Wednesday Briefs #7: The Hollow: Soul Seekers

Copyright 2014  JC Wallace

Each Week a group of authors participate weekly in Wednesday Briefs Flash Fiction. Each installment is 500-1000 words long and is posted to our blogs each week. After you read the latest in my story, click on the link at the end to visit the other flashers.

Welcome my new weekly flash story The Hollow: Soul Seekers. My previous story Diventando: Becoming has been pulled so I can prep it for publication. I will let you know in the future a date of publication.

Years had passed since he’d been on the paths by the lake, but as he proceeded in a slow jog on the well-worn path, it all felt so familiar. Had he been on this specific path as a child? Day after summer day had been spent with Logan exploring practically every square foot of the towering forest surrounding the cabin, wherever that was.

Jogging on the wooded path, a powerful, almost over-whelming need pushed him farther, faster. Levi hurdled small puddles and protruding rocks and ducked through showers of low hanging deciduous and evergreen branches. Leaning forward he pushed his legs harder, digging his sneakers into the compacted dirt. Fast wasn’t enough.

Faster... Faster…Faster. Faster.fasterfasterfaster!

He muttered the chant beneath his breath. Beads of sweat trickled down his forehead, tickling his face, dripping from his chin. Heat rose from his chest and flushed across his cheeks. Picking up more speed, he pushed off with his right leg and flew over a large decaying tree to the right of the path. A cushion of littered leaves deadened his landing. Off-trail he ducked, weaved, and jumped, expertly creating his own trail through thick underbrush and large, round, aged oaks, firs and maples. The same predestined force seemed to drive him forward as had driven his from the college.

Only one thought spurred him on: Faster.

Speed increased, foliage blurred, occasionally a stick whipped at the skin of his arms and face but the momentary stings couldn’t compete. The need to move became a necessity for his continued existence. A faint sensation mounted, ascending through the murky blackness of his mind. A feeling? No, an emotion. Pure, uncontaminated…

Euphoria.

On the crest of a small hill, Lake George peeked between the bare trees. Levi’s blood surged, afire within his arteries, and pumped harder and faster to fuel his muscles. He wondered at the rapturous feeling that expanded and magnified. Heat surged from his pores, filling the air around him, negating any cool breeze he created as he cut swiftly through the sheltered forest. His body’s internal temperature rose rapidly with a new thought: more feeling.

A burning current shot up both of his arms. Energy similar to what he’d experienced earlier, yet magnified hundreds of time. Ecstasy and elation faded into a fiery and all-consuming inferno that invaded his torso, his legs, his arms, his very molecules. Any minute, any second, he’d spontaneously combust. He would explode outward in a blinding light and reduce his surroundings to ash. There was no doubt in his mind.

He knew what he had to do. There was only one remedy for the searing heat rising relentlessly from deep within. Levi bolted to the left down the hill with a speed that threatened to throw him down the rocky and tree-laden hillside. Leaning back, he fought the forward momentum of gravity, the lake well within sight. Dead leaves and pine needles were kicked into the air as his feet half-slid toward the bottom. Tripping over a tree root and stumbling out onto a rock shelf that jutted out over Lake George, Levi pushed off with his left leg, one final effort, and soared, flailing, into the air over the dark water below.

“Oh hell!” he exclaimed when he saw that the water was probably well over 20 feet below him.

For a split second, he wondered what the hell had convinced him that throwing himself into the freezing lake was a good idea? Struggling to enter the water feet first failed and he smashed into the surface of the icy water partially prone and on his right side.  Pain exploded into his ribcage, as the icy water enveloped him, icy claws digging into his skin.

An arctic blast extinguishing every last bit of heat and numbed his mind to rational thought. Darkness surrounded him. Shudders of cold cramped muscles and froze joints.  In a matter of minutes, his body would be completely immobilized. Panic. Can’t breathe.  Fraught with determination, Levi pulled at the water above, fighting to inch closer to the daylight. Kicking his legs helped propel him and just as his mouth opened for air he broke through the surface.

“Fuck me, that’s cold!” he managed to say between clenched teeth.

Dog paddling, he felt his feet scrape against the stony bottom of the shallows. A problem however loomed above him in the form of the massive ledge of rock that he had just attempted to swan dive from. He could have sworn the smooth unclimable gray face of that rock was silently mocking him.

Standing in about 2 feet of water, Levi wrapped his arms around his torso, numb almost to the core, and stumbled past the rock to a break in the shore. Just an hour ago he’d been resting comfortably in Statistics and now he had nearly become a drowned rat—a cold, drowned rat. Was it the world that had tilted off of its axis, or him?

Wobbling, he climbed through the brush and collapsed onto the soft brown carpet that had been shed by a grove of cedar trees. To stay there on the ground would almost certainly mean death from hypothermia. Not that moving was necessarily going to guarantee survival either, but the odds were better.

 Forcing himself to sit up, Levi doubted cell service reached this far down the lake. Rolling his eyes, he muttered a string of obscenities and pulled his cell from his pocket. Water leaked from every opening in his body and Levi chucked the useless phone to a watery grave. Could the day possibly get any worse?

Rapidly the numbness was fading and giving way to full-on cold. Wearily, Levi stood, his feet aching from the pressure he’d exerted on them. Tentatively, he walked, as if barefoot on hot coals. Each painful movement definitely ruled out trekking back to his car, whatever direction that was from his current location. What new form of stupidity had  the second he’d left his car?  Cardinal rules of the wilderness. You never go into the woods without telling someone where and when. You never leave a marked path. And you definitely never, ever jump into an Adirondack lake in the middle of fucking March—no matter what your core temperature is—and with your cell phone in your pocket!

He let out a nervous laugh. “I’m not lost. Just temporarily misplaced.” His levity did little to improve the situation.

Maybe at the top of the hill he could see something, anything—a path, a camp, a quick way to get help. Whatever energy had propelled him to sprint through the dense woods now eluded him. And what was with the nagging need to go off-road in the woods (much less run doing it)? Better yet what was with the need to be in the woods at all? It wasn’t so great now that he was here.

 With tremendous effort, he reached the apex of the hill and practically threw himself the last few feet. Pain screamed in his fingers and toes, even the tips of his ears.  Real fear surfaced that he might lose parts of his body to frostbite. Important parts. In this cold winter climate, it was more common than he cared to think. Fiercely, Levi rubbed his hands to create friction, then studied his fingers. Red, numb, and cold. Not good.

It was imperative he move. His body shuddered in an attempt to warm itself, and his teeth were actually chattering. Looking around, Levi realized moving south would eventually bring him to the state campground. Eventually.

Ignoring the pain in his feet, he stayed near the shore. Each step forward was searing, especially when he stepped onto a rock or accidentally bumped his toes. Although the air was probably a good thirty degrees warmer than the water, the wet clothes clinging to his body kept him from warming up.

“Survive eleven years of a fear-induced hell, thinking I would die from some phantom illness or disease only to die from hypothermia in the middle of friggin’ nowhere,” he muttered. “Classic.”

A loud screaming noise suddenly echoed through the trees. Squawking birds flew wildly from their hidden roosts. A momentary fear gripped icier than the coldness. Wait. That was a chainsaw. A chainsaw!

The possibility of rescue quickened his pace.

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