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  Jane got up and walked over to the nightstand. She got out a couple of the pills that she knew would calm her mind and body. She held them in her hand as if feeling their weight. She looked at them closely, holding them to her face, as if she was trying to see if they were really real and not just something conjured out of her imagination. In the end, she took them without any water—she didn’t need any because her mouth salivated at the thought of taking them. It was scary to her, that her body knew that the pills were something it wanted.

  Jane relaxed back down in bed and tried to go to sleep. After what seemed like hours she looked over at the clock to see that it was still early. Her body started to calm, but at the same time her heart was racing. She got out of bed to slowly pace around the house to see if it would calm her down.

  When she got to the kitchen she was shocked to hear that the television was blaring static. She crept closer as she thought she heard a voice within the static. She frantically grabbed the remote and jabbed at the power button to turn it off. She recognized the voice. It was Kyle’s. She screamed and crumpled to the floor.

  High on a shelf along with some other relics from the not so distant past sat their old answering machine. It hadn’t been plugged in for years, yet clear as day, Kyle’s voice spoke out from the tinny speaker. Her initial reaction had been to smash it into a million little pieces on the floor, but then she realized that she needed to slow her hammering heart so she could hear what he was saying.

  “… baby I just want you to know that I miss you. There are times that you’re all that I can think about. They left me over there baby, left me for dead. But I made it out, made it through, and now I’m stateside. I can’t make contact with you out in the open like I want to because then the men from the government would know what was going on and I … I just …”

  Kyle’s voice trailed off for a second, but then continued. But this time it wasn’t coming from the old answering machine, it was coming from somewhere else in the house. Jane felt her blood run cold as she heard the voice underneath her, in the basement. She quickly ran to the top of the basement stairs and descended, step by creaking step, hoping not to scare off the voice. If it came from Kyle she wanted to see him, wanted more than anything to hold him. So many feelings were rushing through her at such a rapid rate that she wasn’t sure what to do about them. She felt like she was going to burst, and that wasn’t a good feeling. When she made it to the bottom step she looked around.

  At the other end of the basement, underneath a single bare bulb, swinging like a pendulum at the end of its extension cord, stood Kyle. He had his back to her, and his shoulders were hunched over. It was like he was looking downward into some deep hole in the ground.

  At first, Jane wasn’t sure what to do. She wanted to run over to Kyle and grab him, hug him all over to make sure that he was real. But at the same time, she felt more afraid than she ever had before. What was Kyle doing in their house, in the basement, looking at the floor while he talked to himself?

  Kyle kept speaking, then muttering to himself. From the back, he looked thinner. His clothes looked threadbare and torn at the edges. There was a lot going on with his appearance, from his long hair to how unkempt the rest of him was, that made Jane wonder if he was living homeless in the woods behind her house, or under a bridge somewhere. Had it really come to that for him?

  “Kyle, are you all right?”

  As soon as Jane spoke the light went out. The entire basement was plunged into a thick darkness. Not only this but the floor was suddenly sticky to the touch of her bare feet, as if someone had put some kind of rubber cement down and it was just starting to dry. She tried to run back in the direction of the steps but stumbled and fell because in the sticky sheen. As she fell, her head hit the bottom stair and everything faded to something different than blackness, something thicker and richer in texture.

  Chapter 14

  When Jane woke the next day for work she was in her bed. She realized that she hadn’t gotten up to take her medication the night before, but instead had fallen asleep. The nightmares could be explained as her body’s way of coping with withdrawal symptoms.

  She had hours left before she had to go to work. She didn’t want to go, but at the same time she didn’t want to sit around her place and go through withdrawals. She wished that she had friends, real friends, to talk to. It would have made all the difference in the world if she’d been able to tell someone close to her how she felt, how she was scared and alone and didn’t have anyone at all.

  Jane was feeling low, so low that she knew that she had to take some of her medication or she was going to end up in a mental rut that would never let her be free. She didn’t want to slip back into depression, that much was certain. The last thing she needed was her boss on her ass again. The medication made her cheerful and easier to be around, and she knew that some of her coworkers considered the medication to have “brought the old Jane back.”

  Jane held the pills in her hand, then shoved them back in the bottle and grabbed her running shoes. It had been many moons since she’d gone for a run. But since Kyle had left her life she just didn’t seem to have what it took to go on a long run. Even when she tried to go with people it just didn’t help, she still struggled the whole time. She didn’t want to have to live like that, and there were times Jane pined after her not so distant youth and what it had allowed her to do.

  Today, though, today she was going to do something really special. She was going to lace up her running shoes and go out and hit the trail that circled back into the pines behind her place. She had loved that trail when she was younger, and the clearing was one of her and Kyle’s old rendezvous spots. Jane thought about how they used to meet up back there, about this time of year, when they had to make heat together to stay warm. The thrill of being discovered coursing through them as they got naked in the spring sunlight. There had been a time when there wasn’t anything she wouldn’t do if Kyle asked it of her. But that all seemed like so long ago now.

  Jane suited up and headed out the door. There wasn’t anything holding her back, she realized, as the door clicked close behind her. She hoped that if she went out for a jog she wouldn’t need to take that many, if any, of her pills. She was going to feel good after this.

  As she hit the concrete, she gathered some spring in her step. She leaned forward so that it was more like catching herself from falling than it was propelling herself forward. Soon she was really cruising, making time that most people half her age couldn’t do. She knew she was really getting after it when she found herself smack dab in the middle of the pine grove in record time.

  The way the trees cleared out in the center of the grove created a magic that seemed to permeate everything. The feeling had been one of the reasons the grove had been a favorite spot of her and Kyle’s. They loved the feeling of seclusion that could be found just a short walk away from their back door. It was a wonder that she’d forgotten about the place, but at the same time she’d read in a psychology book that trauma and grief fucked with the mind in ways that weren’t fully understood. So maybe it made sense that she didn’t remember the grove where so much of the relationship between her and Kyle had fully bloomed. From the center a multitude of paths led away in all directions.

  Jane stopped and surveyed the landscape around her. She wanted to find the last spot she and Kyle had made love. But the more she thought about it the more it seemed to slip away from her. She shook her head as the memories failed to come to her and ran down one of the paths that took her due south, toward her house. There was some rough terrain, which is why there wasn’t more of a vagrancy problem in the small grove. The terrain didn’t shield the elements from campers, so instead of finding shelter from the wind they found themselves being pummeled by it. Jane remembered all of this as she stretched her legs up and over roots that would have caught her foot like a snare.

  She had to be careful and pay attention, so she slowed down. If she sprained her ankle, or worse bac
k here, there was no telling when, or if, anyone would hear her cries for help. The terrain was rough enough where it was unlikely that she would have the strength to crawl out on her hands and knees as would be required.

  The deeper she got into the wooded area, the more she realized how much of the sun was blocked out by the trees. It was as if the world was slipping into an unending twilight, and Jane felt a cold shiver run through her body. She became disoriented and turned around, unsure of which way to go. For a moment, she had a clear thought that it had to be some kind of reaction from the medication, or a withdrawal from the medication. Something was going on beyond her control, and maybe it hadn’t been a good idea for her to leave the house. She wished she would have stayed in as she stumbled over a rock and into some old briar patch, dead, and barely sticking out of what remained of the snow.

  Jane tried to calm herself as she thought about the facts. She was lost, that much she knew for sure, and she was lost in a spot where no one would come looking for her. Even if Brian came over and couldn’t get in, she hadn’t jogged straight out from the house, so there wouldn’t be any tracks to follow. She was on her own. That didn’t make her feel any better, so Jane sat down on a nearby stump to collect her thoughts.

  The best thing she could do, as far as her reasoning went, was to walk in a straight line toward where she thought her house would be. She felt so confused – how had she gotten turned around? The way that her body was shivering didn’t have to do with the morning chill, and the way that cold sweat kept pooling on her brow didn’t have to do with physical exertion. Jane didn’t want to be a statistic; she didn’t want to have her death chalked up to having too much dope in her house and too little supervision. She knew that with as many pills as she had in her house, the people who came to investigate her disappearance would determine that she was just a junkie addict gone missing.

  Jane hugged herself as she felt the cold start to creep into her body. She hated how the world seemed set against her, not just in nature but in the civilized world as well. Jane got up and breathed into her hands, rubbing them together briskly to try and get some feeling back into them. There was something she needed to do to keep warm, and even though it escaped her now, she knew it would come to her.

  Keep moving!

  That’s what she needed to do. She needed to move in a straight line and see where it got her. She picked out a line through the trees that she figured would set her on a course toward her house. Jane moved through the trees with purpose. The land, with its many streams and bramble patches, kept pushing her off course to her left. After maneuvering around a large knoll, she realized that she’d become turned around again.

  Luckily, she was wearing a watch, because if she hadn’t worn one she might have panicked at how cut off from everything she was. But looking at her watch she felt a little better. She still had time to make it home in time for work; ample time, really. She just needed to calm down and walk out of here. Jane felt a little better than before, and tried to pick out the line through the trees she’d chosen before. It wasn’t as easy as she thought, but soon she was within eyesight of the lines of the homes in her subdivision.

  She descended the final small hill in a cheerful jog, not paying attention to the changing terrain below her feet. It was then that Jane lost her footing, and then her balance, and just when she thought she was about to right herself, her arms turned to pinwheels and she tumbled down the small hill. When she came to rest in a heap at the bottom she collected herself, but this time found that she had a problem. Her ankle felt like it was broken.

  It had been a long time since Jane felt the kind of pain that was making her ankle throb. It was so overwhelming that she nearly passed out.

  Not knowing what else to do, Jane crawled over to a tree, and using it as a brace, was able to work herself to a near standing position. She tested her ankle, and found that it didn’t want to carry any weight. It wasn’t hurting nearly as bad anymore, but she didn’t know if that was the adrenaline kicking in, or if it had more to do with the cold sapping her of strength and feeling. The only way to know if she was able to walk was to try, and that was something she knew could end badly. If she put weight on it, there was a possibility that a fractured bone would turn into a broken bone, or a strained ligament would turn into a torn ligament. But what else was she to do?

  She held her breath and gingerly stepped forward—stars flashed before her eyes as pain made her vision dim. She staggered back against the tree and then sunk down the trunk so her back was pressed against it. She tried to keep her eyes open, but her head kept drooping down so her chin met her chest.

  As her vision faded away she saw a figure looking down at her. She thought the pain was causing her mind to play tricks on her, because she knew that silhouette. She told herself that it was the pain; that she had to be hallucinating from a combination of the pain, withdrawal, and also delusion. But when the sun hit his face, his features became clear, and it was Kyle.

  Before she could say anything to him, Jane lost consciousness. When she came to, she was lying on her back porch and paramedics were rushing around the side of the house calling her name. Jane looked around to see if there was any sign of Kyle, but the trace of snow that would show that someone else had been the one to carry her home was quickly trampled by the paramedics.

  Later that day when she was in the hospital, she told everyone to check to see if there had been a man’s footprints in the snow. The police had already made up their mind that she was crazy. Besides, as the Sergeant was quick to point out, who in the world would bring her all the way back to her place and then not ensure that someone called an emergency telephone number? There wasn’t a rational soul on the planet that would just leave an injured person on their front porch and leave it to chance that a neighbor would call for an ambulance.

  Jane wasn’t convinced, but also didn’t trust her mind. When Brian arrived, Jane felt so much better, and for the first time that day she began to think that maybe things would turn out all right.

  She hadn’t broken anything, but her sprain was severe and she’d been instructed to stay off it. Brian had already called her work and told them what had happened, and her boss was understanding.

  Brian sympathetically told her that the only tracks that anyone could find were those of someone who had dragged themselves out of the woods of their own accord.

  Jane would never know for certain if there was another person. Some of the doctors had told her it wasn’t uncommon for people who were in shock to be able to perform superhuman feats to save themselves.

  Brian kissed her on the forehead, and as soon as he left, she reached over to find her newly prescribed painkillers.

  Chapter 15

  Jane recovered quickly. Later that day she checked out and Brian was there to pick her up. As she hobbled out of her room on crutches, the doctor who had been treating her jogged over to them.

  “Jane, I need to speak with you,” the young doctor said. He looked as if he was of Arabian descent, but spoke without an accent. “What I’m about to say is going to be hard to hear. I’m not going to sugar coat any of this for you.”

  Jane swallowed, and nodded. She wasn’t sure what the doctor was going to talk to her about, but she got the impression it was going to be a lecture.

  The doctor looked at Brian, then back at Jane.

  “It’s all right,” Jane said. “I don’t mind if Brian hears.”

  He looked weary, and sat down in one of the chairs in the corner of the room before he started to speak.

  “Look,” he said, pushing up his glasses to rest on the bridge of his nose. “I know you’re both grown adults, and I’m not trying to overstep my bounds here, but I feel as a doctor that I am obligated to say something. And I want you to know that I often have this talk with people…”

  The doctor’s voice trailed off. Jane looked for a name tag so that she could reassure the young man by using his actual name instead of doctor, but she couldn’t se
e it. He looked so exhausted, it made Jane want to walk over and give him a hug. But when he looked up from staring at the ground she saw a resolve in his eyes that let her know he’d found whatever reserve he’d needed to tap into.

  “Jane,” the doctor started again. “The drugs we found in your system are common, and also commonly abused. And I know you have prescriptions for them, and I know that you have a very valid reason to be on them. I just want you to look out for yourself. Some of my contemporaries care more about pharmacological referral money than their actual patients. That’s why I keep seeing more and more people like yourself, who are successful and affluent, come in with extremely high amounts of these drugs present in their system.”

  Jane could feel herself wilting in the silence of his pause, and she could also feel tension in Brian’s body. She was sure that he didn’t like what he was hearing.

  “You probably didn’t think anything of it when you went for a jog yesterday morning,” the doctor continued, his eyes back on the floor. “But I have no doubt that if you’d been sober you wouldn’t be here right now.”

  Jane felt tears welling up in her eyes. It was hard to hear someone tell her that she was the problem. It was especially hard because Brian, the man who was closest to her, the man who she was in love with, had told her the same thing. The problem hadn’t gone away, she hadn’t fixed anything, in fact she’d made it worse.

  “I think I’ve got a handle on it, now,” Jane said. “I know that might sound weak in the given circumstance. That morning, well, I’d gone to bed early and had a fitful sleep. I woke up early and headed out the door trying to clear my head. I’m not sure how I got so turned around—”