A young red-hair woman stood in front of a hairy, bare-chested guy in the middle of a dark forest. I watched this scene, trying to figure out what’s really happening while hearing a name from a fairy tale. A memory of a book came to me.
She can’t be Red Riding Hood. In what type of twisted place am I?
A brief urge inside me wanted to stand up and let loose a maniac scream at the insanity. However, that idea stopped when the man dropped his pants while reaching for the woman. I glanced away to avoid the sight since I’m not into seeing another guy’s junk. The snap of a twig, followed by his yell, made me look back.
“Get back h’re!”
The guy tried to pull up his pants while he stumbled forward, then fell to his knees. Her red cape fluttered behind her as she ran away. I would laugh, but I’m extremely confused. That’s because I panicked when I noticed her sudden turn.
She’s coming this way!
When I recognized her desperate attempt, I internally rooted in her escape. Just from her terrified expression, the tug of wanting to help dug into me. As I crouched there, my thoughts fought each other for control. Coming so close to getting killed earlier, I don’t want to get involved.
As she dodged the limbs in her way, the man finally got his pants up enough to sprint after her. I’m damn sure the guy is a low-life scum who deserves heavy kicks in his balls for this. Unfortunately, he’s also built like one of those action stars from the 80s. Anyone who saw my scrawny arms understood I can’t do much standing against him. I crouched lower while hating myself.
The red-hair woman followed the path I was on earlier. Nothing good is coming out of this encounter, but I cannot lift myself to help. Still, the footsteps and the cursing coming from the man are closing in on my position.
At the last minute, I remembered stumbling on a dead limb near me. Grabbing the broken branch the size of my arm, I pushed it through the brush to intercept them. I stopped between two trees, hidden in the darkness by the animal trail. After the woman passed by me, I planned to shove the limb out in front of the woman’s pursuer. The plan is he’ll hit the ground. While pull back into the thicket, the woman will disappear.
However, fate screwed with me. As the woman came along when she suddenly turned between the trees where I crouched. Her knee struck me square in the face. We tumbled away from each other. Stunned, I turned over to my side, then glimpse a dark boot next to my face. A hand grabbed me and lifted me from my spot. The crazy man’s eyes are red like a demon as his spittle splashed my face.
“I’ll killeth thee!”
He struck me with his backhand. The blow made my teeth rattle while I fell next to a tree. My back fell on top of the sickle. As the bearded man leaned over while I struggled to pull the weapon from behind my back. Pressure struck my shoulder. It burned like fire, and I yelled out in pain as the bastard laughed. Until I swung the sickle at him.
“Ahhggh…”
His shriek erupted as he staggered back. When I got to my knees, I noticed the gleam of his knife between us. The man held his bleeding hand with missing fingers. He cursed at me with his face contorted in a mix of agony and fury.
“I’ll run througheth thee bastard!”
As I stared in a strange trance, the hunter lunged down to get his knife with his good hand. My delayed reaction made me miss when I swiped the sickle at him. But the effort caused my attacker to back away briefly. However, I was past the point of no return. I’ve decided it’s either him or me!
Frantically, I swung the deadly instrument again when he attacked. This time I got him in the leg. His scream turned to agony. Not waiting, I slammed the blade into his shoulder. The damage wasn’t enough since the hunter sliced at me with his knife. Fortunately for me, he missed. However, the opening let me swing my weapon at his chest and my hand felt the impact. As I backed up, a grunting, gurgling noise confused me. In the shadows, I watched as the man fell over. His body seemed to tremble, and I heard a drawn-out gasp.
Then, it’s quiet! Deathly quiet filled the area except for my ragged breathing.
Crawling away with my bloody weapon still in one hand, I pushed into the thicket. I’m running on pure adrenaline since my brain is past reason. Even amid the pain from my knife wound, I forced myself to think about one thing. I must get away!
They’ll find the body and come for me!
Even in self-defense, I’m a murderer without power during this time. It’s strange that I suddenly recall a bit of history. Laws are for nobles to control commoners. For the same inexplicable reason, I know I’m a commoner.
Pushing through, deeper and deeper into the darkness, I can’t determine my direction. Instinct filled me while I kept moving away from the scene. I don’t know how far I’ve gone, but exhaustion filled my body. After coming to a small clearing, I looked up through the trees. Eventually, my eyes caught sight of the star I’m following. After finally seeing it, I used the sickle to cut a notch in the tree trunk next to me. It’s pointing in the right direction for me to follow in daylight. As the night fills my vision, I wonder if I’ll wake up since I can’t feel the pain like before. Even my breathing slows while the aches The soothing darkness of vines and bushes surrounded me next to the tree. As I lay there with the blackness overcoming me, I think I hear a voice calling out. Briefly, I wonder if it’s the girl.
Run away, you fool!
I can’t call out to her. My exhaustion won’t allow it. My mind reminds me I’m a murderer with my weapon in hand. This dream world requires survival. I’ve seen that already. As grogginess filled my mind, I remember a story about a woman with a red hood somewhere, but only her name comes to mind.
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Little Red Riding Hood was my grandchild’s favorite story!
Closing my eyes, I tried to capture the memory and hold it. It’s too difficult. A brief memory comes back when I must survive in the woods. A fleeting image of people in camouflage uniforms. My mind slowly blanked as my heavy eyelids closed. If I wake up and realize what I just went through was fake, I’ll be angry. This can’t be a dream. My body hurts too much.
It must be a nightmare.
~~~
A panicked voice and sounds woke me with a start. I grabbed the wood shaft in my hand and looked around in fear. The morning dawn is just arriving, filling the sky with beautiful colors amid the dark shadows around me. After a moment, I finally calmed down and my stomach started again. It’s getting pissed off with the lack of food.
The image that woke me comes back to my mind. It’s like a jumbled series of flashes filling my head. All of them show me I’ve fallen to a familiar floor. People stand over me, then I see the inside of an ambulance. The strange thing is I noticed my arm when the EMT is inserting an IV. I observe my arm, which is lacking muscle and has wrinkled, splotchy skin. I remember the last image is a small child running into a room. Her eyes are frightened and excited.
“Grandpa, you’ll be fine!”
Curious, I looked around for the voice. It’s a memory. When I stare at my grimy, bloodied hands and forearms, they reveal thin limbs with no signs of a wrinkle. I turned over my hand and saw the wound on one palm from the blade of the sickle. Dried blood crusts the jagged wound. It also covers my hand and some of my clothing.
“Damn, can I get tetanus here?” I mumbled.
My voice is still unrecognizable to my ears, but that’s the least of my problems. Looking over my clothing, I’m shocked.
Damn, I’m wearing leather pants like a rock band from the 80s.
The joke immediately disappeared from my thoughts.
How do I remember such things now?
Before I fell asleep from exhaustion, I went mostly by instinct. Now, my memories overnight have convinced me of the truth. I died as an old man and now I’m back inside a new body.
Well, of sorts, I thought.
My body odor reached me as I eased my aching body to a fully upright position. Slowly, I looked over the filthy woolen cloak I’m wearing which show a large, dried patch of blood coming down from the collar to my chest. It immediately reminded me of my injury in the town when I first woke. Lifting my arm, I groaned from the knife wound in my shoulder.
Using my other hand, I feel around my throat, which carried a line of crust across it. Without a mirror, I couldn’t tell much. The strange part is I didn’t recall anyone attacking me while I was in the village. All I remembered was getting up from the ground and the people who stared at me. Someone screamed, and all hell broke loose after that.
As I guessed my faulty memories were to blame, I tenderly felt the line across my throat again. I’m hoping it doesn’t go into a bacterial infection. For a moment, I wondered if someone had cut my throat. Then I shook my head.
No, I’d be dead!
When I pulled back the fabric of the cloak to check my other wound, there’s blood on the outside of my leather shirt. I frowned, growing angry when I saw the long slit from the hunter’s knife blade left in my shirt. Frustrated, I carefully lift off my cloak, then my shirt. The pain made it difficult, but I needed to see the gash in my shoulder. It’s several inches above my heart. My skin is pasty pale, like it’s never seen sunlight.
“That bearded bastard tried to kill me,” I mumbled to myself. “Well, fuck him! He should be dead.”
That’s when an epiphany came to me. Assuming my thoughts about the time frame of this world, I realized I needed to clean my wounds. Most people died from infections and disease.
“Yeah, I remember watching that program with my son!”
My brain locked up at the information.
“Wait, my son is Timothy. We watched a show about the medieval world together when he was young.”
Shaking my head with my head in my hands, my son’s smile came back to me. I teared up as more memories rolled across my brain like a freight train. My wife Betty held my hand on our first date, then I held hers as we cut the wedding cake. Tim’s wife, Amber, showed us our first grandchild, Tiffany. Tears fell across my cheeks as I sobbed. It took a while but, finally, I calmed down. After taking a couple of deep breaths, I nodded to myself as I realized my long life had a loving wife and child.
I’ve lived a good life!
“So, what the hell am I doing here?” I yelled up at the sky.
A dozen paces away from the strange man yelling into the sky, Blanchette woke with a start. She immediately held out the bloody dagger in her hand, only to relax when she realized no one threatened her. The woman scurried to her knees and lifted her head carefully to where she heard the man’s voice. She saw her rescuer.
The thin young man with brown hair stared into the sky with tears in his eyes. Blanchette stifled a gasp when she noticed the closed gash across his throat. Dried blood covered his neck and the front of his clothing.
How is he alive?
She was confident that the hunter didn’t cut the stranger’s throat, but the sight led her to other questions. As she observed him, Blanchette wondered at the reason behind the man’s breakdown. Then she stared down at the dagger that she had retrieved from the fight. The small stranger took on Larry the Huntsman. She watched the fight from a few paces away, wanting to help but too afraid to join in the fight unarmed. When Larry finally stopped moving, Blanchette finally felt a sense of freedom wash over her. She escaped from the horror of Emerald City. Nobody would be wiser. Her grandmother could take the backlash from failing to live up to the agreement.
The old hag deserved it! She was supposed to save me, not use me!
When the fight finished, for some odd reason, the strange man who saved her crawled away. The grateful woman followed him into the dense brush while she called out to him. Hearing no reply, Blanchette hurried back to the place where the two men fought. Shocked, the body of the huntsman was not there. Fear filled the woman as she felt around the dirt and leaves until she came upon the dagger. She ran away, determined to find the man who saved her.
It didn’t take long to follow his path since he occasionally groaned in pain and mumbled to himself. Finally, she found him leaning against a tree. At first, Blanchette thought her savior had died from his efforts. The woman slowly crept closer to discover he was breathing. However, her extreme wariness about men remained. The fact he could overcome the much larger hunter both intrigued and terrified her. She wondered if he had held some type of dark magic power. As much as she wanted to check his injuries, she was afraid of his reaction if he woke. Instead, Blanchette convinced herself to remain nearby, where she could observe his actions.
After seeing his tearful cry out to the sky, the woman tried to gather the courage to call out to him. However, the raging conflict inside her kept her silent. She learned men were the natural enemy of women. Her experiences in a brothel confirmed the worst of men.
Blanchette peeked over the foliage as she watched the man, who observed a notch in the trunk of a tree. After a while of lifting her head occasionally to watch her rescuer working, the woman found herself intrigued by his actions. The man took a piece of bark from a tree, carving another piece, which he eventually used to create a tool. She wondered why he kept looking at the piece of wood, only to stare up at the sun, then back at the notch in the tree.
When the stranger finally left, he appeared confident as he moved. He pushed through the undergrowth and entered an open field. Blanchette hurriedly slid on her red cape and cautiously followed the man.