Heart of Hazel Green

I closed my eyes again, took a deep breath, and sat up. I clutched my arm tighter as the laceration sparked a fire, burning bright and immense under my skin. Damon’s strong arm caught me before I could fall back to the ground. He then continued to push me to my feet, using only his forearm, careful not to put any pressure on his disfigured hand. The whole way up from the ground seemed like miles of a pain filled journey that I wish I had never started. Once I finally made it on my feet, I was almost spotting all of my weight on Damon as the immense pain made me sway in dizzy disarray. “Come on.” Damon whispered, urging me forward, The blackened road stretched out ahead as it twisted and curved through an eery, silence filled darkness. It loomed in front of me like a bad dream or something from a scary movie. I hesitated for a moment, holding my arm close to my body. I had only had about two seconds to do so before I heard the roaring of an engine echo behind us. They were coming. And by the sound of it, they were a lot closer then I had previously thought. “Run, Cameo!” Damon yelled, giving me another hard push. At first I hobbled along, almost too slowly. My shoulder, along with the many various cuts and bruises I had accumulated in the last hour flaring up in pain with every step. But as the sounds got louder, I went faster, trying my hardest to push through the pain. Here I was again; running. It seemed as if my whole life had resorted to running. I didn’t have time to think, nor the energy. All that existed was running. No time to look back and see if they were close. I only ran harder and prayed for my life to escape this approaching danger. I knew if they caught me this time, they’d just kill me, no questions asked. That bullet would be in my head faster than I could say, ‘please’. Our fight for breaths deep enough to fill our lungs broke the chilled silence around us. I could feel the world turn around me as I tried to return the oxygen to my brain. It was difficult to keep my footing on the uneven ground of the dirt road. Suddenly, bright lights sliced through the dense trees surrounding the road up ahead, piercing my eyes through the blackness that I had become accustomed to within the last hour or so. My first thought was that at last someone was coming to pick us up and save us! But before I could express these thoughts to Damon, he caught hold of my un-injured arm and yanked me back off the road and into the lightless cover of the trees. “Damon, what are you doing? They might be able to help us!” “No, Cameo, you don’t know that. They could be just as bad, or worse, than those other guys.” Damon whispered as he, not all too gently, pushed me behind a tree and shoved me to my knees. Then he followed suit. As the vehicle approached I studied it closely. After it made it completely around the bend in the road, it began to slow. I could see the halo of red lights illuminate the back end of the vehicle as whoever was driving pressed on the brakes. The rest of the car seemed to glow ghostly white through the shadows around me. It waited there, moving slowly down the road like it was waiting to pounce on something. I wasn’t sure what to do. I was scared out of my wits. The street was so barren that there wasn’t even the slightest whisper creeping into my ear and the darkness was so complete that I could barely see the outlines of the trees all around me. ‘Just pass!’ I thought to myself. ‘Don’t stop by us. I don’t want to deal with this right now. Leave us alone!’ As the white vehicle slowly inched toward us, my agitation and impatience grew. I wanted them to go away, whoever they were, but they just kept coming closer. Soon I could hear the gravel on the side of the road crunch under the weight of the approaching car. The headlights were dim, but as they came closer, they illuminated the road ahead of me and I could see the halo of light surrounding the trees we were hiding in. I could feel my heart begin to thump harder against my ribs. My breath quickened and my body began to shake again, making me almost forget about the pain still pulsating in my shoulder. I had watched a lot of scary movies, and yet, out of all of them, I had never been more afraid than I was now. The vehicle was almost to a stop now. Whatever was going on, it couldn’t be good. They must have seen us, or else they wouldn’t be stopping. My mind began to race. What if this was part of the group that had taken us in the van? Maybe they were just following our other captors. But I hadn’t seen any other men in the house; and how would they know about this dirt road? Why wouldn’t they have just taken the main road. The vehicle rolled to a stop on the road directly in front of where we were hiding in the trees.