Nia was running like mad. Twigs and branches slapped against her face and the cool air of the nocturnal forest was starting to burn in her lungs. Mere minutes ago she witnessed something terrible and she knew that she had to let the world know as fast as possible. She stopped in her tracks for a second, held her breath, listened. The sound of stirred-up foliage and aggressive rustling in the undergrowth from where she came from assured her: They had spotted her, and now they were after her – at any cost.

It had been a stupid idea to spend the night in the woods all alone and defenseless but until moments ago everything had worked out for Nia. Now she lost most of her quick thinking, her reasoning and her blind trust that everything will work out for her in the end, now she was no more than a deer fleeing from its hunters driven by adrenaline and horror.

In the distance she thought that she could make out the brawling rapids of the small stream she crossed eight hours before. And from those, she was certain, she could trace back her steps to the safety of her car. This glimpse of hope gave her a surge of energy and she headed towards the direction of the noise. Any place away would be much safer than near the secret campsite where Nia witnessed death and loathing. But it seemed that it did not matter how fast she was running, or in what direction, the sound of the water was as distant as before. Or was it just the wind in the trees? The half moon was once again hiding behind clouds and who or what was coming after Nia was closing in on her on left and from behind quickly. The movement sounded efficient and determined, neither as loud nor as clumsy as Nia’s feet flying over crumbling patches of frozen snow and brittle leaves.

Nia wasn’t so much afraid anymore of taking an unfortunate step or even of falling off a cliff as she was taking every opportunity to get out of the forest quicker. Her brain had shut off most parts of itself Nia was most proud of and left her only with a highly agitated amygdala and a highly stimulated locus caeruleus. The only things Nia was capable of deciding within the fractions of a second they entered her tunnel-vision, were whether to run left or right of a tree in her way and what direction felt to be the safest to her, what direction promised to shake off her pursuers. With every turn she lost more faith in ever finding the way to her car on her own accord and now just prayed to run into it by accident eventually. She knew that once her haunters caught her, it would become anything than comfortable for her, most certainly her suffering would be long, painful and lonesome, which scared her above all.

The heavy camera in its bag containing Nia’s evidence kept hitting her in the back but she didn’t feel much of it. She felt nothing but ice cold fear until she jumped a tad too far across a rift and hit another tree stump with her left ankle. Yet this time the stump was not half rotten and unsound like the others she stepped on before. This one was strong, solid and wouldn’t give way to Nia’s foot which not only cost her advantage, it also sent a sharp pain straight up her leg and spine. She let out a high shriek, so sudden and shrill that it surprised her for a moment herself until she tried to put that foot on the ground as she continued with her next step. The moment she put her full weight onto it, the sudden pain was excruciating. The flickering of the feeble flashlight Nia was clutching vanished behind a black wall in her vision, like an aperture that was closing abruptly from all sides and she tripped. From the moment her head hit the trunk of one old pine tree, her memory failed her. The last thing she was certain of before passing out for good was that something disturbed the snow close to her, began pulling on her and a loud noise, most likely a gunshot. From then on, everything was black.