think, Brooklyn. Don’t panic. You know what to do—or at least you should, considering all those first-aid pamphlets in the science classroom. I needed to stop the bleeding, clean out whatever forest detritus had gotten into the cut, and figure out a way to keep it from getting infected. The thought of infection made my scalp tingle. I didn’t even have a tetanus shot this year.

I reached down and pinched together the torn fabric of my jeans around the wound, wincing as the fibers dug into the raw skin. I needed a bandage, something to tie around my leg, but I didn’t want to use my filthy sleeve or risk further contamination. For a moment, I just stared around at the forest floor, brain short-circuiting, then realized I had to work with what I had. I peeled off my jacket and wrapped the sleeve as tight as I could above the cut, improvising a tourniquet. My hands shook, breath coming in short, sharp gusts, but I managed to knot the fabric and slow the bleeding. It wasn’t perfect—far from it—but a little pressure was better than nothing.

When I tried to stand, the pain screamed up my entire side, so I sank back down, trembling. I had to keep moving. The thing chasing me was still out there. I could hear it, maybe, or maybe I was just imagining the sound, the way you imagine teeth in the dark after you’ve seen a scary movie. I forced myself to focus. If I sat here too long, I’d be dead, or worse.

I looked at my shoe, debating whether to take it off and try to clean the wound more thoroughly, but then I heard the crack of a branch somewhere behind me. My pulse spiked. I needed to hide. I needed to get out of sight before the monster caught up.

Ignoring the pain, I dragged myself behind the rock and pressed my body flat to the earth. Every movement felt like it was tearing my leg open all over again, but I forced myself to go silent, to press my cheek against the cold leaves and watch the narrow corridor of darkness that led deeper into the trees. The forest was suddenly very quiet. Even the birds had gone silent.

I counted my breaths, tried to slow them down. I tasted copper and adrenaline. I pulled my knees—both of them, even the ruined one—up to my chest and squeezed them with both arms, willing the pain to fade, willing myself to disappear. I held my breath and waited.

The monster didn’t come charging through the brush. Instead, there was a long, stretching pause where nothing happened at all. I waited until I thought my lungs would collapse, then slowly let out a gasp and listened. Nothing. Maybe it had lost me. Maybe the blood was enough to throw off its trail. Or maybe it was just waiting, the way cats do, crouched and patient.

I risked a glance over the top of the rock and saw nothing but trees and shadows. The sun was almost gone now, the sky bruised into an inky violet. I’d lost track of how far I’d run, or even how close I was to the edge of the woods. My phone was dead, of course. I’d left it in the locker room at school, as usual.

I tried to recall the map of the forest from my memory, from the endless nature hikes we'd done as a class, from all the times I had been lost in these same trees while trying to avoid the chaos of. There should be a stream about a half-mile north of here, if I hadn't gotten completely turned around. It wasn’t much, but it was something to focus on—something other than the pain.

I realized I was shivering, not from fear, but from the cold slowly seeping into my bones now that I'd stopped moving. It wasn’t even winter yet, but the temperature had dropped sharply as the sun went down. I wrapped my arms tighter around my knees and told myself I couldn’t stay here. Not if I wanted to live.

I could figure this out. I just had to move.

But first, I had to make sure the monster wasn’t going to jump out and murder me the second I tried to stand up. So, I waited, listening to the sound of my own pulse in my ears, counting the seconds, breathing in the sharp, electric air, until I was sure it was gone.

Only then did I force my body to move. I used my hands to push myself upright, swearing quietly as the pain flared up again. The make-shift bandage was already soaked, but the bleeding had slowed. I risked standing, putting just enough weight on my injured leg to test it. The pain was almost unbearable, but I told myself it was just pain, and pain was survivable.

I limped forward, out from behind the rock, scanning the trees for any sign of movement. The forest was still and silent. I took a step, then another, steadying myself on a low-hanging branch. Every footstep brought more pain than the last, but I kept moving.

My head swam with pain and exhaustion, but I focused on the goal: get to the stream, follow the water, and find the road. And if the monster came back, well... at least I’d die running.

I made my way deeper into the woods, every step a hurtling leap of faith, my breath fogging in the cold, my blood marking a trail behind me.

I kept moving, and I didn’t look back.