With a grunt I opened my eyes and pushed myself up, the overwhelming feeling of grogginess kept my mind from immediately sending alert signals to every part of my body as the sensation of my bed sheets was non-existent. I sat down on my knees and took a moment to rub my eyes as a drawn-out yawn left my mouth, as I rubbed away the tears that followed the yawn I finally took my hands away from my face and looked around me. Having to blink multiple times as the bleary sensation was still messing with my vision because I was surely not that lucid to be seeing trees in my room. Surely, I was still in the process of waking up, and the darkness of my room was making me see things.

I took a moment to close my eyes and shake my head, taking another look at my surroundings afterward, I felt a little bead of worry start forming in my chest as the single tree that I was seeing had multiplied. Everywhere I turned my head I could see trees, big, tall, and small. That didn't help the feeling of worry turn into full-blown panic as I fell forwards and caught myself with my hands, curling them inwards at the strange and familiar feeling of grass and dirt coating my fingers and making their way in between my fingernails. I quickly pushed up and onto my feet, shaking away the leftover dirt on my hands and doing a three-sixty as I stood in place, taking in the image of all these trees casting a shadow over my form as I could just barely see the sun peeking in from the canopy above.

Then I snapped my head back down and looked at myself, patting at everything to ensure it was all there and not missing, mainly because my thoughts immediately formed the idea that I was kidnapped and dumped in a forest. But then again that would also contradict the memory of him passing out in his warm bed after a few long hours of working, there was no way that he was in the ideal spot to just be kidnapped and dumped likes this. There was just no way...

"Okay... Okay, I just have to.." I tried talking to myself to try and stop myself from just panicking.

I had no idea what I was going to do in this situation. Never in my life had I been prepared to wake up half-naked in a forest. Like literally, all I was wearing was a hoodie without a shirt underneath it, shorts, and literally nothing else. So that meant that the bottom of my feet and my toes were currently enjoying the constant feeling of the prickly grass that I was standing on.

There was no way that I wasn't going to die of exposure…

"Fuck.." was my only sentiment.

I ran a hand through my messy hair before my eyes landed on a small path that I didn't notice in my initial shock and panic, so with another look, I let my hand drop back down to my side and I started walking in that direction. Making sure that while I was walking, to watch for anything that would stab, scratch, or would just make me slip and bust my ass.

I'd try my phone, but I don't sleep with my phone within arm's reach, I like to keep it charging at my computer that is all the way across from my bed. So that left me with absolutely nothing but the clothes I was wearing when I went to sleep and when I woke up.

There's nothing much I could really say to describe what precisely all of this looked like as I walked, what could you say to describe yourself walking through a literal ton of trees that were surrounding a makeshift hiking trail on either side of it? But I could say that it was a pretty weird feeling because there was a distinct lack of ambiance like there were no insect noises, birds chirping, or anything. Just the sound of my feet making contact with the ground every so often.

All I knew was that all this walking was for sure going to mess up my feet and that I was probably going to be dead in the next few days, or hours, depending on what exactly I am going to face in this forest. Because I know for a FACT that something is going to come out from the tree line and try to do something to me, my luck was just that awful that no matter the situation, something was always going to come and bite me in the ass. But I hope whatever it is, is something that I can preferably perform the play dead routine on and it'd let me go on my merry way. But then again, there are some animals that don't play around with that type of confrontation and go for the kill even if you try and play dead.

I brought both hands to my face and let out a deep groan of dissatisfaction before I let them drop back down to my sides and continued walking, making sure to watch the path beneath me to make sure that I don't stab myself with something.

.

.

.

.

"Finally! Some progress!" I yelled out to no one in particular.

Why was I yelling out? Well because the surrounding trees started becoming more and more sparse in between each other, leaving more empty spaces that allowed me to see more than I was able to a few hours ago. In truth, it looked sort of like a haphazardly done humanitarian effort, but if walking through a few miles of this meant that I would find some sort of human contact then I'd suffer through more bumps and bruises.

Everything was going well, I was uninterrupted in my overdue hike, the sun was still in a good position in the sky, and I was most likely going to find myself some other humans that could help me get to some type of law enforcement. I still had to figure out how the hell I got out here in the first place, and the cops could probably give me some insight as to how exactly that'd happened.

That was until a branch snapping in the nearby distance caused me to stop and turn towards the direction of the sound, looking at the available space between the trees with more than enough scrutiny to cause a copywriter to jump off a bridge. But as I saw nothing, I just looked back in my original direction and continued walking, albeit at a faster pace than I was before.

"Nope, nope, nope.." I muttered to myself as I got farther and farther away from where the noise happened and felt a bad chill run through my spine as the noise sounded once again, though this time louder than it was before.

"Now is not the fucking time for my bad luck to start acting up…"

I continued at my quickened pace for a few more minutes of peace before suddenly feeling the urge to look behind me, so I did the complete opposite and started booking it, not even caring if my feet started getting scuffed up. I was not going to be dealing with whatever was behind me, and thank God I was a fast runner, so I was confident in the fact that I could absolutely get away from it.

My instincts to immediately start running proved to be correct because as soon as I was running, I heard some pretty ominous-sounding footsteps start running after me, and when I mean running, I fucking mean they were BOLTING after my ass. How did I know? Because I could hear their booming footsteps crunching against the bramble all over the floor, louder than my own.

Now I refused to look around my shoulder, because in all of the horror movies, knowing what was behind you was a lot worse than not knowing what was chasing after you and hauling ass away from it.

But what I did afford to look at was the thing that whizzed past my face and onto the ground, a few feet in front of me, widening my eyes as I came closer and ran past it that was an arrow, one that was firmly planted into the earth and that was one hundred percent aiming for me.

So I skipped over the part where I described what it looked like and how it made me feel, and instead ran even faster. My arms were pumping and my heart was beating even harder as I sprinted.

It was a tense and very adrenaline-filled moment before I could feel something impact the back of my knee before feeling as if it coiled around one leg and then the other. Which then caused a hitch in my movement and sent me forwards and onto my face, a grunt of pain being let out of me as my chin flared with pain. I was quick to slam my hands down and push myself back up and onto my knees to try and continue running but I was stopped by a sudden force throwing me back down onto the floor, a grunt being let out of me as I was pressed against the ground.

I struggled against the force and tried to move with as much power as I could, not registering anything that was happening beyond that point. My struggle was put to an end as the force pressing on my back was removed and instead replaced with a tight grip around the back of my neck, making my eyes widen and let out a noise of pain as I was hauled up and off the ground.

"I've never seen something quite like you before.." a course-accented voice suddenly broke the silence. Making me falter as I tried craning my head around to look at my attacker. But a sharp object pressed against my neck, but I couldn't see any sort of knife in his hands.

A chilling laugh made the hairs on my neck straighten as their voice followed once again "You'll fetch some nice coin.." before the grip around my neck tightened and I was thrown into unconsciousness.