Five 'o' clock came sooner than I thought, and I rise from my seat behind the cash register. I walk towards the window and turn the sign from "open" to "closed".  I grab my backpack and walk out the back door of the flower shop, locking it behind me. I start on my journey home to my cabin in the forest, entering the woods and stepping onto the path I walk home on every weekday. "Hopefully Chris will be home early enough to take a walk along the river," I say to myself. 

     An hour later, I'm halfway home. I happen to be weary today, so my walk is taking twice the usual time. At this rate, it will be dark by the time I get home and Chris will more than likely be asleep. 

     I hazily traipse through the woods, my feet cracking and cracking leaves below me. Weaving through trees and jumping over logs, I stumble several times. My journey home is far from desirable, but with my limited budget and lack of a vehicle, I am left with walking as my only option. Sundown creeps nearer until the sun is entirely hidden behind the tree-covered mountains. 

     The lumbering trees are now black, and their limbs seem to reach down in attempts to grab me. I feel a sharp poke, familiar to the jab of a stick, in my lower back. I turn around frantically, but after carefully searching the area around me for any abnormalities, I dismiss the poke as only my mind growing paranoid. As I reach a clearing, my pace quickens. My boots hit the grass with extreme force, my legs aching and my mind growing fuzzy as a result of my weariness. My cabin is now in sight, the textured wood gleaming in the moonlight.

     I start running toward my cabin, but as I near the rocky pathway, the cabin disappears as if I had only imagined it. My body slams to a halt, my mind running. My feet feel as if they have been stuck in cement, heavy and unmovable. My mind says to move forward, but my feet are refusing to do so. Have I walked along the wrong path, then convinced myself that the cabin should be over the clearing? Yes, that has to be it. 

     It takes a moment or two, but I am able to force my legs to shuffle forward a few feet, and soon I am able to walk gingerly. My whole body was experiencing shock, my hallucination the cause of my surprise. Just as I'm recovering from shock, I see a body moving opposite of me. Across the hill, there is a man running closer and closer to me. I decide that my best option is to stand still and hope that in the darkness he will not notice my presence. As he quickly gains on me, I decide that there is no way for me to not be spotted so I yell into the darkness, "Who's there?" 

     "Carlie? Is that you?" The man called out to me. The voice automatically registered to me and I knew who this man was. The voice belonged to my husband, Chris. 

     "Chris? Oh my, I don't know what's happening," my voice cried out, tears welling up in the corners of my eyes. Chris must have experienced the same hallucinations I had on his journey home. 

     "Carlie, did you see the cabin disappear?" Chris asked, his own voice wavering. 

     "I did... I saw the cabin over the cleaning and ran towards it and it just faded into nothing!" I cried, my voice cracking and squeaking in fear. 

     "The same thing happened to me, Carlie. We just need to walk around the area and we'll find the cabin," Chris said with obvious fear in his voice. 

     "I'm so scared, I even felt something touch my back earlier. I think something followed me," I said, trying to calm myself enough for my voice not to crack so badly. "Something poked me, and I felt a presence." 

     "It was just your imagination. Calm down," Chris said soothingly. 

     "I'm so confused...What could be happening? Where is the cabin? Where are we going to stay tonight?" I asked no one in particular, my mind running once again. Tears steadily streamed down my face, dripping and running down my neck. 

     Sticky tears dried to my skin and my eyes burned. Chris appeared at my side and wrapped his arms around my shaking body. He held me and whispered repeatedly into my ear, "It will all be okay, everything will be fine." 

     With me wailing and Chris doing everything possible to help calm me, we must have caught the attention of something. As Chris held me in his arms, I felt a sharp poke in my back, more than likely puncturing my skin. This poke was followed by something spelling out letters on to my back. 

     I was in shock again, my crying had suddenly stopped as if someone had pressed a pause button.  Whatever "the thing" was had carved three letters into my soft skin, and those letters spelled out "run". 

     At that point it was far too late to follow the directions given by "the thing", so I just stood in place, wishing that Chris' strong arms would protect me from whatever danger I was currently in. Of course, I was wrong. Chris could not save me from "the thing", and I wish I would have told him to run. Then he might be safe and alive.

     I felt a wrapping sensation around my neck and I started to gag, my lungs searching for air. Chris noticed my struggling and stepped back from me, and as he did he gasped. I was, and still am, clueless as to what was choking me. I figure that it was whatever was following me on my journey home. 

     I somehow croaked our "R-run," but before Chris could do so, he was caught by the ankle and dragged away from my dying body. As my consciousness slipped away, I could hear nothing other than Chris' screams. Then I heard nothing, nothing at all. 

     My eyes flutter open and my body aches. How am I alive? I figured that "the thing" would have killed me at any chance it could get. I then remember my sweet Chris, and I spring to me feet and dart in the direction I figured I would find him. There are sticks lined up parallel to one another, creating a pathway. I decide to run on the path, thinking that Chris might have created this path for me to follow. As I look back upon this moment, I realize that I would have been much better off not following this path. 

     I reach the end of the path and look along the trees for my Chris. I then look down, and what meets my eyes causes vile to rise to my throat. Bones are lying in a circle around where I am standing. Human bones. My body collapses and I fall to the ground, in the center of the circle constructed from my husband's bones. 

     My body shakes simultaneously with my sobs, and I throw punches into the earth beneath me. "Why me? Why Chris? You should have taken me instead! I could have saved him, I could have saved him!" I scream, hoping that whatever took Chris' life would feel guilty for taking the most important thing I had, but I knew that it was not guilty in the least. 

      I'm not sure what brought me to do so, but I picked up what I knew was Chris' arm. I pulled it to my chest and sobbed and screamed until my throat was raw and I was aching everywhere. I don't know how exactly I managed to do so, but I closed my eyes and fell asleep. 

     I wake up suddenly and cry out loudly. I'm surprised by my surroundings, as I am somehow in my cabin. Someone is holding me tightly, and I soon realize that this person is Chris. Oh my, thank God that was all a dream. 

     "Chris, I had a terrible dream. Something poked my back, then it started choking me and something killed you! I exclaimed, becoming scared once again even though I'm now aware that I've only had a bad dream.

     "Carlie, it's just a dream. Just a dream," Chris whispered pulling me into his arms. 

     "I know, I just got really scared at the thought of losing you," I said softly, tears falling down my face. I know it's fairly immature to cry over a dream, but with the thought of losing Chris running through my mind, I just had to cry it out. 

      As Chris holds me in his arms, I feel safe once again. We both stepped back from one another, and I started to turn towards the kitchen. Before I could do so, Chris started to fade away. In a matter of a second or so, I am standing alone and Chris has fully disappeared. I feel a sharp poke in my back. My breath hitches as, once again, letters were spelled out onto my back. Those letters spell out "run".