Dream Lover

FOUR

NOT. A. DREAM. 

Elle didn't have time to wrestle with reality. She'd just witnessed things she hadn't even seen in horror movies. Her imagination wasn't this damn good. Whatever this was couldn't possibly be real-but it wasn't a dream either.

If it was, she should have been awake by now. She would have woken up before she got cut or immediately after at least that was how the dream thing was supposed to work.

 She had no idea how far she’d run before she realized nothing was chasing her but to be sure she jogged another couple hundred yards straining to hear anything over own heartbeat too afraid to risk looking over her shoulder. When she finally stopped running, she swung herself into a tree and climbed up.

On her way up the tree, she’d half torn one of the fragile straps holding up the dress. It slid impotently over her shoulder straining its precarious attachment. The dress would stay up; she’d been blessed and cursed with her mother’s top-heavy frame. Hers was a body that could and would slide toward the soft and cuddly at the slightest provocation. Elle usually teetered on the line. She was active, she ran on her days off, and when she worked, she kept her tables happy with snappy refills but she’d yet to find a cookie she didn’t like. More often than not, she found a away to squeeze five or six of them in between meals during her day. As a result, she tended to be on the lush side of an eight but when motivated she could get down to a curvy six in a few sugarless, bread-less joyless weeks.

When she was secure on a high branch and able to balance, she checked the wound on her left arm. She expected to see her own bone or at least cause to be concerned about a severed artery. She didn’t see either. It was deep, as far as cuts she’d experienced went, but she wasn’t in danger of bleeding out.

Now that she was looking at it, she doubted she would have bled as much as she had if she hadn’t decided to run for her life right after it happened.

Life threatening or not, it still hurt, and Elle wasn’t prepared to traipse much farther through this crazy place unarmed. Especially, when she realized that the only living things, she’d seen that hadn’t attacked her so far were plants. 

The thought that she needed a weapon had barely crossed her mind before a man carrying several of them walked right under her. He was walking slowly his eyes on the ground and his hand hovering over a long bow. Elle took a second to wonder where the hell she was and why anyone would have an old-fashioned long bow actually made out of wood as a primary weapon.

Elle was up, circling the relatively spiral patterned branches getting lower and closer to the man as she did. She moved comfortably in the tree the sandals had flexible rubber soles with a good grip on them and she’d probably spent half her childhood in trees. She spotted a pair of knives sheathed on his hip and one of them looked like something she'd actually seen before.

Perhaps it was her recent success with avoiding death and fighting off a man twice her size that had Elle thinking she could pull off a blitz attack on a guy carrying this many weapons, but he wasn't nearly as burly looking as the guy she'd taken out had been so she could probably handle this guy too.

This guy had some muscle on his arms but from where she was standing on the low thick branch of the massive tree, he looked like he was about the same height as she was and he looked on the slim side. If she timed it right, she could drop down on him, take him on a quick roll, have the knife she wanted in her hand, and be on the run again in a matter of seconds. With her legs already rested and stretched, she could be out of sight before he knew what hit him. 

She watched him, determining his pace while moving nimbly along the wide sturdy branches closer to bottom. When she was reasonably certain where he'd be in the next 20 seconds she cut across, and in something like fate landed on a tree limb as broad, straight, and sturdy as any diving board she’d ever seen. She set herself up counting down the seconds. When she got to five, she shot off from the base of the tree, sprinted down the branch, and flew at him. He turned to see her in the last instant, but she was already on him she’d underestimated how much the impact and the roll would take out of her but in another amazing show of coordination she got the knife she wanted and was back on her feet and moving.

As far as muggings went, Elle thought she had done a pretty good job. Everything was going exactly as planned.

Until something pounced on her from behind.

The blow was enough to knock the air from her lungs but things only got worse when she was suddenly face down in the dirt. 

Dazed,  Elle's first thought was that the animal she’d thought had let her go had changed its mind about eating her brains. She was tensed for an instant waiting for talons and the beak before her brain began to process her current situation. She was breathless and she was caught.