Oh, God. This is it. This is how I go out. I think I went out for a run, and now my life’s going to end with some beautiful woods witch stabbing me.
There was so much I wanted to do. I wanted a wife. Kids, maybe. Who’s going to take care of my dog now?
The knife glints in the mid-morning sun and I let out a whimper. I thought I’d be braver if I ever faced a murderer. I thought I’d be the guy who disarms the criminal and saves the department store full of people.
I did not think I’d be lying on the cold forest floor in a bed of oak leaves, whimpering like a dog in a thunderstorm while my head and shoulder hurt so bad I could die.
I probably am going to die.
I blink hard to try and get a better look at my assailant. She wears a little smirk as she lifts some amorphous blob and cuts off a piece of it. She drops the knife and stretches the piece between her hands.
This is my moment. I can live through this.
My hand scrambles through the leaves, grasping for her knife.
“Stay back, demon,” I say through a cotton mouth. It feels like I’m underwater and fighting to get to the surface. I’ve felt this before when I got my bell rung too hard in a hockey game. The thing that ended my hockey career, in fact. Thus, I’m now Foxboro’s fire captain.
Too bad I can’t use my EMS skills on myself right now. I’m not accustomed to being the patient.
Her gentle, cold hand meets my shoulder and I have no fight in me. I fall back onto the ground. “Shhh. Just hold still.”
Her eyes aren’t on my face, but down toward my collarbone. “I’ve got you. It’ll be alright.”
Her voice is . . . soothing?
“Please don’t kill me,” I whisper.
She chuckles, and the cool blob she’s been holding presses to the searing pain on my shoulder. I hiss.
“I’m not killing you. You’ve just got a cut here. I think it’s just on the surface, but the knife went in a little. Does your head hurt?”
I grunt, and she tuts and grimaces.
“Sorry, sorry,” she says, her eyes not leaving the cut. “Here, have some water.”
She lifts a canteen to my lips, and I sputter it out. “It’s poison!”
She shakes her head, laughing again. “It’s not poison. Just plain old water from a gas station. Come on. Drink.”
I don’t know why, but I trust her. I sip in a little of the water.
“What are you doing running around in just your shorts anyway?” she scolds me, taking off her jacket and covering me with it. Her eyes are kind and familiar somehow, even though she was menacing me with her knife just now.
I want to explain that barefoot running is good for you and that cold air is invigorating, but my head hurts so bad that I?—
“Oh, Jesus,” she utters as I vomit in her lap. “Guess this is my fault. I think we’d better get you to some help.”
She splashes some water from the canteen onto my puke, brushing her pants off with the knife.
My vision clears, and I finally get a good look at her. No. It can’t be.
“Ari?”
Her eyes return to mine and that’s when I clock all her familiar features. Almost feral-looking green eyes emerging from olive skin, a spray of freckles across her nose and cheeks, and she still chews the corner of her lips like she did when we were kids.
“You’re all grown up.”
She rolls her eyes. “That tends to happen with the passage of time.”
