2nd Life
“What the hell is even going on!” A dark-skinned young girl kicked a rock into a bush filled with bright orange berries.
The smell of the berry bush nearly sent her off her feet from its delicious fragrance. But she didn’t grab one to take a bite. Despite lacking memories of anything about where she was, who she was, and what was even going on, she knew that bright things in the wild equaled poisonous. She might’ve been dressed like some sort of primitive woman from the time before civilization with a one-strap leopard print dress but that didn’t mean she was one! Her memories are gone but thankfully her common sense hasn’t left the building either.
“Waking up in some weird forest with nothing but the clothes on my back. Totally vulnerable to everything and anything out here.” She picked up a thick branch and a rock as she crouched underneath a tree.
She decided to fashion herself a weapon for protection in case she ran into any dangerous wild animals. By using the rock against the sides of the branch near the tip, she could sharpen it into a pointy stick. But she wasn’t a primitive girl! There just weren’t any modern and civilized weapons out here for her to utilize. It was only natural to make do with what was available as a normal girl with common sense.
The rock was sharp enough that it kind of resembled a knife but who would choose to use a knife over a spear? Someone without common sense, that’s who. But just on the off chance that her spear breaks, this rock could be nice as a backup weapon. The thing was, she had nowhere to pocket it. Her dress didn’t come with pockets and she wasn’t shoving anything inside herself. She briefly thought about putting it between her breasts but unfortunately, they weren’t big enough to keep it from slipping through and falling to the ground.
“Where is civilization? Where is civilization? Where is civilization?” She sang to herself.
Traveling through the woods with a spear and no idea where she’s headed. The only thing she could do to keep herself from being bored was sing, chant, and panic at every noise she heard nearby. This only kept her entertained for a little while until her stomach started to grumble and rumble. Now she had to find something to eat. Hopefully, she could find some berries that didn’t look poisonous or fruits because she didn’t know the first thing about hunting or preparing dead animals.
Hours went by without any signs of any fruits or berries, leaving her quite starved and desperate. The sun was about to go bye bye and the moon would soon take its place in the sky. She would have to find someplace to rest soon. Maybe some sleep would take her mind off the pain in her gut. Sleeping for dinner isn’t that uncommon for some people her age. This would be a situation where she felt that restraining herself from eating the leaves off of a tree and going to sleep instead would be for the better.
Up ahead, there was a dark cave near a cold clear pond. The pond could fit around fifty or more humans at max capacity and looked relatively safe in case she ever ran into trouble. Wolves or bears wouldn’t go into the water to chase prey, would they? Wasn’t it only bees that stayed above the water if their enemy went underwater? God, she hoped so.
After taking several sips of the pond water, she went to explore the cave where she could see nothing inside. It only took a few moments for her to instantly regret that decision. In a matter of a single minute, she was soon running out of the cave at full speed screaming her lungs out as an animal was right on her tail. No, she didn’t jump into the pond like she was pondering about earlier.
‘You’re kidding! You’re kidding! I’m so stupid! Of course, a freaking giant lizard would be sleeping inside a cave! It makes perfect sense!’ She inwardly cursed with every breath.
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The big lizard wouldn’t pass up a free meal and chased the slow prey. It believed it would catch up to the food in no time but even after an entire minute of chasing them, they’ve yet to stop and it was pretty cold out. Exerting this much energy for prey that seemed like it was more trouble than it was worth wasn’t worth it. If it tried too hard and still didn’t manage to catch the food, it would die of the cold! So, it stopped chasing the meal and slowly made its way back to its cave.
The human on the other hand doubled over and puked out the water she drank earlier after pushing herself beyond her limits. Then she fainted in her puddle of vomit and didn’t wake up till it was morning. What greeted her when waking up was a horrid rancid stench of stomach bile and morning breath. She had puke all over the left side of her face and hair, stomach roaring to the heavens, and stained piss etched on her legs. As the civilized and modern girl she was, she swiftly returned to the pond and dunked herself inside to clean herself.
Without drying herself, she quickly made her way elsewhere to hopefully find people or a way out of this damn forest. Humans weren’t suited to live in the wild anymore. They’ve moved past that point in their evolutionary history. Now they belonged in cities and such. A city sounded much more pleasant than this disgusting terrifying forest.
“God, I'm so hungry...” She groaned.
By this point, even the fat little round bugs crawling on the ground looked like juicy little snacks ripe for the taking. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to just try one bug... Should she cook them or eat it raw? If she wanted to cook them, then she’d need to make a fire and collect a good amount of them that would fill her stomach. But one, making a fire was not something she had experience with, and two, having a bunch of bugs crawling around in her hands without squishing them was going to be impossible. Her hunger was beginning to think for her but she still had an innate dislike for insects.
‘Keeping them alive doesn’t matter. What matters is that I eat their stupid tasty looking meat. Just don’t squish them and it’ll be fine. I have to put something in my stomach or I'm going to go crazy...’ Her eyes frantically looked around in search of the biggest insects.
The best she could find was a single ant carrying a small leaf somewhere. She followed the little ant without disturbing it. While she wouldn’t be able to eat big insects, ants usually number in the hundreds, thousands, or millions in their ant hills. As she was crawling on the forest’s floor following a mindless ant, something stumbled into her during her search for food.
“Skree!” An emerald green fox with a large fluffy tail around the size of a large dog pounced at her.
An instinctive scream rang out from her as she was bit and clawed by the wild beast. Her survival instincts kicked in as she did everything, she could to protect her throat and kick this animal away from herself. It latched onto her arm with its sharp teeth and caused her to scream even louder from the pain shooting up in her arm. She used the small rock from earlier to stab the fox in its eye but it still didn’t release her arm. So, she stabbed it until it did. Gushing blood from both herself and the animal, as its growling and her screaming combined into one horrible symphony between man vs nature.
Stab. Stab. Stab. Stab. Stabstabstabstabstabstabstabstabstab!
By the time she felt its jaw loosen, there was little feeling in her arm. She didn’t realize when she started crying but tears were falling down her face as she dry heaved from killing the animal. The fox was dead and she wasn’t in a better condition. That pond was too far away to try to travel to for cleaning her wounds. It was shameful but dealing with her injuries came first. Why did it have to hurt so badly...?
She moved away from the dead fox with both her spear and rock in hand. With the rock, she started to cut off a piece of her clothing to use as wrappings for her injured arm. Cutting from the top or bottom wasn’t an option unless she wanted to reveal her breasts or vagina to anybody she meets. So, she had to make do with the middle section of her leopard skirt. Exposing her navel didn’t seem like much of a problem when compared to the other two.
After doing an absolutely amateur and horrible job at cutting the dress and patching up her wounds, she grabbed the dead fox by the tail and dragged it away. For nearly killing her, becoming her meal was the least it could do. Right?
Unfortunately, everything started to get blurry for some reason. She tried taking her glasses off, scrubbing her eyes and then putting them back on but that still didn’t work. Why does it take so much effort just to walk now...?
‘Did I eat one of those berries and just blocked it out of my memory...?’
The ground suddenly came straight towards her before everything went black.