Better Than Home

She leaned forward and threw her legs one in front of the other. Tears streamed down her face and she couldn’t help but wail and gasp for another breath. Kristy was not running from something rather she was trying to run from herself. Her throat torn up she continued to scream as she ran faster than she had ever run in her life. Suddenly she tripped and stumbled down what she thought was a hill, head over heels the whole way. When she had finally come to a stop she laid there as the tingling of her body faded to pain which soon turned to stinging. She shot up and reached into her pocket to pull out her phone which she realized she must have lost in her tumble along with her shoe.

Kristy began stumbling around on hands and knees searching for both her shoe and phone. After about 5 minutes of strenuous searching her hand bumped into something that felt like her shoe and pulled on it. Kristy broke her shoe loose and stood to slip it on. A rush of warm shot up her leg and Kristy grimaced at the feeling quickly trying to ignore what she thought was just mud in her shoe. She leaned over again and began to search for her phone. Kristy took about 2 steps forward when she ran into something that was about as tall as a small tree root and about a foot wide. The length of the unidentified object extended about the length of her arms. Soon her fingertips brushed against something hard and segmented. Kristy ignored this feeling as well and continued to search for her phone thinking about returning to the object. She let out a yelp of pain as she stubbed her fingernail on a small square object and her phone illuminated. Snatching it up quickly Kristy turned around and headed back to where she thought the object was slowly stalking in the dim white illumination of her phone.

Just a few more steps she thought when she tripped over the object and fell face first onto it. She slowly lifted her face up and the illumination of her phone shone bright against a stranger’s face rotten, bearing his teeth. Kristy screeched and stumbled to get off the body of this stranger and get to her feet. She glanced down to her own foot and noticed that she was not wearing her own shoe, rather she was wearing his. Bending down to take it off she took hers off as well and trotted away a few steps from the body still crying in disgust. Looking around and catching her breath, Kristy quickly dialed 911 and explained her location as she grabbed her nose and held back the tears welling up in her eyes.

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