Say It's All Right, Part I

The car sped past me with the startling whoosh of a racing spaceship. Ducks unanimously flew off a nearby pond. My eyes turned to them faster than my head, and my brain swayed in my skull with a feeling that the world has suddenly reached its end. But no darkness ensued, and the feeling cleared away.
Grey cottonous worlds lingered above the woods: snowy mountaintops floating above ghastly pined slopes down to wintry valleys. All reflected in a lake of vacuity, and I at the bottom of it was alone setting a weary foot on the long fetched Atlantis.
As I turned around, another car silhouetted itself against the horizon, under an archway of branches. Unreal in the distance. Right thumb up. Look at me. They might not see me in the pale light of the late afternoon. They might decide to stop at the very last minute. Usually do. “I’d not seen him! Let’s give him a lift!” Or not. Look at me. Keep going. “That poor kid. Does not look good to me. Junkies they are. I’m telling you!”
Keep going.
There was no more than two miles left anyway. Might as well enjoy the walk. Countryside.
Something moved in the wood.
A loud snap. Must have been something big. My eyes wandered amongst the indifferent greens of overgrown thickets. And then I saw it. There was skin in between the leaves. Pale sickly skin. Somebody was watching me. And when they knew it, they ran away.
I started running too, not knowing why. Something fun was happening. Or at least something exciting. I jumped over the ditch, stumbled my way through nettles and brambles, and ran straight to where the patch of skin had disappeared. Follow the sound of broken branches. But they were scarce. Whoever they were, they must have been used to the woods a bit lore than I.
And soon, all was quite. Out of breath. I wanted to sit down, relieve my legs of my own weight, and let my pounding blood cool down through my temples. Rest at the foot of the nearest tree, like a fox exhausted from an unfruitful hunt. But a snap resounded a few feet ahead. I was about to run for it when it occurred to me: there was no other noise coming from there, no subsequent footsteps, and no one could hide just there, or I would have seen them from where I stood. So I turned back to the nearest tree… and knew.
Somebody wanted to distract me.
I could feel their breath through the tree, their stooped eager presence, their anxious eyes looking down not to meet the intruder’s. I walked around the tree, and thought I might be insane, a lonely paranoiac in the woods. But the hedge of the trunk uncovered a pair of wrenched bony hands and a trembling profile that was so familiar to me, almost too familiar. A vague sense of recognition at first. And then, his furious and frightened facies defied my awed gape with a groan.

To be continued...