1.

It was cold.

That was my first thought. My second was that I was asleep but now I am awake. My third thought was mildly existential. Mostly just regretting life in general, I wasn’t really a morning person.

My head hurt, and when I opened my eyes I immediately closed them again with a grimace. It was too bright.

Wherever I was, that place was bright and cold.

I slowly opened my eyes again while sitting up and off the ground. It was grassy right where I was, but there were also trees all around me, hemming me in like high walls.

I was in one of those things! What did you call them again ... oh yeah, glades. I was in a glade.

My eyes opened wide in realisation as my brain finally started working again, to form actual thoughts and question the situation that I had found myself in.

“Why am I in a forest?”

My memory was hazy. I remembered deciding it was a great idea to follow my ex back to her home. Then I decided to … , huh, everything after that, was just a big white blank.

I really hoped that I’d get my memories back soon. I had no idea what this was.

A prank? Maybe I’d gotten really drunk and walked into a forest somehow? Maybe I’d been mugged, and then they’d carried my body several hundred miles to drop me in a forest? I really didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t know what to think.

I thought about not moving, maybe I was with another group of people, I’d gotten lost, and even now they were out there looking for me. Unlikely, I didn’t really do camping trips in the wilderness, at least not with other people, I also didn’t have anyone that I knew would like to go camping with me. I’d done it a couple of times on my own, just for the hell of it. It was fun. Probably one of the few things I’d ever found that were better to do on your own, than with other people, they sort of just got in the way.

I shook those thoughts and memories away and got back to analysing the situation I was in.

I still remembered my name, who I was where I worked, it was just last night that was a blank. Or at least what I thought was last night, I’d seen it on tv all the time, people losing time, waking up somewhere with the last six months a blank slate to them.

I must have sat there for at least half an hour thinking about useless stuff before something deep inside me got fed up with me wasting time and whispered ‘go’ right at the back of my thoughts.

Or maybe I just couldn’t handle lying down in my uncomfortably wet jeans, probably from the morning due.

The trees, I didn’t recognise them when I went right up to them and looked over the bark patterns and leaves, which made me think I was somewhere very far away from where I lived, or maybe even another country entirely. But I was wearing the clothes I wore last night, and I didn’t smell too bad and they didn’t look too bad either. It was weird.

I left the grove.

Quite a distance away, I thought I could see smoke, which reassured me that I wasn’t too far from people, and I set off in that direction. Maybe it was a forest fire and I was walking to my death, but I was reasonably comfortable that that wasn’t the case.

Once I left, the birdsong which had been previously all around me like a permanent personal choir, left me behind quickly dampening my mood considerably. Only faint sunbeams shone through occasionally, the trees here seemed to really jostle for space, but other than the trees and where the patches of light hit the ground, I found that the forest floor was almost barren.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

It was strange, but also comforting. It had been a while since I’d gone hiking, and while it was strange not having any of my normal hiking gear or safety measures which accompanied the activity, it was also quite liberating, I felt light on my feet in a way that I hadn’t felt for a while, or at least since I’d stopped exercising and I felt I could walk for hours.

I hadn’t been hiking in years, but I quickly settled into my familiar patterns and I convinced myself that I was just traveling off-trail, which helped calm me down from my shock of having woken up in a forest.

I saw a lumbering shape, a silhouette really, far off in the distance and slightly to my right. It seemed to be heading away from me though, so I managed to successfully take a wide detour around it. I really couldn’t outrun a bear out here, so I took extra measures to try and avoid it, just to be safe.

It took me a few hours, quite a bit longer than I was expecting, but I reached the end of the forest. Slowly the trees started thinning out, and I could see the smoke much clearer now too. One massive plume was joined by several others, but I couldn’t see its origin however as the ground sloped upwards into a hill in front of me and blocked my view of the source.

The hill, curiously enough, was also devoid of any trees whatsoever, with patches of grass alternating with the soft white rock beneath in places. Maybe this tree which was with me since I’d woken up didn’t grow so well on slopes.

Not seeing another way through, I scaled the hill in front of me, for the most part walking, but using my hands for security in other places. While mostly being soft, short grass, there were also patches of rock, like someone had torn off the grass, or something had impacted it in other places. It was weird, but I just continued climbing no point worrying now.

I’d enjoyed hiking, but this trip was making me remember all of the things I hated about it, like the blisters, the burning sun, the sometimes lack of food and water, the lack of security pretty much constantly. I was just looking forward to getting back to my nice and safe city.

I was still mostly trying not to freak out about the fact that I’d woken up in the middle of nowhere this morning though, and I’d been trying to focus on literally anything else around me, including stupid fucking trees. I really didn’t care about trees, I was just trying not to focus on how … freaked out I was over this whole thing.

I was really hoping that this whole thing was just a prank because then I could hit the said person in the face, and move on with my life and be done with them. The other options … the other options were a lot scarier.

I reached the summit, tired and exhausted and more than a little sweaty, even after wrapping my jumper and coat around my waist.

Far below me, I could see a sprawling rural village. Most of the buildings seemed to be made of wood and … was that daub? Jesus, where the fuck am I? I’d seen that in like museums and Wikipedia, but I didn’t think anyone still used it.

I was thinking more and more that this was a prank, or maybe a kidnapping, they had a lot in common as ideas.

The town got larger and closer as I walked towards it, allowing me to make out that they’d had a bonfire in the centre of the town at some point, maybe even last night, with the main wisp of smoke coming from a pile of grey ash in the centre of the town, and smaller streams coming out of the scattered homes around the village

. It wasn’t until I got within a hundred meters of the stone wall which surrounded the town that they spotted me, and I saw a humanoid outline start moving towards me. The wall was made of flat stones, piled on top of each other, and barely made it past my waist in height.

I was curious that if they were using the wall as a way of keeping their farming animals close at hand so they didn’t run off, then how did they keep out bears? Maybe the bears were scared enough of the buildings that they didn’t have to worry about it. I wasn’t sure, I didn’t know much about bears to be honest.

I’d stopped just outside the wall, it was their town, and I wasn’t even sure if I knew the language, I really didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot with these people, first impressions mattered.

I watched a massive bear of a blond man approach, wrapped in fur and leather, making me think more and more that this was somewhere in Europe.

He raised a hand in greeting, as well as calling out once he got close enough that I could clearly identify his facial features.

“Ho there.” At least we spoke the same language. Hooray for small miracles.

“Hello. Sorry, but could you tell me where we are?” The man didn’t even blink in response to my question, he just responded gruffly, were abandoned people common out here or something, was the people who dropped me here as part of their kidnapping ring using this place regularly? Were they still using it?

“Green hill village.” He motioned to the hill I’d just climbed behind me. I smiled at my ridiculous chain of reasoning, and the man in front of me, mistaking the smile for its recipient, smiled back at me, a big, monstrously yellow grin.

“Sorry, no I meant, could you tell me what country we’re in currently?”

“Country? We’re in unclaimed lands boy.” That one stumped me. Was this guy messing with me right now? He clearly spoke English, but he claimed that there was a section of land in Europe that was unclaimed? Also, him calling me boy felt weirdly familiar and also strangely off-putting.

“Well, if you won’t tell me what country we’re in, can you at least point me to the nearest airport?” I looked at his scrunched up face as the giant of a man very visibly thought hard about what I’d just said. After he didn’t respond, I just kept asking for different things until he finally answered me.

“A train station then?”

“I’d take a bus?”

“How about a phone? I can just call myself a taxi, I don’t mean to be an inconvenience.” I tried to regain some respect by being respectful in turn, and then hopefully they’d just drive me themselves, I really didn’t want to know what the taxi cost was going to be like all the way out here.

I saw the man’s face straighten out in front of me as if he’d just figured something extremely important out.

“Did you just call me a … LIAR?” He roared that last word, catching me off guard and sending me stumbling backward as the man went from peaceful to wrathful in seconds.

I tried to open my mouth to explain and apologise, but before I could speak, the man in front of me, his mouth widened abruptly, stretching it so I could see his weirdly large canines, as well as straight down his throat.

“This is-,” He tilted his head back, letting loose a roar. I felt like the world had just got a lot heavier as a strange heaviness came over me. My knees sank to the ground as I clutched at my head, bewildered as to what was going on.

He let loose another roar, this time making me feel like someone had just hit me in the jaw, I tasted blood, losing control of my limbs as my arms flopped down, to dangle uselessly like broken puppets. Finally, as I began to see stars multiplying in my vision, I fell over and the ground rose up as a rising wave to collide with my face.