Where Am I?

Flash fiction by C.M. Gabbett

I wake up outside, face down in a mud puddle. I try to sit up, my head spinning and a sharp pain radiating through my side. I look down and do my best to steady my vision. Finally, the world stops spinning and I examine myself.

I am covered in mud, coating my ripped black T-shirt and tattered blue jeans. My shoes are gone and I have only one half destroyed brown sock. I don’t know if it’s actually brown or if that’s just from the mud. My arm is bleeding pretty badly and dirty water has seeped into the cut. It stings terribly and is probably infected.

I stand up to examine my surroundings. As I do so, a crippling pain shoots through my left leg. I have to lean on a nearby rock to keep from falling over. Wincing with pain, my eyes search the area around me. I’m in a wooded area, mostly deciduous trees. The ground is muddy and full of rocks. A bird calls out in the distance, and a few rays of sun peek through the tree tops. I have no idea where I am.

I struggle to remember how I got here. Thinking hard, the last thing that I can remember is leaving the convenience store on the corner of Lamb and Rome streets in downtown Montville. I remembered biting into my Twix bar, but after that, my mind is a blank.

I shuffle through my pockets, trying to find any sort of clue as to where I am or how I got here. My cell phone is gone, as is my wallet. The only thing in my pocket is a bent paperclip. No help there. I sigh painfully and begin to limp towards a brighter section of the woods, in hopes of finding an exit or at least an open space. If I can find people, I can get help. As long as I don’t find whoever put me here, that is.

See more Mark Nasso at :The Underground Forest  a company based in Houston, Texas that publishes the fantasy graphic novel series Land of the Rats and the Texas artist anthology Doom Ranch 5000.