I checked my pack one more time, still disappointed by the outcome. Most of the nuts and seeds had been thoroughly snacked on. There were a few scrounging around at the bottom that were more work to dig out than it was rewarding to eat them. And my fish…

  “Besides the one I’m chewing on, I’m down to my last one.” My stomach growled. I had hoped supplies would last me until I left the woods but after a week there was no sign of the forest breaking. At least, I thought it had been a week. It was hard to keep track of time while running from predators.

  Defeated, I thumped back against the thick trunk of an oak.

  “Man, I was hoping I could eat both of these this morning. Considering how long I’ve been gone, I made them last.” I looked down at the little fish sitting all alone in my pouch. Its desiccated remains stared back, sun dried to hell and back.

  “I guess I should save you for later. The dried ones don’t fill me as much anyways,” I pouted to make myself feel better. It was true. Sun dried fish lost all of their filling bits in the process somehow, but they lasted longer than cooked ones. At least, that’s what I told myself. Maybe a storm of stomach sickness was coming in my future.

  I was hungry, though. Oddly, it was quite easy now to go a day or two without eating. Back home, if I hadn’t eaten for more than eight hours, I thought I was going to die. It was more than just the endurance point kicking in too. My body just felt equipped to do it like the power had been there all along.

  I pinched my belly, noticing how little belly fat there was to pinch. Much different than when I first arrived in the forest. Back then, my belly was soft and pink. Though I never considered myself fat, I seethed with jealousy over that well fed, soft bellied ignoramus.

  “If only I had your life,” I muttered through gritted teeth. One dried fish wouldn’t hold over a grown man for two days and it had already been two since his last one.

  “But with only a fish left, maybe I should go back home…” Turning back didn’t just seem like quitting anymore, it felt like the logical thing to do.

  “I lost a couple days I shouldn’t have back there. Now I’m paying for it dearly.” The dangerous part of the forest had cost quite a few days, six at least, maybe more, but home couldn’t be more than three away.

  “Turning back home will get me back in time to safely hunt and rehydrate. If I go now, I can resupply, say hi to Spot and be off again.” The timeframe was sensible. The logic was sound. Even my confidence told me that the trek home would be far easier than the trek had been the first time around. With my newfound skills, all I had to do was follow the instinct that had led me here.

  It was the plan to approach. Not doing it would be foolish… but my heart yearned to continue and so on unsure legs, I continued on into the forest, burning with the desire to find out what was out beyond the trees.

  The day passed and my hunger struck me hard. The last fish didn’t survive the night. With an empty pack I lay down to rest in a safe place between two oaks. The next morning I’d have to go hunting. It would waste so much time, half a day, maybe the whole day, but if I didn’t I’d be in real trouble soon.

  The next day, with anxiety befuddling my every move, I tried my best to hunt and forage, but each minute spent sitting still meant my brain was moving a thousand miles. I couldn’t push out the idea that every wasted moment was another step I could’ve taken, another few feet I could’ve traversed towards the end of the woods… or, at least, back home. Instead, the forest floor was scrounged for a few nuts, a couple sour berries, and some tiny rodent tracks that led nowhere. By noon, I was too afraid to keep at it and instead decided to go hungry until the next day.

  After a miserable sleep, I had to admit that my hunger was becoming a problem. One fish a day was already a ludicrous meal plan for a grown man, but the size of the forest and the problems of traversing it threw a bigger wrench in my plans than I’d expected. And that wouldn’t have been a problem either if my intense desire wasn’t in control of the wheel. I could’ve scouted, gone back, hunted more and tried again, over and over if need be, but, as most bad plans do, it was born to fall apart.

  And now I lay hungry under the morning sun, ashamed of my life choices.

  “I feel… stupid,” I said out loud. “Was this a mistake?”

  The danger, I was realizing, lay with my own sense of urgency. I needed to find out what was out there. I needed to leave camp even if I wasn’t ready. And that was more lethal than any predator.

  “If I don’t get a handle on that, I could very well die here. This isn’t a dream or some videogame. I have to respect this world, or it’s going to chew me up and swallow me whole.”

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  I wondered while covered in early morning dew what it was that drove me forward; naivete, ignorance, overconfidence? In my mind, it was simply a necessity. If I wanted to go home, then somehow leaving this forest meant I could.

  Well, this morning as I turned onto my back, muscles aching from sleeping on the dirt, belly rumbling, water horn mostly dry, I had to finally admit that my dream of going home was too far off to even dream about. That was a difficult thing to admit to because that also meant accepting a slew of other undesirable things: my overconfidence, my ineptitude, the danger of the situation, the fact that I was stuck here for the foreseeable future, the fact that I had no control over anything in my life… and, the thing that scared me most of all, that maybe I had to accept the possibility that there was no way home.

  Instead of facing any of that, though, I went hunting.

  Noon rolled around when it finally happened. I spotted a woodland creature out of the corner of my eye, something blurry, moving carefully through the shrubbery just a few feet away. I kept still until I was sure. There had been a lot of tricks over the morning, a lot of spears thrown at tree roots or shadows thinking they were some kind of small woodland creature. The anxiety of starving was clearly messing with my head.

  Instead, I paused and patiently watched. Then, the creature moved again, rustling the shrub slightly as it left to feed on something else. I lost sight of it but kept my cool. My stomach growled.

  “Soon,” I whispered. Like a spectre in the dark, I crept forward. Everything was engaged. My instincts were sharp, my feet landing squarely where they needed. I wasn’t the hunter class but I didn’t need it.

  Then, peeking over the shrub I saw it. It was a furry little… rabbit. I panicked for a second thinking that it was Spot, but no, this rabbit was all gray. Spot was white, docile, and fluffy. This one looked like an animal, gamey, skinny, with matted hair and no spots. And its nose was black.

  I thought twice about skewering the animal.

  “This will never be you…” I remembered promising to Spot. I wondered if it was betrayal if I killed another rabbit, though. I’d definitely feel betrayed if Spot ever ate a human. But then, my stomach growled so loudly I was afraid the rabbit would hear it.

  “I’ll never breathe a word of this to Spot,” I decided as I rose to strike. Aiming just behind the neck, I readied the spear, hoisted it and then launched it.

  The spear whistled through the air before it slumped into the dirt just beside the rabbit. Surprised, it hopped off into the shrubs with incredible speed. My teeth grit together, my hands clenched so tight my knuckles went white. I couldn’t do it. Just at the last second I threw wide on purpose. I shook with rage.

  Then, all at once my emotions came crashing down. All of my fear, all of my anxieties clobbered me over the head and I went crashing to the dirt. I slammed my fists into the forest floor and screamed as loud as I could, letting it all out, the fear, the anger, the wasted time… the fact that I was stuck here in this god forsaken forest.

  After it was done, I was left heaving angered breaths. All was quiet and I was alone with my fears.

  The wave had washed over me, fading into memory. I laid flat on my back staring at the sky, watching as fat lumbering clouds drifted overhead. My spirit was broken, worn out, and flattened like a penny on the train tracks.

  I had to accept it. I was stuck here. I was stuck here and I might never go home again. If that was true then what did I do about it?

  “Well son, you got one option.” My father’s words rang in my head. He always told me that when something bad happened, like the time the family dog died.

  Mags was his name and when he died I laid in the front yard all day looking up at the clouds like I was right now. I laid there so long, in fact, my parents worried I’d never get up again. It was my first time feeling loss. I didn’t know how to deal with it.

  The mutt had been my best friend through childhood. By the time I was in middle school he was older than a liver spot but the sweetest animal I ever met. We spent most of our free time together. It felt wrong that he was gone.

  My father came out to get me just before dinner time. Without word, he sat beside me for an hour without any complaints. We just sat in silence, together, for a long while. Then,

  “Come on, son. Let’s get something to eat.”

  “How can you eat?” I asked dead inside.

  “Well, I just move my jaw up and down.” I wasn’t amused. “Come on, son. It’s been three days now. There’s no sense sulking in the front yard day by day. Your summer is wasting away, you know. Migs wouldn’t want you to waste a good summer time off, would he?” Tears came to my eyes. Me and Migs were inseparable in the summer. Now, I had to face the fact I’d have to go without him. The summers seemed lonelier already.

  “I don’t know dad. I just feel defeated. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to move on.”

  “I understand. I loved that dog more than you’ll ever know. I picked him up from the pound the day you were born, just for you. He’s as much a part of my life as he is yours. But I can’t sit here in the grass moping away over things I can’t control. I have a life to live.”

  “Yeah, but you’re old.”

  “You will be too, one day,” he said, trying to get my spirits up. “Come on, let’s go inside and get something to eat.”

  I argued until he countered with words I never forgot.

  “Listen son, no matter what happens to me or you or anyone else, life goes on. It just depends on whether or not you go on with it. Either way, though, it won’t stop bothering you. So, what are you gonna do in the meantime? You only got one option.”

  The memory faded. I looked at my calloused hands, roughened by days of labor and stress. I wondered what my father would think of me now.

  “Alright, I’m stuck here. What am I gonna do in the meantime?” I sat up. “If I keep going, there’s no guarantee I make it anywhere. If I turn back there’s no guarantee I make it back. Either way, life will go on. So what do I want to do?”

  I put aside logic, forward thinking, and desires of home and sat with my eyes closed to listen more thoroughly to my heart.

  Death was on either side of me. Home was far away, if ever present. With no factors to decide what I should do, I honed in on the tiny voice that told me what it wanted. It bade me to continue. I’d made it this far. Come hell or high water, I didn’t want to go back now…