The fog hangs heavy on the trail, slicking your skin before the first branch brushes against your arm. You’re already running. You don’t remember when you decided to, or how your shoes found their way to the trail.
Your breath matches the rhythm of your feet.
Something about the path is wrong. You know that for certain.
The trees hang low all around you. Their branches are damp and heavy. They seem closer every time. It’s like they’re listening to you. As you breathe. As you run.
You don’t stop.
Your body knows this path, even if your mind cannot recall it. The trail curves left at the half-mile mark and you brace for it before you even see it. Before you should even be aware that it’s there. Your chest aches, but it’s not from the effort of your lungs---it’s a memory.
It’s trying to push through.
There’s a sound before it happens. You always hear the sound just before you see it. A scream laces through the fog. It covers the path---everywhere and nowhere. Distant, yet too close. The sound of your own feet spins away from you, becoming further and further away. There’s the snap of something breaking in the underbrush.
Then there’s silence.
You see her again. She’s curled in the ferns like she’s sleeping off a hangover.
Except she isn’t sleeping.
She’s you.
There’s the angle of your neck. The open, bleeding gash over your temple. Your fingers are curled, as though you were clawing your way back to the path---to help.
You step closer, but not because you want to. You do it because you always do it. Every time.
This keeps happening this way. As soon as your fingertips hover over her cheek, she’s gone. The trail is clean again and your legs are already moving. You’re back at the head of the path. You’re already running.
Your feet are pounding and your breath matches their rhythm.
This is the loop.
This is the punishment.
But why are you being punished?
You don’t know what you did, but you know you have to keep running because something awful happened here. You let it happen, maybe. Or you didn’t fight hard enough. Didn’t scream loud enough.
Whatever the reason might be, you know that no matter the circumstances that led to your death, when they finally find you, they’ll always say it was your own fault you ended up this way.
They’ll say you should have left. But you were going to. They won’t know it, because you didn’t tell anyone you were going to. But you were. You were going to.
They’ll say you shouldn’t have been running on this path alone at night. You should have had someone running with you. You shouldn’t have been dressed the way you were dressed.
You shouldn’t have been a woman.
You should’ve known better than to exist after dark.
Your thighs burn. Your pulse throbs behind your eyes. You hate the way the fog never lets you see the stars above---or the moon---the best parts of running this path after dark.
There’s a turn ahead. A spot where the trees open up just a little. You always hope that if you reach that break, you’ll wake up.
The trees never quite break.
You never wake up.
You pass the creek and you know you’re close.
And then---and then---
There she is again.
There you are again.
This time, your eyes are open---and they’re looking directly at you.
It’s different, you think. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe you’re the one who’s changing. Maybe you forget more and more every time you start over. Or maybe you remember more and more. Either way you’ll start over.
Not because you want to.
You kneel. You brush dirt from her cheek. The wound is deeper than it was last time.
Then it hits you.
Not all of it. Just enough...
Someone chased you onto this path that night. Another person’s voice calls your name as you run. You remember looking back. Seeing the glint of the moonlight on the knife. She has it in her hand. You remember the blur of trees rushing by. You recall the sound of your own screams, as they become one with the fog.
They’ll blame some man. Some predatory man, and not an abusive girlfriend. The one you planned to leave that night after she went to sleep. But she found out. She found out.
She held a knife. She chased you into the dark.
You flinch.
The body vanishes.
Your knees sting where they hit the trail.
Fog presses in. It seems to echo with something stolen.
You run.
No one talks about girls like her.
It doesn’t matter if you want to or not. You run because you have to. You run because she’s still somewhere behind you waiting for you to stop…
There’s no hotline to help women like you deal with women like her.
And ahead---somewhere up ahead---you might remember how it happened.
You might remember.
You might not.
You might see her catch you.
You might see yourself fall.
Or not.
But it will happen.
You’ll run. You’ll pass the creek. The trail will curve. The path will feel wrong.
You’ll find something horrible in the bushes…
...and then you're running...
...again.
