WHEREVER YOU GO

By: Martha Whittington

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Story fragment:

“Stop running, damn it!” I heard Carl behind me; he was still trying to catch up.

It seemed he had been following me the whole time. I ran down the small hill, toward the river. Tom never looked at me, not once. He always seemed to look in the direction he pointed at; I wondered if it all was some sort of a hallucination on my part.

As soon as I got close, Tom jumped into the water and disappeared in it.

“Oh God! Don’t let him drown!” I yelled, without thinking Tom was already dead.

I jumped into the river without any hesitation. All I could think of was getting my brother out of the water.

As soon as I got in that river, I felt myself being swept away by the strong current; I barely made it to the surface to get some air. Rocks and tree limbs made me slow down, but still I was going downstream, and fast. I saw my brother, standing on the other side of the river, pointing again.

Oh God, give me strength.

I started swimming as vigorously as I could to get to the other side of the river. After a while I was able to hold on to some rocks; I held onto them while trying to catch my breath. My hands got cut on the sharp edges of the rocks but I didn’t feel a thing with all the commotion going on around me.

Tom was not far from me; he was still on the other side. I started to move slowly to where he was, knowing that one false move would send me on my way downriver, making me lose my objective.

After a minute—that seemed to last forever—my feet touched the ground below. I was able to hold on to some tree roots and pulled myself closer to shore. I saw what Tom was pointing at; it looked like a large potato sack caught up in the same roots I had used to get there.

I made it to that big bag and touched it; I could have sworn it moved, but it might have been just the strong current moving it.

I saw a string around the top of it. I undid the knot and the bag suddenly opened. I saw a man inside it; I thought it had to have been one of the corpses they were looking for. I had never seen a dead body before; his face was totally white and his lips were a little blue. He had dark circles around his eyes.

I tried backing up from it.

The man suddenly opened his eyes; they were the eyes of a madman, shot with blood, and a pair of arms came out of the bag at the same time he let out a horrific growl.

He embraced me with extreme force; knocking the air out of my lungs.