Anywhere But Here

Alyssa’s throat burned as her lungs struggled to heave fresh oxygen into them. Her knees buckled suddenly and her body was being thrown to ground. He was close behind; she could hear the low grunting of his baritone voice as he struggled through the bushes she had just pushed her way through. The shadows Alyssa could have sworn she saw following behind her all of those nights suddenly made sense. It was him. It had always been him.

She knew why he was here. He had found out she was the one that told, and now that she knew, he had to get rid of her too.

The thumping of his footsteps came closer and closer as Alyssa shoved herself off of the dirt. She continued to furiously stumble her way through the forest that she had found herself running into as soon as she had heard his voice screaming her name from the sidewalk only a few miles away from where she was now. A sense of relief pulsed through her veins as she heard the sound that had pushed all of her worries away for these past few months. The sound of waves.

She climbed up a steep sand dune, making sure to stay in the heavy vegetation that was growing next to a pathway. The trees acted as a canopy to hide under. The intensity of the waves grew as she climbed to a higher elevation. Her footsteps became more voluble as she stumbled onto a different surface. Although she was much faster than him, she could still hear him running close behind.

Glancing around, Alyssa finally realized that she was trapped. She was exactly where he wanted her to be.

Her heart thumped wildly in her chest. Her hands began to shake at her sides as she fought to make her voice sound threatening.

“You can’t kill me,” she screamed, watching as the ominous shadow suddenly turned into the ugly monster that had killed her mother. “you might have gotten to her, but I wont let you do anything to me.”

The polished knife that was being gripped in the monster’s hand shined dangerously underneath the moonlight as Alyssa searched for an escape.

She couldn’t run past him, it was far too late for that. She couldn’t try to ploy him out of it, his intentions seemed to already be decided.

Alyssa’s sneaker slid across a jagged rock as she felt her foot slide off of the edge of something. She suddenly grew tense as she realized where they were. The pier, of course.

It was too dark for the beast to see the smile that had grown across her face as she slowly pivoted her feet so they were at the very edge of the old wooden dock. With her head still turned toward his looming figure, she brought one foot off the ground and gathered as much air that would be held into her expanded lungs.

And with that, she jumped off of the port and into the black water before her.