Slipping Away

I took a deep breath in, and the cold air filled my lungs. The scent of pine trees was strong.

“You gonna help us or what?”

I turned my head towards the voice. Rick and Abigail were struggling to get the tents pitched.

“Yeah, I guess I can help since you don’t know how to do it.” I said with a huge grin.

“I know how to pitch a tent, Mark,” said Rick with an annoyed look on his face, “I just wish you would be a little more help.”

“I’m just enjoying the scenery dude. I mean come on. Look at all this. It’s beautiful.”

“Yeah, I get that, but let’s please build our shelter before it dark out.”

“What? You afraid something might get us?”

“No. I just don’t wanna try to pitch this tent in the dark.”

Abigail looked up at me with eyes that spoke for themselves. I could tell from her look that I shouldn’t push the jokes furthur or she’d give me hell for it. “Okay fine.” I said, “let me see that real quick.”

Soon enough we had our shelters in place and already the sun was beginning to fall. Abigail, Rick, and I had been planning this trip for months. We were all in our senior years of college and had never once gone camping over winter break despite all of our fascination with nature. We scouted out a good place for months and finally decided to just go camping near a lake so we could ice fish, something else we had always wanted to do. Kind of a kill two birds with one stone. All of us preferred winter over the summertime.

“Mark, you packed the marshmallows, right?” Asked Abigail who was searching through our bags of supplies.”

“Yeah, they should be in the other bag there.”

“Here they are.” She said pulling out the plastic bag of marshmallows.

“Why do you need them now? Aren’t we going to roast marshmallows later tonight?” Asked Rick

“Yes. I just wanted to make sure Mark actually packed them. Wait a minute. Mark!”

“What?”

“Where are the graham crackers?”

“Oh shoot.” I had forgotten to buy some.

“Honestly, Mark was it really that hard to remember Marshmallows, Graham crackers, and chocolate?”

“Sorry. I was just in a huge rush and forgot.”

“This is why we told you to come shopping with us that day. So, we could all just go together and get supplies.”

“I said I’m sorry. Listen we can just use… bread. How about that?”

Rick turned toward me with a look of disgust. “Bread? Dude that’s disgusting.”

“How do you know? You ever tried it?”

“No because it’s disgusting.”

“It’s not disgusting it’s just different.”

“Okay!” interrupted Abigail, “Let’s just forget about the stupid graham crackers.”

“I agree. We should go explore before it gets dark.” I said already taking steps toward the wilderness.

“Mark, wait up!” Rick yelled after me.

“What about the camp?” said Abigail.

“Leave it! It’ll be fine! Nobodies out here!” I yelled back behind me.

I picked up the pace and began jogging in the snow. The surrounding area was picture perfect. Snow sat gently on the pine trees and the sound of woodland animals could be heard as I made my way through the forest of trees. Eventually Rick and Abigail caught up.

“Aren’t you afraid of bear traps?” said Abigail.

“Bear traps?” I said.

Before she could say anything back, I stopped and looked at the landscape in front of me. The others did the same. Together we gazed out onto a frozen pond.

“Woah look at that!” I said excitedly.

“Don’t even think about it Mark.” Said Abigail sternly. “Mark!” It was too late though I was already running onto the frozen ice. “Mark! That ice could be thin! Get off of there!”

“It’s fine. Come see for yourself.”

Rick looked at Abigail with pleading eyes. “You guys are idiots.” She said with a smile as she joined me on the ice. We slid around on the ice for what seemed like hours. It was more fun than you would think it would be. I fell so many times that I was definitely going to have bruises the next day.

Eventually it was getting dark, and we decided to go back to the camp. We made it just in time before it got super dark. Rick started up a fire (with my help of course) and we began roasting marshmallows. By now darkness had settled in. We only had two sticks for roasting, so I let the other two go first.

“So tomorrow we can go ice fishing and maybe one of us can catch some dinner.” Said Abigail breaking the silence.

“That sounds good to me.” I said looking deeply into the fire.

“Everything alright Mark?” asked Rick.

I broke my gaze from the fire and laid down in the snow. “Yeah. I’m just tired.”

“Mark?” said Abigail.

I knew this was coming. “Yeah?”

“Rick and I have been meaning to talk to you about this, and we don’t want to make you upset but… are you okay?”

I didn’t answer for a few seconds. I knew that made things uncomfortable, so I quickly tried to fill the silence. “I uh… I don’t know. Why?”

“You’ve been really… weird lately.”

“Weird?”

“Yeah.” Said Rick, “You seem kind of in your own world. Like nothing else really matters.”

I sat up from the snow but immediately regretted it as I looked at my friends. They were both staring at me waiting for me to pour everything out so everything could be normal again. But that’s just not how things worked. “I’m fine. I’m just…tired.” I don’t even know what that meant. I got plenty of sleep. Rick finished scooping his marshmallow off of the stick and held it out for me to take. I grabbed it from him, stuck my marshmallow on it and began roasting it. I once again stared deeply into the fire. It made things feel calmer for me.

“I don’t know that I’m ready to talk about it. I’ve just been trying to forget about it honestly.”

Abigail stood up and sat next to me on the log. She and I kinda had a thing but it never really went anywhere after what happened. I just couldn’t commit to something like that right now.

“We care about you, Mark.” She said staring into the fire with me. “That’s why we agreed to go on this crazy trip with you. Because we care about you, and we hope it will help.”

I broke my gaze to look at Rick. He and I had known each other since elementary school. I noticed some tears welling up in his eyes. It hurt to see that, and I felt my own eyes begin to water. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Sometimes it’s just hard to accept that my parents are gone. I get so stressed out thinking about what the hell I’m going to do now.” The pain in my chest became too much and I brought my hand up to cover my face. I felt Abigail wrap her arms around me and it seemed all my held in emotion poured out from there.

I never got to eat my Smore because the Marshmallow burned and fell off into the fire. Eventually we all decided to call it a night.

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As the others slept, I stayed up unable to sleep. They were right. I wasn’t okay. My parents had both died in a terrible car accident 2 months ago. Life just hasn’t been the same since. This trip felt like an escape for me. A dream finally fulfilled. There was nothing out here for me to worry about. No problems, no questions, no looks from people.

It was then that I heard a noise from outside my tent. At first, I decided to ignore it, thinking it was just my mind playing tricks but then I heard it again. It sounded like somebody walking outside. I decided to take a peek outside. I unzipped the tent and gazed through, but nothing was there. I noticed that Rick’s tent was completely unzipped and went outside to investigate. He was nowhere to be found. I decided to go and wake up Abigail.

“Abigail. Abigail!” I whispered. “Wake up, Rick’s gone.”

“W-what?” she said in a sleepy voice.

“Rick’s missing.”

“What? Where did he go?”

“I don’t know”

After investigating his tent some more, we found tracks behind his tent which continued to behind a tree. “He probably is just peeing behind there. I’ll check on him.” I said continuing to follow the steps. I expected to find Rick behind the tree but instead what I found was a pool of blood. “Abigail!” I screamed. It was then that I heard a growl coming from behind me. I quickly turned around to see a wolf slowly approaching me. In its mouth was fabric similar to Rick’s coat. “Abigail! Run!” I screamed to her again. I then bolted toward camp. As I ran toward Abigail she screamed after noticing the wolf behind me. As we ran, more and more sounds of growling and barking could be heard behind us. We eventually reached our camp where I quickly grabbed the roasting sticks and continued to lead Abigail as far away as possible.

I quickly looked behind me to see Abigail’s terrified face and just behind her a pack of 5 or maybe 6 wolves still chasing after us. Turning back around though I tripped and began tumbling down a hill in the snow. I lost my grip on Abigail and she disappeared in the darkness. I eventually landed on something hard and tried to stand up. It was difficult because my feet kept slipping and I realized where I had landed. I was standing on the frozen pond. I tried to see in the darkness for Abigail and eventually saw her knocked out on the other side of the pond. The wolves were not too far from where she was. They must not have seen me. I quickly started screaming at them to try and get their attention on me.

“Hey! Over here! Come get me!”

I could feel a warm liquid dripping down my face and could only assume I must be bleeding after the fall. My distraction worked and the wolves made their way slowly over to me. They surrounded me on the pond. I tried my best to keep my eyes on all of them but one managed to catch me on my blind side and bite my leg. I let out a scream. The rest began to leap toward me, and I swung my stick at them, making contact with a couple. I could tell the impact caused a deep wound when it landed. The growling turned into whimpers as I saw 3 of the wolves run off. I bashed the wolf on my leg with the stick trying to get him to release but he was determined to eat me. The other wolf was just watching. Waiting to go in for the final strike.

“Mark!” said a familiar voice. It was Abigail. I had no time to answer. I was furiously trying to keep one wolf at bay and get the other off of me. In my attempt to escape I hadn’t noticed that I had been chipping away at the ice beneath me with the roasting stick. I heard a huge cracking sound and then noticed the other wolf running away. The one on my leg continued to fight though and it was starting to piss me off. I eventually made a clean hit on him, and he released as he lost consciousness. I then quickly tried to stand up. More cracking sounds.

“Mark! The ice!” screamed Abigail. As I took one last look at her I then heard a series of cracking sounds and then everything went dark and cold. At first, I panicked and then suddenly everything started to fade away and I slipped from consciousness into shadow.