He had been lost in the woods for days, though he couldn't say how. Deep down, he know how. The woods were alive and sought to trap him forever. He knew it, but he couldn't say it.
He had only stepped off the road to relieve himself. He hadn't even gone ten feet from the road. He could see his car from where he stood, but there was a skittering noise in the leaves, and he turned to look, to be sure some wolf had not come for him. He saw nothing but trees. He finished his restroom break, and turned back to his car, but once more, he saw nothing but trees. Dense, dark forest where once there had been a car and a road. He stumbled blindly through the pines and briars where he knew there should be two paved lanes and 1976 Trans Am.
He wandered for hours until the sun gave way to alien stars and the darkest night he had ever experienced. Then dawn came, not with the blazing glow of the sun, but with a sky that simply became less black. Still he stumbled onward, and the brambles tore at his clothes and skin. He had found no water to drink, and only berries that filled his mind with lightning and his limbs with fire.
On the third day without food or water or sign of life, he found a river, and therein, a boat. Where there were boats, there were towns. He would drink the cool, black water. He could swim to the boat and rest and let the current carry him down stream where someone would find him. His fevered brain burned with excitement.
But he never reached the boat. He entered the stagnant water and swam, and with every stroke, the ancient canoe moved father away. The river's black hands reached for him, tugged at him, and the unfamiliar stars laughed at him, and he swam on and on toward a boat he would never catch.
- Originally mailed to A. Chance of Brandon, Mississippi
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