The words of William Shakespeare, "Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once," were spoken in a show of Julius Caesar's pride and fearlessness, the two fatal flaws that ultimately led to his death before the Roman senate. It would be a cruel irony that these words were my last thoughts before my untimely demise. I by no means believe myself a coward, and I'm nearly certain Mr. Shakespeare didn't account for someone truly dying twice, but it was terribly fitting for my predicament.
I awoke lying on hard, cold soil, that which the sting of frost had long since penetrated. My tattered clothes, ingrained with the stench of putrid meat and iron, did little to protect my skin from the elements, allowing rainwater and mud to wash along my body. I began to push myself from the ground, barely registering my surroundings in my delirium. My focus was on my own body and the hundreds of aches and mild pains that afflicted it, notably different from the constant strain of age and poor bodily care I had since learned to live with—rather, I felt as if I had risen from a long, much-needed nap, now shrugging off the exhaustion that I had accumulated throughout the days, weeks, months, or even years.
My stretching came to an abrupt halt as I noted my condition, my body wrought with streaks of lukewarm blood like a slaughtered cow being bled on a meat hook. It stemmed primarily from my throat and heels, pouring down my limbs, seeping into the shredded cloth, and ultimately dying the ground beneath my feet a distressing crimson. I attempted to draw a shocked and perhaps fearful gasp as I stumbled backward, a sudden rush of adrenaline forcing me into a fight-or-flight response despite the lack of immediate danger, though I was only met with a sharp, frigid breath and the taste of the blood on my lips. I was certain that I was covered in it.
I wretched as the substance pooled onto the tip of my tongue, spitting desperately onto the ground in a pitiful attempt to rid myself of the taste, an atrocious medley of metal, filth, and the unsettling knowledge that this was likely my own lifeblood. That jolted me back into a more lucid state. In perhaps the first conscious movement since I awoke, I gripped at my throat, tearing away at the tight collar of my clothing—a dress, I recognized, though it wasn't especially elegant given its soiled condition—in search of the wound that had left me in a pool of blood. I found nothing. Physically, I seemed to be in perfect shape, but the scent and feel of blood along my skinwas unmistakable. I stepped backwards in an attempt to distance myself from the scene before me, but approximately three meters away, my back collided with a firm wall, chips of wood slicing and leaving splinters along my exposed back, prompting me to hiss an incoherent curse from my lips. My muscles tensed from the pain.
Aided by the thin streaks of light peering through the wooden wall's shallow cracks, I spied the silhouette of a doorframe just to my right. I promptly reached for the crude door latch, using perhaps a bit too much force in my efforts to quickly escape whatever building I had been made captive in. The rotten wood threatened to rip from its hinges as I stumbled forward, expecting it to be heavier or perhaps locked from the outside.
My eyes were met with a vast grove of pine trees adorned with countless ribbons of ice and snow, each glistening with the light of dawn. The building in which I awoke, as I now realized, was a worn logger's cabin akin to something an old cartoon's lumberjack and his thick-coated hound would take shelter in during the harsh winter storms and freezing nights. Whichever lumberjack had made shelter in the shack, I was quite certain it had served him well as my exposed skin, now protected by neither cloth nor shelter, suffered the bite of cold air. Nonetheless, it served my thoughts far better than the gore-stained dirt in which I previously laid.
When I was sufficiently far from the shack's entrance, my knees buckled beneath me. I collapsed into the thin layer of snow that coated the ground, my arms supporting my upper body in an awkward lay. The air was much easier to inhale without the ominous looming of a graphic murder—though I was still uncertain of who the victim was or my role in the scene—and residual dust.
Although at last I could dwell on my situation, there was little logic to be found. I had gotten in a car accident—I remembered the pain quite vividly—and awoken in a mysterious lodge in blood, the wounds that should have been completely faded. My hair was a deep brown and noticeably longer, grown to an utterly impractical length, my skin a shade fairer than usual, and the numerous tiny scars and callouses on my hands that I had accumulated over the years dissolved into nothingness. There was clearly something amiss, though I couldn't fathom an explanation beyond something fantastical; I felt too lucid for this to be delusion. I wasn't content with simply moving on, but I was completely stumped at the situation, and I was still in the middle of nowhere without hope of returning home.
I rose to my feet once more. The cold was finally becoming unbearable, and though the sickening sight of blood was still fresh in my mind, my stomach roared with hunger. My only solace, I assumed, would be within the shack. It seemed a much better alternative to wandering without warmth or clear direction, at least until I was properly satiated and properly clothed. As I approached the entrance once more, I covered my mouth and nose with a relatively unsullied piece of fabric. I nudged open the door once more and entered the shack.