29 - Dig

29 - Dig

She fell over something squelchy. Mud covered her clothes down to her hair and her boots, which she didn’t mind getting dirty, as that’s the reason they were made. She picked herself up, luckily, she was on her own and nobody else seemed to be around her in the forest she was walking.

Every day she would take the same trail, living close to the forest just a little walk away was the best place to clear her mind. She would wonder around the trees and the leaves sprinkled on the ground hearing the way they crunched underfoot, moving slowly as she always picked the perfect time in which she could take as long as she wanted, time to reflect without the struggles of everyday life.

She would have been relaxed, until she fell in mud. For the past few years, she had taken the same route and nothing like this had happened before. It hadn’t been raining in the night, so the ground should have been dry, it just wasn’t.

Starting on her trail once more, she walked until something on her left boot kept nudging her as if something was stuck. She bent over, peeled what looked like a crumble piece of paper covered in mud. Uncrumpling it, finding it difficult to read she squinted. She didn’t need glasses, but dirt can block anyone’s vision.

A treasure map of some kind. At first, she just presumed it to be some child’s drawing, playing in the woods that dropped their map inside mud not wanting to get muddy. At this moment in time staring at her hands that were also covered she wished she had done the same thing.

On further look, it looked to professional for a child to have drawn the map. Children can be clever and there are master painters out there but nerveless it seemed a bit far-fetched.

It was a map of these woods, her exploring over the few years day in and out helped her navigate and pick landmarks from everyday trees. She began to walk forward, to the right corner of the paper was an X marks the spot like a real pirate had been burying their fortune in a nearby forest. It seemed, again to far-fetched, but at least it kept her mind of how stinky she was beginning to smell...

There wouldn’t be gold she thought walking along the path hearing the crunching of falling leaves underneath her boots, the treasure was probably something silly, something like rubbish or more so, not even there in the first place, just a joke someone drew as they were bored.

She got nearer and nearer. It was hard to tell those things looked different even though she knew the forest well because at the end of the day, trees no matter what they are, all look very similar to each other.

There was something to the right of her that matched the map. Marching over to a dirt like mound she walked up hill where it stood. There was nothing around the pile to suggest she followed and reached the right place but there wasn’t a DO NOT DIG sign either, just when she was about to dig the top of the mound up, she remembered, no shovel, she couldn’t dig with her bare hands...

Or could, see? She was this far and completely dirty already, she sighed that thing had come down to this, a new low for her and then she started to dig, feeling like a dog clawing into the dirt.

After what felt like an eternity but was probably just twenty minutes, she stared down at her work where there was nothing to show for, just some human claw marks in dirt.

She leapt from her hands and knees where she had been kneeling on deciding to quit, she wasn’t an animal, she had no upper strength, it was useless. As she marched down, propped up against a tree trunk was a metal shovel with a wooden handle. She couldn’t remember anything being there but dismissed it and grabbed the shovel lying around marching up the mound starting on her digging project once again.

It really did feel like she had been digging forever, but this time progress was being made. She knew she had been here a while as the sunset was arriving. She didn’t want to be in the forest at night, but she couldn’t leave this how it was. She just kept digging.

Inside the mound now, she thought how long she left until she found something. Perhaps that was the idea, it was all about the journey. She really thought she until her metal shovel bounced back, vibrating.

As she knelt in closer, she dragged something out, something large as it was as though it didn’t want to be pulled. Something fleshly, Skin…

The more she uncovered, tugging what she really dreaded it was she felt dizzier and fainter. Was she now a part of a murder…?

The face was pulled up and she was face to face with something impossible. She was staring at the dead body of herself...