The warm sensation of sunlight on his face combined with the red glow of light filtered through his eyelids to stir Jack into the beginnings of wakefulness. With a drawn out groan, he stretched his arms and arched his back. He rolled to his side and curled up.

“Sharyn, we need to get a new matt-”

His eyes flicked open. Gone were the Egyptian cotton sheets and alarm clock. As a matter of fact, there was no mattress either. In its place was a grassy mound of packed dirt with a hunk of shale for a pillow and, where his wife was a mere couple seconds before, a wide-eyed sheep who was fighting to get loose.

Startled, Jack jerked his hands away from the sheep and jumped to his feet. He brushed his hands down his scrubs, loosening any wool fibres and dirt that remained before taking a breath and looking at his surroundings. Where he was previously sprinting through a dark, rainy parking lot towards a tower of concrete, steel, and glass, he now stood in the middle of a small forest clearing. Warm sunlight shone through the break in the trees, illuminating the grassy knoll he had unwittingly used for a bed. A short distance away, in all directions, was the edge of the forest, filled with tall, narrow trees, whose green foliage created dappled shade on the fallen leaves and undergrowth below.

Taking a deep breath, Jack dropped back on the ground, put his head in his hands, between his knees, and sighed. "This can't be happening."

He stayed in that position for a few minutes, breathing deeply, popping his head up from time to time, taking in his new surroundings. From the forest's edge, small creatures skittered in and out of view, looking at this newly-come oddity, stepping forward to smell the air and dashing back whenever Jack raised his head.

Then Jack raised his head for the last time. The look of confusion and shock disappeared as his face took on a determined cast. He patted himself down, feeling the various pockets secreted throughout his scrubs.

"Damn it."

As Jack began to pull items out of his pockets, it became apparent that he'd had very little of use on his person before the flash, A stethoscope, penlight, pocket knife, granola bar, wallet, and cell phone with no signal were the only items of note, aside from bits of lint and scribbled-on index cards. With a look of resignation, Jack re-filled his pockets, stood up, and began to re-inspect the clearing he was in.

He slowly turned around, keeping his eyes fixed on the forest edge. He glanced up at the cloud-streaked, blue sky. He studied the shadow cast by his "pillow", comparing its length to his foot. Scratching his head, he stood up and sighed.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Now, where did that damn sheep go?"

He dropped down to look at the grass, looking for hoof prints in the shoe-trampled clearing. He smiled, stood up, dusted his hands off and marched confidently towards the forest edge, in a direction somewhat to the left of the rock's shadow, which was, incidentally, the opposite direction taken by his former companion.

--

Jack sat at the base of one of the forest trees with his knees up and spread out, forearms resting on his knees. Dark circles stained the pits of his scrub top as sweat dripped from his now-limp hair. The sun was now high in the sky and, while he was shaded by the forest canopy, there was no shelter from the growing humidity of the water vapor released from the endless foliage. He glanced down, to his side, at the reflective foil lining of the inside of his now-empty granola bar wrapper. With a dry smack of his mouth and a grimace, he grabbed the wrapper, crumpled it into his back pocket, and stood up.

Looking around, he listened to the surrounding sounds. Hearing only the distant twitters and cawing of birds in the branches above, he carved an arrow into the tree bark and trudged along in the direction he marked, brushing aside the various shrubs and creepers that filled the understory.

--

The short, stunted shadows of noon lengthened and as the heat from the day’s sun faded, the forest floor settled into a dank, fetid gloom. The boisterous noises of the daytime chorus trailed off as dusk settled ever more deeply into the woods. Jack shivered and rubbed his hands over his exposed arms, as the cooling air gripped his sweat-dampened skin. With resolute mien, he leaned on his newfound walking stick, a piece of unworked deadfall, and began investigating the trees nearest to him.

Walking from tree to tree, he poked at the bases of the trunks with his stick, kicked aside the leaf litter, and pulled on some of the lower branches. Every now and then, he would hear a rustling, sometimes a scurrying noise or small chittering, prompting him to freeze and quickly scan his surroundings, but, finding nothing, he would return to his task.

After some time, when the gloom had almost fully given over to night, he stopped. In front of him was a stout tree, with thick branches and no signs of burrow underneath. He knocked on the trunk and gave a nod of satisfaction at the dull sound of a stick hitting a solid tree. He cleared away the fallen leaves from around the tree, before piling up small twigs and leaves in a teepee-like configuration. He then whittled a small, dry branch to a tip with his pocket knife, before grabbing a piece of dessicated deadfall, torquing the whittled branch, tip down, into the deadfall.

After many fits and starts, Jack managed to obtain a small spark, which became an ember, which he fed to his teepee of tinder. By the time the deep darkness of early night set in, he had a small fire flickering. He built a frame of dry branches around the little flame, giving room for airflow, and cleared out any remaining bit of dry leaf or wig from the area before hunkering down at the base of the tree, in the cranny between two roots, and falling asleep, walking stick held across his lap.