Seven Day Story Part 4

I made it maybe a mile before I felt the blood running down my leg. It’s mostly numb, but I thought I felt a tickling sensation and it was bugging me. When I looked down my leg was completely red from the half way point of my shin down. All the strain of walking ripped the cauterized wound open. I’m not sure how long it was like that before I noticed, but it has me worried. My pants are covered in things from the forest that dried in the original blood. There’s no telling what kind of infection I could get.

Currently, I’m looking through a clearing. I’m about two miles in, and I figure if I can do two miles each day I should make it back just in time. Trying to work through this with my leg makes it about ten times harder than it would be otherwise. I say ten because I’ve done these types of trips a hundred times in my life, and doing this one right now feels about ten times harder. I don’t know why it’s not six or eight, or even twelve. Ten just feels right. Actually, nothing feels right at the moment.

I think maybe I’ll camp here at the edge of this part of the forest. I can see things coming easily with the clearing in front of me, and I’ve done a pretty good job of shuffling up sticks and stuff hobbling through so I should hear them coming from behind me. I’ve eaten about half of the raccoon. I know that’s pretty bad since I should ration a little better in case I can’t catch anything else for the next two days, at least, but it’s hard not to eat it when it’s there. And of course eating makes me thirsty, so I’m down to about three-quarters of my bottle. I hope I run into water soon.

It’s getting harder to write. I feel the weakness in my hands. I know that if something as simple as writing gets difficult I’m gonna be SOL when it comes to building a fire or pitching my tent. For some reason getting all of these thoughts down when I have them seems just as important as anything else in this situation. I know it’s not vital to my survival, but I guess maybe my body knows something I don’t. Is there something in our biological makeup that can tell when we’re about to expire, and we just don’t consciously know what it feels like until it’s too late?

My watch says four thirty. I know I should have pitched the tent before I sat down, but I just needed a rest. I’m going to get up and do it now while I’m thinking about it. If I don’t, I won’t.

Against my better judgment, I ate a raccoon leg and took a swig of water. I tried to talk myself out of it, standing there with an item in each hand, but it was almost like I had no control over myself. It made a difference, though, and I managed to pitch the tent and get the fire going. My leg is in bad shape and I’m not really sure what to do about it. I could cauterize it again, but I’m afraid it’ll just rip open like it did the first time. It’s starting to itch around the edges and that has me worried.

It took me an hour longer to get everything set up this time than last. My left arm hurts from putting so much strain on it and I think my hand is starting to chafe against the walking stick. I’ll have to remember to dig the left glove out of my pack before I leave again. I’m hoping the next leg of the trip is similar to this one as far as the forest goes. A lot of the trees were close enough together that I could do ten to twenty-second bursts of movement with a rest in between. I can’t imagine what it would be like doing this in an open field.

I’ve been wondering about Siobhan and what she’s doing. Today is Wednesday, which is her day to re-up at the library. If I had to guess she is probably on the couch with a glass of wine and whatever she decided to grab this time around. She usually gets good fiction, which is nice. I can actually talk to her about what she reads since it’s not that thrift store romance garbage. Her mom was really into those and when she died there were boxes full of them that got, you guessed it, taken to the thrift store. I wonder if people write those books knowing that’s where they’ll eventually end up.

I’m having a hard time keeping my eyes open. It’s not even dark yet, but sitting still is really taking it out of me as much as moving.