Ravaged

The sedan had finally been completely starved as it gulped back the last fumes of fuel.

“No, no, no… please don’t die on me!” Victoria whimpered, pleading with the machine to live on.



The motor shuddered and the RPM gauge convulsed before the car gave one final jerk of power before giving out on her. With a grimace she had to reluctantly pull the vehicle over onto the side of the logging road while it rapidly lost its momentum.

She had flown into a rage, shouting more and more colorful expletives erupted from while pounding her palms into the steering wheel. When she finally relented, the enraged woman was panting and her throat ached from screaming at her car, her hands throbbing after such a violent outburst. After spending all that anger, she had to accept the stinging fact, all this yelling was not going to suddenly resurrect it.

With a hard twist of the keys she killed the power to the lights before wrenched them out of the ignition with a resigned sigh. She snorted with a shake of her head, finding a shred of humor in how then she had the presence of mind to not drain yet another part of her car dry.

Her body fell back and she sank herself deeply into the seat of her car, tilted her head back before letting out this low sullen curse a the situation she had gotten herself into. Already her guts felt like they were bunching up into this tight knot over it. She had run out of gas in probably the worst possible place, on the side of a mountain with only this dense forest surrounding her.

She laughed hysterically in that moment, yet her eyes were welling up with tears, her hands reached up to her head, pushing her fingers through her black hair.

“Great, first I was fucking lost and now I am stuck in the mountains, this is, just, fucking, PERFECT!” She talked to herself with a tremble to her voice, her chin quivering while she brushed aside those initial tears with long plaid sleeve of her shirt.



The anger she had initially felt was the emotion she sorely needed in the moment because it was the only thing she could burn to keep the looming shadow of terror at bay. But that font of rage had already been spent and those icy fingers of her anxiety snaked through her veins to clutch at her heart.

With a low groan in self-pity she dropped her head against the steering wheel, only to accidentally trigger the horn with her forehead. The loud blaring honk made her scream right back at it in alarm and practically jumped out of her seat in wide-eyed surprise, her heart thumping against her chest.

She reached for her phone, the one thing that could save her from such a mess. Warm at home and in her bed was the place she wished to be, this camping trip could go and fuck itself for all she cared.

With a press of a button the phone flashed her face with such a bright light it made her eyes wince at such a glare. Once they adjusted to its harsh brightness, it had felt like some cruel prank when she saw her phone had no service, she was way outside of the range of any cellular tower.

Her heart sunk into the pit of her stomach and her lips pursed tightly to stop her chin from quivering again, it had just gotten so much worse. There would be no calling for a tow truck, no texting for help or any form of outside rescue at all. Still, she had tried to send a handful of texts out in stubborn desperation.

The hope she was clinging onto was such a cruel bitch because it only helped to torment her, watching as her texts and calls failed over and over. The plastic frame of her phone creaked when she tried to crush it in her hands when the grim understanding had truly sunk in, she was entirely on her own.

With a whimper of utter defeat, she tossed the useless device aside with a flick of her wrist and it bounced off the passenger seat and onto the floor. She brushed her wavy raven black hair from her face with a quivering hand, tucking the loose strands behind her to compose herself.

“Come on Victoria… this is nothing you can’t handle, just don’t freak the fuck out.” She had tried to temper the torrent of dark emotions by saying to herself in a soft and soothing voice.

It took her a few long and deep breaths but she finally reigned in her emotions enough for her to think with a level head about her situation. What she needed most in that moment was comforting embrace of a hug and crossed her arms under her large bust to squeeze herself tightly in self reassurance.

It was while she stared at her steering wheel in this quiet contemplation for a moment, the first options about how she could get out of this mess started to take shape in her mind. Yet those options were far fewer than she cared for and she chewed on the inside of her bottom lip because they both sucked the big one as far as she was concerned.

The first she quite liked, just wait and sit it out in the car. Help would eventually come to her and she didn’t have to do a fucking thing. It scored bonus points for being the nice and lazy option where she did absolutely nothing, but cold and cruel logic reared its ugly head and it started to unravel her idea. The most glaring issue was she had no idea how long it could take for help to show up. When she found herself struggling to even recall the last time she had seen another car, she cursed in annoyance.

She groaned at the recollection that they were supposed to go camping in a unregulated site, that meant no patrolling rangers or a steady flow of departing campers, this meant she could find herself waiting for quite a long time for the off chance for someone to show up. Even worse, the cold already started creep in around her and suck the warmth from her body and she had simply pulled a blanket from her bed to use up on this frosty ass mountain.

Victoria continued to hold herself for comfort while this bleak situation was getting even darker, rocking back and forth while holding herself once the cold really started to nip at her arms and legs. This frigid touch was the spur to her mind needed to make her seriously debate the terrible alternative idea she had.

She was seriously pondering how bad could it be to take the longest walk of shame of her life to reach the closest gas station. The best guess she had made was pretty fucking terrible considering she had no idea where she was or how long it could be before she even made it back to the outskirts of civilization.

The blood in her veins seethed with hatred over the bitter fact it was probably the quickest way to salvage this shitty situation and she was quickly running dry on patience. With her palms pressed firmly to her forehead she made an annoyed growl,

What other option did she have? Waiting in the car and freezing to death?

Her eyes lit up when the prospect of at least while she walked there was still a remote possibility of flagging down a rescuer. She might even have to walk for very long and someone might just happen across her.

“Oh, Please let someone find me, I swear if he is a dude i’ll blow him the entire way down this fucking mountain.” She sighed a personal prayer aloud at the wonderful thought of salvation by hitchhiking.

This naughty thought of rewarding her imagined rescuer in such a way made her giggle and she needed the brief moment of levity to help lift her spirits. With a plan of action formed in her mind, she was already peering out the window to gaze towards the pale moonlit road with the intent to execute it right then.

It was quite bright even at such a late hour allowing her to easily make out the winding path of the roughly carved out logging road. This path was flanked by some of the tallest pine trees she had ever seen and it made her wonder just how off course she actually was.

Under those broad canopies, there was nothing but a inky darkness and She narrowed her blue eyes at the foreboding sight and she could not help but find herself wondering what could lurk in there while she walked. Her imagination started to play with all the dark possibilities of what could pounce her from the shadows, but she realized her wild imagination was going to make her start to reconsider the idea of walking.

Yet this cold was truly biting into her, it made her skin break out in little bumps and stiffened her nipples against the cups of her bra, her breath came forth in steaming puffs. She rubbed at her thighs through her black cotton leggings trying to massage some warmth into them, the tight material bunched up under her fingers as she vigorously stroked, squeezing the toned muscle of her legs.

It was either walk or freeze then, with a heavy sigh she braced for the adventure she was about to embark on and shoved open the car door.

—

The cold and crisp night air of the mountains blasted over her curvy figure and played in long locks of her hair as she stepped out of her car while gritting her teeth before fully climbing out onto the logging road and her body involuntarily shuddered to warm itself. Thankfully it was still summer or it could have been so much worse for her but she was not used to the chilled temperatures on this high elevation.

She was bounced up and down with her arms tightly wrapped under her breasts trying to warm herself with some vigorous activity making her large bust bounce so heavily against her forearms but at least it was helping her feel warmer. A frenzied number of rapid fire curses spilled unabated from her mouth while rubbing at the sides of her arms trying massage some warmth into her body, refusing to stop holding herself and kicking the door shut with a booted foot.

The car was being left behind to make her trek back to civilization and couldn’t help but feel this slight rush of excitement course through her, it felt like she was embarking on an adventure. In that moment she had sorely wished wished for the foresight to have brought some earbuds so she could have some music to make this long walk with.

The pace was brisk, her strides long as she had hoped to get her blood pumping and then she would be able to ignore night chill and it didn’t take long for her to warm up and soon her arms were swinging freely. Her tan hiking boots thumped loudly against the hard-packed soil of the road and she put a fair amount distance between herself and the car down this long stretch towards the first bend from where she had come from.

The moon was so bright she was confident in walking without a light, but maybe if she had bothered to remember her phone, she would have had the chance to have catch the inky shape of a creature stalking her from the treeline.

There were wisps of fog curling up the sides of the logging road from the forest and she watched the smoky tendrils reaching in towards her. Those gray spectral fingers of mist curled toward her feet only scatter away from her steps but they smothered the road ahead giving it an eerie look.

Deep down on an instinctual level, Victoria was being warned there was something wrong, the small hairs on the nape of her neck were standing stiff, it felt like something was watching her. She was beginning to regret this decision and looked back to her car, only to whimper in worry when she saw how far it already was from her, much too far which only deepened the sensation of impending doom twisting at her guts.

Then a strange realization dawned on her on the moment of hyper awareness and it made her eyes narrow in suspicion when she noticed there was nothing but an eerie silence. Never in her life had a forest been so still, there was this unsettling dead quiet around her, only the faint sound of the shifting trees and creaking bark from the breeze playing through the trees.

How badly she had wished to truly feel alone because her senses were under the impression there was something watching her. Her head was on a swivel and she twisted in place to gaze into the deep shadows under those trees, desperately trying to make out what could be hiding in the darkness.

After taking a long inhale, she blew out this long sigh and tried to dismiss those cries of alarm because of her wild imagination overreacting to being alone and in the woods. Yet when she started to walk again, the sound of her own footsteps still seemed far too damned loud for her own comfort.



Then none of that mattered when this terribly loud crackle of wood came out of nowhere. Her mind flew into a panic mode.

‘OH fuck, oh shit! What the fuck was that!‘ She frantically thought to herself but dared not add her voice to them.

She was frozen in place then, but promised herself if there was so much as a bug’s fart to be heard, she would get the fuck out of there. Except there was no way for her to be sure because the sound of her heart thumping in her ears was just too damned loud for her to hear anything else.