The Field

Janice ran as fast as her feet would take her. Her legs burned with every stride, but she didn’t care. The pain helped her to run faster; perhaps if she ran long enough, she would escape it.

She barely knew where she was. It was a field that she was in, that much she was sure of. But if she tried to think back as to how she got here the picture in her mind was fuzzy and after a few tries she stopped.

The wind blowing by her felt cool on her face, especially where her tears left tracks. Thinking of the drying tears on her cheeks caused Janice to cry more.

She felt pain, agony, the worst pain that anyone could possibly feel; much, much worse than the burning in her legs.

Janice noticed that the field she was running in stretched farther than she could see. For the first time in hours, she thought of something other than her pain. She thought that she should stop, turn around, at least figure out where she was. But then the anger returned and she stubbornly decided that she didn’t want to stop and didn’t care where she was going. How far away from home could she be?

Janice was in great shape, although she had never been much of a runner. Hiking, canoeing, skiing, those were more her style. She didn’t do any of that stuff for the exercise, she just liked being outside and they were fun.

Janice noticed for the first time that it had become dark. She couldn’t understand how that could have happened. She had only left the house at one o’clock and that was a half hour ago. Janice looked at her watch and stopped dead in her tracks. Her watch read eleven o’clock, ten hours later. But that’s not what made her stop. Janice stopped because the date on her watch showed that she had run for four months.

She looked around. There really was nothing to look at; no trees or houses, no lights, no sounds. No sounds, not even birds. And then she was afraid. She knew that she was still in a field because she felt the soft grass under her shoes. But when she knelt down to touch the ground she was shocked to feel sharp dead grass, not the soft green grass she had been running in.

Janice cried out, “Hello?” Her voice didn’t echo, it didn’t carry like a voice should. It dropped away instantly as if she were in a box. She stretched out her arms to make sure she wasn’t.

In the distance, what sounded like miles away, she heard what sounded like a faint, “Hello?” Whether it was a male or female, Janice couldn’t tell. A creepy feeling now joined her building fear. It brought her no comfort at all hearing another voice in the darkness. Deep down inside she knew the voice did not come from a friend.

As her eyes began to adjust to the darkness, she could see the outline of the surrounding woods. Slowly turning around she discovered that the woods contained the field she was in completely. How that could possibly be, Janice couldn’t understand. But it was not quite the most pressing question on her mind.

Janice began to do the only thing she thought made any sense: she ran. She ran back the way she had come, at least, the way she thought she had come. At this point her sense of direction was totally useless. A breeze began to pick up, and Janice was thankful for it, except that, what began as a cool breeze quickly became warm. The air became thick and humid and although the breeze never actually reached hot, it stayed at a very uncomfortable temperature. Sweat covered Janice within seconds. It burned her eyes and dripped off her arms as she ran. The wind came at her from above, incasing her in a cocoon of heat.

She ran faster and faster trying, without reason, to outrun the hot air. Her mind reeled, her thoughts became incohesive. She screamed, “Stop it! Stop it!” Her foot caught on something and she flew to the ground. She landed hard and slid for a few feet, grass and dirt sticking to her body. Janice curled up into a ball, covering her head with her arms, hoping she could just disappear.

All at once the wind ceased and the heat dispersed. In her ear Janice heard, “Get up!”

Janice jumped to her feet before her blood curdling scream had even finished exiting her throat. She looked around in terror running with no direction. She mumbled nothings and found herself running almost sideways. What little of her mind she had left told her that she was running away from something, but her eyes and ears couldn’t help her identify what that was. Screaming, eyes wide, Janice ran. She felt no pain. She felt nothing.

When no more screams would come from her dried throat, Janice switched to crying. But in a brief moment of silence she heard, in the distance, a woman scream. This time she did feel comfort in knowing that someone else was out there and she changed direction to run towards the voice.

She yelped as something bit her in the face. No it wasn’t a bite, something hit her. Then it happened again and she soon the sensation began to feel familiar. Sleet began to fall as if someone had flipped a switch and Janice’s face felt as if she was running through hundreds of small razor blades. The falling ice cut her hands and arms causing frozen agony as the temperature plummeted. The sweat in her hair froze so rapidly that Janice could hear the ice form.

There was an eerie orange glow in the sky, enough to lighten up the field which was now silver and white. Janice noticed her breath for the first time. And when it disappeared, she began to panic. She knew that her body couldn’t possibly handle the cold. Her blood would freeze solid inside her within minutes and she would be dead. Mindless terror of the unknown had been replaced by a calm realistic fear of truth. What was worse than knowing she was going to freeze to death any minute, was not knowing how it was possible to happen at all.

And then the air was gone; as Janice went to take a breath, her lungs simply didn’t respond. She stopped running, dropped to her knees and instinctively grabbed her throat. Silence surrounded her and then it was joined by darkness.

Janice opened her eyes slowly, light blinding her as she did. She turned her head to one side to shade them from the brightness and got her eyes to open completely. She knew where she was immediately, her bedroom back in her house. She let out a breath that she wasn’t aware she was holding. Sitting up, Janice tentatively tested her arms and hands, then her legs and feet. Everything seemed to be in working order. She pulled back the sheets and got herself out of bed, which turned out to be much easier than she anticipated. After running for as long and hard as she had, Janice expected to be in much more pain. She took a step and a thought occurred to her: how had she gotten here? Was the whole experience in the field a dream, or rather, a nightmare? It didn’t really seem logical for it to have happened.

And then the full weight of memories came flooding back at once. Janice dropped to her knees and started to throw up. But nothing was really coming out; mostly water and a bit of bile. As the heaving subsided, she leaned against the bed, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and began to cry. The memory of the field, the darkness, the heat, the blistering cold, all came back. And that voice. It was the worst nightmare Janice could remember having.

But what made Janice cry was not the nightmare.