Roger sat, staring at the flames for a while. He'd been up all night, but he didn't feel it. The touch of the sun on his back only made him restless. The fire pit was down to one log, bravely sputtering in the dawn air, white ashes a testament to its former heat. Inside his Winnebago, back toward the road there was food for breakfast, but Roger didn't make a move to get up yet. Shifting his gaze to the side, he looked at the fallen tree stump where his visitor had sat last night.
It had been abnormal, in a way. Nothing about the man himself had surprised Roger, but the feeling in the air that things were not quite right afterwards had kept him up. As he had talked with him, Andrew he had been called, a growing sense of panic had grown inside him, mentally yelling at him to run away, to flee the area, to douse the flames and set off into the forest. Even after his visitor had departed hours earlier, wandering off into the darkness, Roger still sat frozen, resisting the pounding of his heart. It wasn't the first time he had felt an urge to leave a place, spending his money that had at one time been for college on the Winnebago and driving off, away from home. This time held a different tone of urgency though. Instead of his own inner voice that couldn't stand the life he was living, buckling under the pressure of society, he could feel the otherness in the voice that plagued him this night. It felt like the strange man who had showed up to share his fire, warming up against the cold, autumn night before wandering off. It wasn't the same voice, just a feeling. The man had been pleasant, charming, entertaining in his affect.
The shakes in Rogers hands worsened as he thought back to it. He needed to leave, to get away, to shake off the presence that was haunting him. Maybe a short stroll would do it, giving in enough to throw off the sense of dread that had gotten hold of him. Maybe it wouldn't be like the Winnebago, one step of fear that he never had the courage to come back from, to face them again after stepping out that front door two years ago. He headed over to the water spout by the road, filling a bucket and dousing the flames before he did anything else, letting the plastic bucket fall to the wayside next to the rock he had been sitting on before setting his sights on the forest in front of him.
It wasn't a trail, but it felt like the right way to go. He stepped forward, brushing a branch out of his way and staring deeper into the morning shadows of the woods. The dread spiked behind him and he broke into a jog, barely noticing the ground sloping up as he ran. He was out of shape from his driving, living on cheap pasta and what he could get from his shows when he hit a city. Roger felt his breath giving way to gasps, stopping to lean on a tree before looking back. The forest was all the same, dark and cold away from the campfire, a feeling of dread still emanating from that direction, confirming it to be the way back. Roger walked some more, keeping the feeling behind him, wondering if it would go away and leave him lost, or stay there and drive him away from the campsite.
He didn't notice the ledge. He didn't register the feeling of falling until the ground whizzed by his face and his stomach finally transmitted that lifting sensation that always happens. He didn't realize how screwed he was until he saw the bright light of the sun flashing off a river from below him. He didn't remember anything until he heard the burble of water in his ears and felt the cold, chilly wetness that soaked him from behind closed eyelids, unaware of how much time had passed.
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