GOING NOWHERE - a 20-minute prose exercise
Here’s my 20-minute prose exercise for today. If you’d like to share yours, you can email me here. I’m working on getting a place to share them publicly (anonymously) on here if that’s something you’d like. If not, I’m happy to provide private feedback via email.
GOING NOWHERE
The trees looked the same as they had the day before and the day before that. The sun lingered at the precipice of the horizon on what would be the end of the fourth day.
“We’re lost,” Evelyn sobbed. “I can’t take this anymore.”
“Evie,” Hank assured her. “We’re going to make it out. We just have to trust Mary.”
“Mary is just as lost as the rest of us,” Toni quipped. She was leaning again a tree smoking her last cigarette.
“I’m still your best shot out of here,” I said. “C’mon.”
“No more,” Eveyln cried in agony. “I can’t go any further.” She collapsed on the pine needle carpet.
“Okay,” I said. “Then we’ll send someone back for you.”
“You can’t be serious,” Hank said, raising his voice. His bravado made me sick. “When we get out of here, I’ll sue you for everything your worth.”
“Ha!” Toni laughed. “Good luck with that.”
I shot her a dirty look, but didn’t have time to further engage. “We have to keep moving. By nightfall these trees will be overrun, and we’ll be finished.”
“Maybe we should be,” Toni continued. “Maybe the reason we keep going in circles is that this is all there is.” She stepped closer to me. “It’s not your fault you know?” she said with a sardonic smirk.
I shoved her to the ground, hard. “Enough! You two, on your feet. You hired me to get you through this forest and that’s what I’m going to do. And you,” I said glaring at Toni, “we’ll finish this once we’re back in San Paolo.”
Toni wiped mud from her face. “I’m looking forward to it.”
“We’re going up that ridge to get a lay of the land. Once we spot the sea we’ll head there. The boat will be back midday tomorrow. If we hurry we’ll just make it. Now, come on. Keep it together. This is when I need you the most.” I was looking at Hank and Evelyn, but my words were directed at Toni.
“I hope you stay alive,” she said softly, “so I can kill you myself.”
I ignored her and we carried on.
Miles and miles of forest and insects the size of my hand. Evelyn screamed at a snake. Hank twisted his ankle in a hole.
Toni was silent, but I could feel her eyes boring into the back of my head, lest I forgot my betrayal, my triste in Sao Paolo. We kept our word to co-guide this exotic hike, but we should have never come, I shouldn’t have come. Because the truth was I had no idea where I was going or where we’d been. We’d followed the stream that cut through the undergrowth hoping it would lead to the ocean, but it circled back to the same waterfall it came from.
It was time to accept the truth: we were going nowhere ever again.
And the cannibals on our trail would see to it that all evidence of our reckless adventure would be swallowed up and forgotten in the blackness of jungle.
“Mary,” Toni whispered.
I looked over at her, my head spinning. We sat next to each other against a stump covered in vines.
“How long?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Long enough.”
She looked thinner than she did a moment ago, or maybe days had truly passed. There was no way of knowing for sure. I glanced around and saw that she and I were alone.
“Where are they?”
“Gone,” she said, matter of fact. “They’ll be back for us soon.” She nodded toward my leg.
That’s when I saw: my leg was littered with poison darts. Toni’s were not.
“You stayed?”
“Of course.”
“But why?”
She snuggled up to me and held me in her arms. “Love is eternal, right honey?”
“Yeah, it is,” I started to cry.
“And what happens when that trust is broken?”
I started to look up at her, but she tightened her grip around my head and throat like a boa constrictor. I could feel my airflow cease.
“Maybe it’s for the best,” Toni said. “We really were going nowhere.”
And soon my world went dark as I embarked on a new adventure into the endless nowhere.
